How to improve from great (760) to incredible (780!) on SC

This (LONG!) post is in honor of a fine fellow named gmat2k17, who is the proud owner of a 760 -- but wants to improve by another 20 points. He asked the following question in the “Should I retake the GMAT” thread:


So basically: you’re asking for near-perfection here. I like that! Of course, there’s no magical formula or magical resource that will get you there – but hopefully a few changes to the way you focus on questions can help a little bit. And if they don't help you, hopefully they'll help somebody else!

This is an oversimplification, but I like to think of SC errors as coming in three broad categories:

1) Basic, straightforward grammar rules
2) Advanced/nuanced grammar rules – or funny exceptions to the basic grammar rules
3) Subtle, meaning-based stuff

And as you go down that list, you’re likely to encounter increasingly difficult issues that can separate great test-takers from truly elite ones.

Let’s take these one at a time:

1) Basic, straightforward grammar rules

As you all probably know, GMAT tests a handful of mechanical grammar rules in a relatively straightforward way. A small sampling:

• pronoun agreement
• modifier placement (especially “that,” “which,” and participles, among others)
• parallelism
• subject-verb agreement
• verb tenses (past perfect tense usually causes the most confusion here)
• placement of -ing and –ed modifiers
• basic comparisons (especially using “like” and “unlike”)
• countable vs. non-countable modifiers
• semicolons

These sorts of things are pretty foundational (and my list isn’t meant to be exhaustive – there are obviously other grammar topics we could add here). If you make a mistake on basic, non-tricky applications of these fundamental rules, you’ll probably struggle to get an elite score.

So for a guy like gmat2k17 who has already scored a 41V, these are almost certainly a non-issue at this stage. Let’s move on…

2) Advanced/nuanced grammar rules – and funny exceptions to the “rules”

If you’re already scoring in the low 40s on verbal, this is the easiest place to look for more points on SC.

Many of the “foundational” grammar topics I listed above have some funky little exceptions and nuances. Take, for example, our old friend “which.” Here’s a straightforward, textbook example:

• My favorite restaurant is in Brooklyn, which serves delicious Uzbek horse meat salad.

GMAT veterans have seen this sort of thing dozens of times: “which” seems to be modifying “Brooklyn”, and that doesn’t make sense. If Brooklyn served delicious Uzbek horse meat salad, I’d move there in a heartbeat. But for GMAT purposes, that’s illogical.

But then there’s this classic OG sentence:



If you’re applying the most basic form of the “which” rule, you’d conclude that “which” is trying to modify “Susan Huntington Dickinson”, right? And you’d say that this sentence is incorrect – but it turns out that it isn’t. Check out the full discussion here: https://gmatclub.com/forum/emily-dickin ... 10142.html

There are similarly tricky nuances and exceptions to other basic rules. A few examples:

• Past perfect tense: often, we oversimplify and say that past perfect tense must be accompanied by another action in simple past tense. But there are exceptions, as discussed toward the end of this thread. An official example can also be found here: https://gmatclub.com/forum/less-than-35 ... 75119.html
  
  
• Parallelism: I don’t think that there are many exceptions to the parallelism rules, exactly, but sometimes, the exact application of the rule can be incredibly tricky, especially when the parallel elements are separated by a ton of text. A couple of my favorite examples can be found here or here.
  
  
• Pronouns: actually, there’s tons of nuance to understanding exactly when the GMAT considers “it” or “they” ambiguous. A discussion on this issue can be found here or there's an official GMAT example here.

We could go and on and with examples. Bottom line: to get a crazy-elite (46!) verbal score, you’ll need to know when the “basic grammar rules” of the GMAT start to break down. Mike (GMATNinjaTwo) and I are still constantly learning more about the GMAT’s funny nuances with some of this stuff – so there’s ALWAYS at least some room to continue improving in this area.

3) Subtle, meaning-based stuff

This is probably the biggest issue that separates good SC scores from AMAZING SC scores. And there’s no single formula or tip or trick or gimmick that I could ever offer that will magically make you great at deciphering the subtle little meaning differences between answer choices.

Rules aren’t helpful here: you just have to think deeply and precisely about how, exactly, a small tweak to the sentence will change the meaning of the sentence. And that’s really, really hard – which is why it tends to separate the low-40s verbal scores from the mid-to-high-40s scores.

So here’s what we always tell our students to do on SC, regardless of whether they're chasing a 46V or something more modest:

• Step 1: cross out the answer choices with any concrete, definite, rule-based errors. (I’ll bet that most of you are already pretty darned good at this part – especially a guy like gmat2k17, with his 41V.)
  
• Step 2: compare the remaining answer choices, and figure out EVERY difference between each pair of choices. Then, see if you can figure out how those tiny little differences might impact the meaning.

Almost without exception, there’s room to improve at step 2, partly because every hard GMAT SC question is just a little bit different from the next one. I have plenty of criticisms of the exam, but the test-writers are definitely creative and crafty, and they’ll keep you on your toes when it comes to the meaning of SC sentences.

Basically, your job is to become really precise at identifying those little differences. You’ll never see the same little difference twice – but eventually, you’ll start to “get inside the GMAT’s head” and develop a super-sharp instinct for these things.

Here are a few of my favorite official examples with some funky little meaning details embedded in them:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/according-to ... 81568.html
https://gmatclub.com/forum/37-og-vr-som ... 56040.html
https://gmatclub.com/forum/recently-doc ... 16579.html

If any of you have favorite examples of really tough, meaning-based OFFICIAL SC questions, post ‘em below. Would love to hear which ones have helped you get inside the GMAT’s head.

Go kick some butt, gmat2k17!