Verbal 39-41 to 44+

I believe different strategies/solutions applies here depending on your case. A deterministic parameter is how your verbal weaknesses are distributed. For me, as an example, the 40 barrier can not be broken because of my RC skills, as I'm a non-native English speaker. I got all SC questions correct in my practice tests and almost all CR questions correct, but missed a bunch of RC problems, and thus could never break the 40 barrier. The solution for my case can be totally different from someone who misses an equal number of questions from each type of verbal problems.

Had posted this awhile back, but wondering if anyone had any new insight?

I went up from 38 on my first practice test to 45 on the real exam in about 4-5 months. I had written some notes on my prep and never posted them because I really got all the information I needed on how to prepare from gmatclub from postings of other successful people. But let me repeat them anyway.

• Did all the GMAT sets on CR 1000. Kept error log and went through those questions again
• Did 500 of the SC from SC1000, and repeated that again to understand where I was going wrong. I realized I wasn’t making much progress on this and quickly bought the Manhattan’s SC guide based on the recommendation from this forum. Now that helped me a lot to get past 40 on verbal.
• To refine verbal further, I did the LSAT questions on CR1000 and the SC1000 from 500-1000. This time it was a lot better, I could see I was improving. BTW, I also used the logical fallacies document that's posted on the verbal section to understand patterns in CRs, and I tried Kaplan 800 for CRs but did not like it very much. Error logs were a big part of the prep for SCs as well as CRs
• Additionally, I spent some of my time looking at Reading comprehension from the RC1000 list.
• I also repeated the SC questions from OG 10 in the last week of preparation. I got about 91% right. Analyzed all the wrong ones again.
• Not to mention, I was fairly active responding to the questions posted on the forum. If I was wrong then I would look at the explanations of the people whose answers were right.

As you can see a big part of my prep went towards verbal. I spent about 2 hours everyday, including math prep and not much more over weekends. I did 6 full practice exams. Gmatprep 1 and 2 into one month of prep (got 38, 39). Then mid-way I did the power preps (got 44, 41). Repeated gmatPrep 1 and 2 weekend before the exam and got 47 and 45 respectively. My exam was on a monday morning. I got 45 on it.

Hope this helps.

One more thing, do not take RC lightly. The difficulty for me was concentrating on the passages during the full exams. I had to consciously realize I was losing focus and bring myself back to the passage with full attention.

I agree with this - I consistently had problems with RC and CR "Find the Assumption" type questions. An effective note-taking strategy to deal with RC Long Passages was instrumental in my going from v42 (GMATPrep) to v46 (actual GMAT).

If you're reasonably good in the quant section already then even a 1 or 2 point increase to your v39 - v41 will do wonders for your final score!

I went from consistently scoring around 41V on practice tests to 48V on the actual test.

One question, scoring 40-ish, are you finishing with a lot of time left on the clock?

I wouldn't say A LOT of time, but definitely enough time (4-5 minutes) usually.

Thanks for the posts they seem like good strategies

I definitely find patterns in CR questions

some patterns I identified for example in assumption questions:

look for mostly simple answers that do not go far from scope, that do not contain any extraneous info that is not explictly mentioned in passage but also answers that do not repeat a fact in the question

and another pattern Ive found in the "If True" questions, look for choices that seem like they may be out of scope, but not too far out of scope. Answer choices that do not repeat any/all of the words in the passage. I noticed theylike to throw in choices that make people comfortable answering because it is close to the stem, but in reality, not what they really are looking for.

What RC note-taking strategy? For me I think this may take awhile on the actual test to write out. I try to read the passage slowly and understand in my head what the passage is saying and then answer the questions.

SC - I've definitely read through MGMAT SC tons of times, however sometimes you think these are questions you will never get right no matter how hard you try. I think the big thing for SC is to understand the sentence logically. I think that is where a lot of the hard questions in SC go and something I should work on. A lot of times you can catch yourself looking atthe question on a word by word basis looking for errors, and not understanding the meaning of the question.

In CR, I definitely think this is my best area of Verbal, however sometimes its difficult to discern the meaning of certain words they throw out and you have to judge the extent of a phrase. Big things to look out for and to scrutinize are many, few, alll , some , none etc

Also know that each answer has to be AIRTIGHT. You just have to keep that in mind at all times and look at the question with a straight head with no extraneous info.

I also catch myself geting answers wrong because I see an assumption, and I answer it, in reality they were asking for a statement to weaken the argument, so that is just concentration more than anything.

Those have been my basic strategies I have been using to attack these problems. I mean 39-41 Verbal is great in and of itself, just wondering if I can jump to the next level. Sometimes you can get frustrated and think, okay, I hit my wall, I can try harder but sometimes you just don't get it.

What is the logical fallacies document that's posted on the verbal section?

This link includes a link to the logical fallacies doc

https://www.gmatclub.com/forum/11-t44301

awesome...thanks for this.

In my trial CATs (PowerPrep,GMATPrep, Princeton, Manhattan) I consistently scored around 39-42V. Last 2-3 days before the actual test I sat down and checked my top 4-5 common error types. I thoroughly read the types that were counter-intuitive to me, finally I spent a good 2-3 hours on the idioms. Result : my highest V ever :44 (English is my second language).

I HIGHLY recommend "nailing" idioms. May make a 1-2 question swing. 1-2 extra correct answers may well mean the difference b/w 41 and 44.

So I got a 42V on my last gmatprep. I was pretty happy although I know I can do better.

I got 1 RC wrong, 2 CR wrong, and 6 SC wrong! I was very happy with RC. I think I learned how to nail RC. It's all about dissecting the language in the answer choices. It is about eliminating answers that just go to far (extreme) or not far enough. I stress analyzing every word in the answer choices. They give you feel good answers. So if they ask you about one topic, they will give in the answer choice something, a word, a phrase, that relates to that topic that you will think back, oh , "those 2 go together", yet that is not the answer because they try to throw you off.

Anyway I need to improve SC obviously. I know all the rules for the most part. It is just the application of the rules as well as identifying them.

1 RC wrong - it is great. It is an obstacle to me.. I get most of the questions correct on the RC 1000, but when it comes to CAT test (Kaplan) I fail to answer about 50% - 60% I am mostly wrong on the specific questions..
What is really frustrating is that the text itself can be pretty long (60+ lines) and only 3 questions follow it.. I just do not have enough time to make it up.. I spend about 3 to 4 min on reading the passage..

Is RC 1000 doc a good source to practice? How would you evaluate the difficulty level of its passages?

Thanks a lot

Hey Chica,

I have not really used that document so I can't judge. But I will start and I will let you know.

Well the specific questions probably should be the easiest since it actually appears in the passage. Maybe a strategy you could use is to read the passage quicker and mentally note where certain key things are, and when you come across those items in the question go right back to the passage. Sometimes it won't be as overt an answer, the words may be a little different, but the jist is there.

Thank you

I will definitely try doing that.. Hopefully, it will work out for me..
The global questions seem to be the easiest ones so far.. I think it is because I concentrate more on getting the overall idea of the passage and pay less attention to the actual details.. and indeed it is easier for me.. Well, will keep on practicing..