1st GMAT 620 ( Q50, V24, IR8, AWA 4.5)

Question

I gave my 1st GMAT exam in June 2017 and scored 620 ( Q50, V24, IR8, AWA 4.5).

Started with AWA followed by IR, Quants and Verbal.
 Very much disappointed by the verbal score.
Everything was going smoothly during the exam. I was happy until the final score popped up.
I Couldn't believe verbal was this much low. I was scoring in range of 28-30 during mocks and was confident about scoring more than 30 in GMAT.

After a break of 2 months I started preparation with e-gmat verbal course. I have finished SC and currently preparing for CR. But the confidence is just not building up for a good verbal score. 
I thought of verbal online score as an option, have hears alott about that from my friends, but cannot decide weather to go for it or not ?

Even though i can wait till Feb-17 end for giving the exam, I am planning to give next GMAT by December-17 end.

Any suggestions or guidance will be highly appreciated.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using  GMAT Club Forum mobile app

ImAnkitKaushik · Answer

Practice more and more! The only key to improve verbal scores is "learn the basics and practice". 
The below pointers will surely help you (they helped me though):

1. Make sure to take a note of the mistakes you commit, learn from them. 
2. Identify your weak areas.
3. Go through the basics once again for those weak areas.
4. Practice at least 50-100 different questions.

You'll definitely make a progress after this much practice. All the best!

Thanks,
Ankit Kaushik

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Rahul2511,

To start, you would likely find it beneficial to begin your next Official GMAT with the Quant and Verbal sections - so that you can tackle those parts of the Exam when you have the most energy. By starting this last Test with the Essay and IR sections, you might have been a bit too tired to perform at your best in the Verbal section (at the end of the Exam).

With a V24, you would have lost significant points in all 3 major Verbal categories (SC, RC and CR), so you have the potential to pick up serious points in any/all of those areas. Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long has it been since you restarted your studies?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) How have you scored on each of your CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for each)?

Goals:
4) What is your goal score?
5) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
6) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

vivek6199 · Answer

You should order the ESR to know more about your weaknesses. Also, why did you start with AWA followed by IR, Quants and Verbal. You would have been exhausted by the time you reached the Verbal, which is your weakest link.

Rahul2511 · Answer

Thank you for all the feedback. I would like to update you all further. I ordered the ESR for the 620 score -- V 24 (CR - 27, SC - 29 , RC - 17). I had to improve majorly in all categories. I prepared for verbal exclusively through e-GMAT, and by Feb-18 end, I was scoring in range of 34-35 in mocks. I gave GMAT 2 on 9th March'18 with the confidence to score 700 ( as i was getting in range of 680-690 in mocks ) GMAT 2 - 650 ( Q49, V29, IR6, AWA 5.5) Could not believe in V 29, ordered ESR -- Break up ( CR - 27, SC - 38 , RC -23) -- and took the next exam date within 20 days. 1st April - GMAT 3 - 650 ( Q49, V31, IR8, AWA 5.0)

Again ordered for ESR and came to know about low performance in RC. Break up ( CR - 38, SC -34 , RC -21) I had to bring that RC upto minimum 30, to get a total score of more than 700. This time practiced more for RC, only through Official guide and Verbal review. Ordered OG 2019 and completed all verbal section questions (SC, CR & RC). In mocks i was scoring in range of 32-40 ( 32, 34, 35, 38, 39, 40) . This time i was confident to get above that 700 mark. All this while, since Jun 2017, I did not study quants section. was practicing questions only in mocks + gmat club quants test + questions of the day. I was getting scores in range of 49-51 consistently and 48 once in a while. With all this gave my 4th GMAT today (20th Aug 2018). GMAT 4 - 680 ( Q48, V35, IR7, AWA 5.5 )

couldn't believe my eyes when the scores flashed. Verbal was expected but Quants blew me away. I know I can do far better than this. In fact I scored a 50 in yesterday's GMAT prep mock. May be a bad day for quants or the less time at the end affected my performance in quants. I am confident enough to score a 49 or more in quants even if I sit for a 2nd exam today. Requesting your suggestions. Should I study quants again in depth till next exam OR should I focus on my verbal to push that score towards 40 and continue doing quants practice questions. ( Target is to cross 700 ). I will order ESR as soon as it is available. I am planning to give one more attempt in next 20 days as I want to apply for ISB class 2020 in 1st round and i do not want a low score to be the reason for rejection of my application. P.S. - Order of sections in all the exams was ( V, Q, IR, AWA)

CAMANISHPARMAR · Answer

I appreciate your grit and strong determination.

Maintain your cool, believe in yourself and take it easy. You have persisted for long enough and you are almost there. Just do it this time around with a cool and calm mind. I am sure you will be successful.

From your post I feel you have studied a lot and you do know where you went wrong. You also realize that you cannot leave practice of either Quant or Verbal if you want to be successful in both the sections and overall in GMAT. Quant is your strength. Maintain a Q50 or above and then improve your Verbal score above V35.

Do update us when are you planning to give your next attempt and how was your experience. I am feeling you will do it this time around.

Please feel free to get in touch in case if you need any help.

Wishing you all the very best!

Rahul2511 · Answer

Thank you for the wishes. I am planning to take next GMAT in next 20 days and will definitely update after the exam ( hopefully with a good news).

As of now I have 14 GMATclub Quants test left. 1 per day for the next 14 days ( except on the day of mocks).
Though my scores in last 5 GMATclub test were ( 51, 49, 49, 48, 51), a series of 14 test with scores in this range will boost the confidence.

For verbal, daily 2 hrs of practice should maintain this 35 i believe.

Rahul2511 · Answer

Just ordered the ESR.

Quants and Verbal section are polar opposites. Verbal went down in the last quarter and quants recovered in the last quarter, in spite of less avg time per question in both the sections.

V 35 ( CR-34, RC-35, SC-36)  
Q 48 ( PS-47, DS-49) need to touch that 50 mark next time.

I am attaching my ESR. Any input from experts will be highly appreciated.

egmat · Answer

Hi Rahul2511 , You have worked hard on your preparations and it will definitely result into a good score. Remain focused and give it your best shot. Do write to us at support@e-gmat.com using your registered email id so that we can couple information from your Scholaranium alongwith your ESR and share a precise plan of action. All the Best! Looking forward to hearing a great score from you. Regards, Aditee

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Rahul2511,

The good news is that you are getting close to your score goal. If you can slightly raise your verbal from a V35 and hit a Q49, you should hit your score goal. That being said, I am happy to provide some advice on how to improve your GMAT score.

It's possible to score 680 without fully understanding some topics or refining certain skills. To score 700+, you have to go through GMAT quant and (especially) verbal carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to learn all about how to answer question types with which you currently aren't very comfortable and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving up your score point by point. When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to around at least 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better.

For example, let’s say you are reviewing Critical Reasoning. Be sure that you practice a large number of Critical Reasoning questions: Strengthen and Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, Find the Conclusion, Must be True, etc. When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken the Argument question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what, if anything, you would have needed to know in order to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.

When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and instead focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and thereby comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice Reading Comprehension, focus on the exact types of Reading Comprehension questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect Reading Comprehension answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. Your reading strategy can be perfected with a lot of practice, but keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be easy to read. So, to better prepare yourself to analyze such passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the Economist, Scientific American, and Smithsonian.

Sentence Correction, on the other hand, is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, you likely will have to work on all three of those aspects. Furthermore, the reason that your Sentence Correction performance has not improved is likely that you have not been working on all three of those aspects.

Regarding what you know, to be successful in Sentence Correction, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not just a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure. This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending under two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns in the sentence clearly refer to nouns in the sentence? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.

There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and those reasons are not that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answer were always the one that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.

As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey meanings that make sense. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice repeatedly until you start to see the differences between the choices that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices in a Sentence Correction question, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. It may take time for you to see what you have to see. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to be determined to see the differences and to figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.

To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. For instance, are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did that resulted in your arriving at that answer and what you could do differently in order to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could have done differently that would have extended your streak.
 
As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a
particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your Sentence Correction skills improve, you’ll then want to practice with SC questions that test you on skills from multiple Sentence Correction topics.

Although your quant is stronger, you can follow a similar process for that section. For example, if you are reviewing Number Properties, be sure that you practice 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see and types that you would rather not see, and types of questions that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new verbal and quant materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best quant  and  verbal courses .

You also may find my article with more information regarding
 how to score a 700+ on the GMAT  helpful.

Feel free to reach out with any further questions.

Good luck!

Rahul2511 · Answer

Thank you all for the feedback.

I want to share an update regarding my GMAT journey.

I gave my GMAT on 15th Oct 2018 and finally was able to touch 700 mark.

Score -  700 ( Q 49 , V 36, IR 7, AWA awaited )

I was expecting a Q50 at least, as I was consistently scoring it in the mocks between last GMAT exam and this one, but a 7 in the hundreds digit gave a relief.

I will share the details later.

CAMANISHPARMAR · Answer

Congrats Rahul2511 ! Your hard work, persistence and determination have paid you rich dividends. Congrats again on getting a 7 in the hundreds place!!

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