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Second Attempt 620 (Q49, V26) Goal 680+

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Second Attempt 620 (Q49, V26) Goal 680+ [#permalink] New post   21 Oct 2016, 15:56
Hello All! After 3months of studying, I wrote my GMAT this week scoring a 620 (Q49, V26).
My previous score from last year was 610 (Q47, V27). After studying around 20 hours a week, I was very discouraged and disheartened by the 620 score.

As for my study plan, it was to work on my fundamentals first, then work on practice questions and mock exams.
Resources used:
1.) E-GMAT Verbal Online
2.) Math Revolution
3.) OG 2016
4.) GMAT Club Grammar Book
5.) Veritas Prep Practice Exams
6.) GMAT Prep Question Pack 1
7.) GMAT Prep Free, Exam Pack 1/2

With SC being my most glaring weakness, I started off with the E-GMAT Verbal online eventually going through all of the SC and CR section in the first month or so. After this, I did practice a little bit on OG and saw improvements in my SC accuracy. I then eventually signed up for MathRevolution as a goal to consistently hit the Q49/50 mark. I went through this program within a month and was hitting Q48-50 consistently in all my practice exams. I realized that the questions were not difficult and for Quant, it was about re-learning the fundamentals and avoiding silly mistakes. With this, I turned back to reviewing my verbal while taking mock exams every weekend.

Mock Exams:
GMAT Prep 1: 590 (Q47, V25) - Original CAT before any studying
GMAT Prep 2: 600 (Q47, V26)
GMAT Prep 3: 640 (Q49, V29) - 3 weeks before exam. Right after finishing Math review
GMAT Prep 4: 680 (Q49, V34) - After a week of verbal review
GMAT Prep 5: 640 (Q48, V29) - 1 week before exam
GMAT Prep 6: 650 (Q48, V31) - Day before exam

I also took just the Quantitative portion for Veritas Prep Test while I was going through Math Revolution
Veritas Prep 1: Q46
Veritas Prep 2: Q47
Veritas Prep 3: Q49
Veritas Prep 4: Q48
Veritas Prep 5: Q50

From my personal observation and experience I feel very confident on consistently hitting Q49 and on doing so on test day. I understand Q50/51 is on another level/tier so I don't believe it is worth my time to try and improve Quant at this point. That being said, my Verbal is still terrible and although I feel more comfortable after going through so many problems and covering all basic fundamentals, it is obvious I still have some serious flaws when it comes to SC especially. I do feel as though my CR and RC are on a decent level. My CR has ranged from 32-38 usually while RC has been between 32-36. Unfortunately, my CR went horribly on my exam and felt that it was much harder than the GMAT Prep or anything else I have encountered. Finally, for SC, I also felt as though the real exam was harder than what I have been practicing.

I am now looking for advice on how I should refine my SC skills to get it to a respectable level. I need to improve my accuracy and speed for SC to have a chance to improve my Verbal. MY goal is to consistently hit V34-36 so I have a shot of hitting 680+ on test day. I ran out of time before the exam last time to go through all of OG 2016 SC so that will definitely be part of my study plan for the next exam which I am planning to take either the end of November or early December.

If anyone has any advice on how I can improve (SC especially) or anything else, I would appreciate it! Also if anyone has tried the MGMAT SC or MGMAT Foundation for GMAT Verbal and would like to share their experience I would love to hear it.
Thank you for reading my long post and thank you in advance for any help!
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Re: Second Attempt 620 (Q49, V26) Goal 680+ [#permalink] New post   22 Oct 2016, 10:32
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Sorry to hear that you had a bad test day, Kurai. Clearly, you've worked really hard at this, so you deserve some score improvement!

For the most part, I think that you've had a solid approach to your GMAT studies. I like that you built your fundamentals first, and then started concentrating more on practice tests toward the end. That's a good thing. It's also good that you've stayed away from "knockoff" verbal tests -- it's simply impossible for a company like, say, Veritas to accurately copy the style of real GMAT verbal questions, so doing just the quant tests was a good move.

I'm obviously not 100% sure, but here's my theory on your SC struggles: I wonder if you've been a little bit too hyper-focused on some of the mechanics, at the expense of the big picture of SC. Many of the SC resources you've used focus on "memorizable rules" for the test -- things like parallelism or pronoun usage or idioms. Those things are really important, obviously. But I'd argue that it's equally important to make sure that you're able to think about the difference in meaning between two answer choices, and that skill basically comes down to how well you can pick up on the nuances of language. Perhaps that's something that would be worth concentrating on as you move forward.

Sure, it's also possible that you're just struggling to really understand and use those grammar rules on the test: you might know the textbook version of, say, pronoun rules, but maybe you struggle to actually notice the pronouns when you're taking the test. That's probably part of the issue, but my hunch is that you're not drilling into the meaning as deeply as you should on SC -- the mechanical rules will only get you so far.

So maybe you're already doing this, but concentrate on the grammar/usage rules on your first pass through a question, and eliminate as much as you can. Then, take whichever answer choices remain, and see if you can pin down exactly what's different between those choices -- and exactly how those differences impact the meaning. I could be wrong, but that might move the needle somewhat as you keep studying.

In terms of GMAT study materials, it looks like you haven't finished all of the verbal OG questions -- and it looks like you haven't touched the official GMAT verbal guide. Those are going to be easily the most important resources for your retake, so use those strategically.

For CR (and RC), I'd recommend using official LSATs as a supplement to the GMAT. LSATs are harder -- and there are obviously some cosmetic differences between the LSAT and the GMAT -- but the LSAT tests the same fundamental skills as GMAT CR & RC, so LSATs are a good way to build some consistency. And on CR, my hunch is that consistency is a fundamental issue for you, since there was quite a bit of variation among your GMATPrep tests and actual exam. So more practice with official materials can only help.

Last thing: I wouldn't be shocked if fatigue played a role on test day. In theory, the CR questions you saw shouldn't be any harder than the ones you saw on your GMATPrep exams, so maybe you were just a little bit more worn out on test day than when you took your practice tests? It wouldn't take much additional stress or fatigue to drop your score a few points. That, or some of the CR struggles were just bad luck -- which should even out next time, right?

Let me know how it goes!
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Re: Second Attempt 620 (Q49, V26) Goal 680+ [#permalink] New post   23 Oct 2016, 16:35
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Hi Kurai,

Thank you for providing such detailed information. I agree that your quant is definitely in a stable place and you should focus on increasing in your verbal knowledge in order to raise your GMAT score. Although sentence correction is your weakest topic, according to your ESR, you may consider trying to improve all aspects of verbal, so you can raise your verbal score as much as possible.

You mentioned that in your previous round of studying you went through many sentence correction problems covering all the basic fundamentals. Thus, it’s possible that you started practicing random questions prior to fully understanding the principles underlying sentence correction.

To truly master sentence correction, you must master grammar rules (parallelism, subject/verb agreement, etc.) and accepted English usage. Concentrate on one topic at a time, such as modification, and practice with as many modification questions as you can find. Only after you feel confident with modification should you move to the next topic. In addition to your dedicated study, notice grammar and usage in your everyday life. Be aware of the things you habitually read, in terms of sentence structure, how phrases are worded, and whether pronouns are easy to understand. Make sure you use proper grammar in your everyday writing as well. Have you put parallel ideas into parallel constructions? Do all of your pronouns refer appropriately to their antecedents? The more you reinforce your study with related activity outside of your study, the greater the likelihood you will master the topics and these rules of grammar will become second nature to you.

Once you feel you have sufficiently mastered sentence correction, move on to critical reasoning and reading comprehension. As with sentence correction, rather than diving straight into random practice questions, you may find it more productive to tackle each topic one at a time and follow up your learning with focused practice. For example, when learning about critical reasoning, you want to be able to learn about all aspects of critical reasoning: strengthen and weaken the conclusion, resolve the paradox, find the conclusion, must be true, etc. Follow up your learning with targeted critical reasoning practice, so you can determine your specific weaknesses within that topic. After practicing a large number of CR questions, you may find, for example, that you struggle mostly with “must be true” and “find the conclusion” questions. If that is the case, be sure to spend some time improving your knowledge of those concepts before moving on to the next verbal topic.

Finally, you may find it helpful to read my latest Poets and Quants article that provides some further advice on how to improve your GMAT verbal skills.

If you have any further questions, feel free to contact me directly.
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Second Attempt 620 (Q49, V26) Goal 680+ [#permalink] New post   24 Oct 2016, 10:48
GMATNinja wrote:
Sorry to hear that you had a bad test day, Kurai. Clearly, you've worked really hard at this, so you deserve some score improvement!

For the most part, I think that you've had a solid approach to your GMAT studies. I like that you built your fundamentals first, and then started concentrating more on practice tests toward the end. That's a good thing. It's also good that you've stayed away from "knockoff" verbal tests -- it's simply impossible for a company like, say, Veritas to accurately copy the style of real GMAT verbal questions, so doing just the quant tests was a good move.

I'm obviously not 100% sure, but here's my theory on your SC struggles: I wonder if you've been a little bit too hyper-focused on some of the mechanics, at the expense of the big picture of SC. Many of the SC resources you've used focus on "memorizable rules" for the test -- things like parallelism or pronoun usage or idioms. Those things are really important, obviously. But I'd argue that it's equally important to make sure that you're able to think about the difference in meaning between two answer choices, and that skill basically comes down to how well you can pick up on the nuances of language. Perhaps that's something that would be worth concentrating on as you move forward.

Sure, it's also possible that you're just struggling to really understand and use those grammar rules on the test: you might know the textbook version of, say, pronoun rules, but maybe you struggle to actually notice the pronouns when you're taking the test. That's probably part of the issue, but my hunch is that you're not drilling into the meaning as deeply as you should on SC -- the mechanical rules will only get you so far.

So maybe you're already doing this, but concentrate on the grammar/usage rules on your first pass through a question, and eliminate as much as you can. Then, take whichever answer choices remain, and see if you can pin down exactly what's different between those choices -- and exactly how those differences impact the meaning. I could be wrong, but that might move the needle somewhat as you keep studying.

In terms of GMAT study materials, it looks like you haven't finished all of the verbal OG questions -- and it looks like you haven't touched the official GMAT verbal guide. Those are going to be easily the most important resources for your retake, so use those strategically.

For CR (and RC), I'd recommend using official LSATs as a supplement to the GMAT. LSATs are harder -- and there are obviously some cosmetic differences between the LSAT and the GMAT -- but the LSAT tests the same fundamental skills as GMAT CR & RC, so LSATs are a good way to build some consistency. And on CR, my hunch is that consistency is a fundamental issue for you, since there was quite a bit of variation among your GMATPrep tests and actual exam. So more practice with official materials can only help.

Last thing: I wouldn't be shocked if fatigue played a role on test day. In theory, the CR questions you saw shouldn't be any harder than the ones you saw on your GMATPrep exams, so maybe you were just a little bit more worn out on test day than when you took your practice tests? It wouldn't take much additional stress or fatigue to drop your score a few points. That, or some of the CR struggles were just bad luck -- which should even out next time, right?

Let me know how it goes!


Hello GMATNinja!

Thank you so much for your response. As I was reading your response, I could relate to almost everything you stated when it comes to my struggles with Verbal and SC in particular.

For SC, you are absolutely correct when it comes to my strategy and not looking for the meaning in a sentence. I do still have a problem with the basic grammatical rules when it comes to SC and I often find myself spending too much time trying to pick out errors in each of the answer choices going through them one by one. This has made SC very time consuming. This also leaves me no time to look into the meaning of the sentence and since I am often picking out little phrases in a sentence, I don't even read the sentence as a whole.

What do you recommend I do to work on changing my strategy to a more balanced approach of looking for grammar errors as well as looking at the meaning/meaning changes of a sentence? Is this something I can consciously start to do while practicing problems and will eventually master? I am a native speaker in English, but I have always struggled with grammar from grade school. I believe I can get the meaning of a sentence if I have time, but this can often be a time consuming task.

I have purchased the MGMAT Foundation for Verbal and MGMAT SC books. I also have the OG 2016 and Verbal OG books. I plan on going through these 4 books then maybe take a short online course while incorporating practice exams in between before my next GMAT exam.

Finally, you stated that you recommend the LSAT books for CR and RC practice. Since I have not fully gone through the OG 2016 and Verbal OG, do you recommend I go through those first before the LSAT books? I am guessing those are made for GMAT and because they are official questions, would be better practice.

Thank you again for your help! I will keep practicing and see what resources I may need in the future to achieve my goal!

Kurai
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Re: Second Attempt 620 (Q49, V26) Goal 680+ [#permalink] New post   24 Oct 2016, 11:32
ScottTargetTestPrep wrote:
Hi Kurai,

Thank you for providing such detailed information. I agree that your quant is definitely in a stable place and you should focus on increasing in your verbal knowledge in order to raise your GMAT score. Although sentence correction is your weakest topic, according to your ESR, you may consider trying to improve all aspects of verbal, so you can raise your verbal score as much as possible.

You mentioned that in your previous round of studying you went through many sentence correction problems covering all the basic fundamentals. Thus, it’s possible that you started practicing random questions prior to fully understanding the principles underlying sentence correction.

To truly master sentence correction, you must master grammar rules (parallelism, subject/verb agreement, etc.) and accepted English usage. Concentrate on one topic at a time, such as modification, and practice with as many modification questions as you can find. Only after you feel confident with modification should you move to the next topic. In addition to your dedicated study, notice grammar and usage in your everyday life. Be aware of the things you habitually read, in terms of sentence structure, how phrases are worded, and whether pronouns are easy to understand. Make sure you use proper grammar in your everyday writing as well. Have you put parallel ideas into parallel constructions? Do all of your pronouns refer appropriately to their antecedents? The more you reinforce your study with related activity outside of your study, the greater the likelihood you will master the topics and these rules of grammar will become second nature to you.

Once you feel you have sufficiently mastered sentence correction, move on to critical reasoning and reading comprehension. As with sentence correction, rather than diving straight into random practice questions, you may find it more productive to tackle each topic one at a time and follow up your learning with focused practice. For example, when learning about critical reasoning, you want to be able to learn about all aspects of critical reasoning: strengthen and weaken the conclusion, resolve the paradox, find the conclusion, must be true, etc. Follow up your learning with targeted critical reasoning practice, so you can determine your specific weaknesses within that topic. After practicing a large number of CR questions, you may find, for example, that you struggle mostly with “must be true” and “find the conclusion” questions. If that is the case, be sure to spend some time improving your knowledge of those concepts before moving on to the next verbal topic.

Finally, you may find it helpful to read my latest Poets and Quants article that provides some further advice on how to improve your GMAT verbal skills.

If you have any further questions, feel free to contact me directly.


Hello Scott,

Thank you for your advice on study suggestion for SC! I will try focusing on one topic at a time.

Would you happen to have any suggestions on how I should go about approaching studying one section at a time for SC? I am thinking about maybe using the tags on GMATClub to work on let’s say Parallelism or SV agreement. Since I do have access to both OG 2016 and Verbal OG, I can also look for a list of every topic of SC and practice them one topic at a time instead of going from problem #1 to the end.

I also like the idea of being more aware of grammar rules in everyday reading. I will try to make a more conscious effort in looking for correct and incorrect sentences as I go through my day.

I have read your Poets and Quants article. Thank you for the great read!

Kurai
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GMATNinja
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Re: Second Attempt 620 (Q49, V26) Goal 680+ [#permalink] New post   25 Oct 2016, 15:22
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Hi Kurai! Glad that I wasn't too far off base with my last post. :-D

In general, I would advocate approaching SC questions in two distinct steps: first, eliminate any answer choices with clear grammar/usage errors in your first pass through the question, then focus on comparing the meaning differences in remaining choices. So it sounds like you're capable of figuring out the nuances of meaning, but you don't usually get there because you get so bogged down with the grammar, correct?

I think the MGMAT SC book will help you to some degree -- it can't hurt to develop a better knowledge of grammar, right? But I think the real issue might be more subtle: it's not just about how much grammar you know, it's whether you can quickly recognize the BEST opportunities to get easy, grammar/usage-based eliminations. I'd argue that the GMAT SC section tests certain mechanical concepts over and over again: pronouns, certain modifiers (e.g., "that", "which", and dangling participles), parallelism, and subject-verb agreement probably top the list, though there are obviously plenty of other concepts that are important. If you can learn to spot the most important grammar concepts quickly, that will help -- and if you don't know exactly what the past progressive perfect tense or an adjectival modifier is... that's great, because grammar jargon is mostly a waste of time on the GMAT. :) It's not a vocabulary test, fortunately.

For CR and RC, it's theoretically true that official GMAT questions are going to be better practice than LSAT questions, since... well, you're not taking the LSAT. But if you've already done a lot of work from the OG, there won't be much left -- the verbal guide, for example, has only 83 CR questions. You can squeeze a few more out of the GMATPrep Question Pack, but odds are good that you'll still need more. Plus, the LSAT questions are consistently more difficult, and that's probably a good thing as you strive to improve. If you're curious about using the LSAT as GMAT practice, here's a long rant about it: https://www.gmatninja.com/2012/11/12/lsa ... rehension/

Anyway, if you have a limited supply of official GMAT CR & RC questions, I usually recommend starting with the LSAT stuff, and then switching back to the GMAT questions as you get close to your test, but feel free to mix them up however you see fit. Just save at least some GMAT materials for closer to your exam.

Seriously, please let me know how it goes for you!
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Re: Second Attempt 620 (Q49, V26) Goal 680+ [#permalink] New post   27 Oct 2016, 11:48
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GMATNinja wrote:
Hi Kurai! Glad that I wasn't too far off base with my last post. :-D

In general, I would advocate approaching SC questions in two distinct steps: first, eliminate any answer choices with clear grammar/usage errors in your first pass through the question, then focus on comparing the meaning differences in remaining choices. So it sounds like you're capable of figuring out the nuances of meaning, but you don't usually get there because you get so bogged down with the grammar, correct?

I think the MGMAT SC book will help you to some degree -- it can't hurt to develop a better knowledge of grammar, right? But I think the real issue might be more subtle: it's not just about how much grammar you know, it's whether you can quickly recognize the BEST opportunities to get easy, grammar/usage-based eliminations. I'd argue that the GMAT SC section tests certain mechanical concepts over and over again: pronouns, certain modifiers (e.g., "that", "which", and dangling participles), parallelism, and subject-verb agreement probably top the list, though there are obviously plenty of other concepts that are important. If you can learn to spot the most important grammar concepts quickly, that will help -- and if you don't know exactly what the past progressive perfect tense or an adjectival modifier is... that's great, because grammar jargon is mostly a waste of time on the GMAT. :) It's not a vocabulary test, fortunately.

For CR and RC, it's theoretically true that official GMAT questions are going to be better practice than LSAT questions, since... well, you're not taking the LSAT. But if you've already done a lot of work from the OG, there won't be much left -- the verbal guide, for example, has only 83 CR questions. You can squeeze a few more out of the GMATPrep Question Pack, but odds are good that you'll still need more. Plus, the LSAT questions are consistently more difficult, and that's probably a good thing as you strive to improve. If you're curious about using the LSAT as GMAT practice, here's a long rant about it: https://www.gmatninja.com/2012/11/12/lsa ... rehension/

Anyway, if you have a limited supply of official GMAT CR & RC questions, I usually recommend starting with the LSAT stuff, and then switching back to the GMAT questions as you get close to your test, but feel free to mix them up however you see fit. Just save at least some GMAT materials for closer to your exam.

Seriously, please let me know how it goes for you!


GMATNinja,

Thank you again for your advice!

I love your simple approach of eliminating obvious grammatical errors first then comparing the errors. I will instill that strategy until it becomes second nature. As stated earlier, I will be going through the MGMAT foundation of verbal and MGMAT SC books very quickly to review and strengthen my basic grammatical skills then practicing OG problems everyday. Hopefully SC becomes second nature to me so I have time to work on a lot of CR questions as well.

For CR, I plan on simply practicing according to the question type (Strengthen, Weaken, Assumption etc) and going through all of OG 2016, OG Verbal and maybe LSAT questions if I have time! Finally for RC, I am going to try Rhyme’s approach on skimming the passage and answering questions. I have also purchased some books recommended on GMATClub to speed up my reading.

All in all, it seems like I may only have a month until my next exam so I am hoping this will take me over the top. If not, I guess there is always another retake I can conquer 

Thank You again for your help and I will definitely keep you updated! I hope your strategy and material recommendation will help me conquer the Verbal section!
Kurai
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Re: Second Attempt 620 (Q49, V26) Goal 680+ [#permalink]
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