TommyWallach
This may seem like it was written to no one, but Noburu wrote me privately to go into more detail on the subject of this issue of quality over quantity. So here was my response:
Hey Noburu,
Sorry to disagree, but I've never met someone who had all of our books memorized, along with the OGs, and struggled to break 700. In fact, going through so many books has probably hurt you; doing tons of questions can stand in for actually developing a coherent game plan on a question-type by question-type level for the questions you have done. I'm not saying that's necessarily true, but I just want to make sure you have a DIRECT, STEP BY STEP PLAN for every verbal question type (SC - parallelism, CR - Draw a Conclusion, RC - inference, etc.).
If you feel like you have that, go ahead and hit up more questions. But I would really recommend you focus in on process, rather than powering through content. Try to memorize the entire
OG. That would be powerful as well.
Does that make sense? Any follow-ups?
-tommy
OK, so I guess I'm therefore the first one you are meeting who has memorized all that stuff and is struggling to achieve 700+. I can say that I have learnt each grammar rule explained in the books, and am very familiar with the critical reasoning process (I have read Logical Reasoning LSAT several times, and I know the different techniques- How to negate the answer in an assumption question, and all the other stuff...). Also, I have memorized the entire
OG, and I can say that all the questions are much more simple than the questions of the real exam.
I think that I have to assume that is not a matter of studying more tips, grammar or techniques. For me is only about english skills. RC passages are sometimes difficult to understand for not native guys (I'm practicing with LSAT: I've practiced 42 LSAT passages in the last couple of weeks, that is 286 questions and only got 211 correct - 73% accuracy), and in the CR questions there are many times in which all the reasoning rests on a key word that I dont have in my vocabulary, and no strategy is going to work if I dont catch the meaning of that key word.
I'm going to work hard during the next couple of weeks and lets see if I can crack this monster. If not, I will continue trying to improve my vocabulary, reading more and more, and learning more english...and will try in a year or so. For me, I see the GMAT more as an english language test, than as an aptitude test, which on the other hand is perfectly comprehensible.
What do you think about that? How hard is to go from a V32 to a V36?