Advice on re-retake

Thank you Businessconquerer for this. This is very helpful to me and gives me a direction to follow!

Thank you for the link. I am using it to create a list of do's and dont's . My only concern is that i can only give 2 hours per weekday given my job.

I cancelled the score when i saw the 670. Was extremely disheartened. I guess i should have kept the score just for ESR.

Yes. I absolutely agree.

Would you recommend getting question pack, or the quant/verbal review, or both? And also, since i am planning to retake the exam in first week of september, do you think breaking the 700 hurdle is achievable?

But what about verbal?

Thank you Rich for responding. Below is the information you're seeking:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied for this second attempt? How many hours do you typically study each week?
Since May 2019. So 3 months. And it was on and off in May because of hectic work schedule.

2) What study materials have you used so far besides the books that you mentioned?
Just Manhattan and OG 2020

Goals:
3) What is your overall goal score?
720-730

4) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
Round 1 is the first priority. Or else Round 2.

5) What Schools are you planning to apply to?
Tepper, McCombs, ISB

Also, i cancelled my score for the second attempt. So i don't think i will get an ESR.

Always glad to see people understanding every single thing I write

Look, you MUST buy everything official
2 hours a day is all you need on weekdays

Not to publicize but if you do have money,
You will benefit from all of these
1. Veritas mocks
2. MGMAT Mocks
3. Jamboree.online site access

I've tried all three
Look, Jamboree site has all the official material that exists from 80's to this day.
I would say, YOU MUST HAVE ALL OF THAT. But you'll need a good study plan. Let me know if you do get access to all of those. I can cut a plan out for you
But you will need at least 30 days for it to work
Of course I do not take guarantee of test day nervousness, but the plan is honest and worked for many

Hi greenisthecolor,

Based on the score breakdown of your most recent GMAT, I agree that you’ll need a nice bump in your verbal score to achieve your 720+ score goal. That said, here is some advice you can follow to improve your verbal skills. I’ll start with CR.

When studying Critical Reasoning, you need to ensure that you fully understand the essence of the various question types. Do you know the importance of an assumption within an argument? Can you easily spot a conclusion? Do you know how to resolve a paradox? Do you know how to properly evaluate cause and effect? Do you know how to properly weaken or strengthen an argument? These are just a few examples; you really need to take a deep dive into the individual Critical Reasoning topics to develop the necessary skills to properly attack any Critical Reasoning questions that you encounter.

As you learn each Critical Reasoning problem type, do focused practice so that you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you incorrectly answered a Weaken the Argument question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

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 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 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 questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. You can perfect your reading strategy with a lot of practice, but keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be stimulating. So, to better prepare yourself to tackle such bland passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the New York Times, Scientific American, and Smithsonian.

Sentence Correction 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 likely reason that your Sentence Correction performance has not improved is 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 less than 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 clearly refer to nouns? 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 none of those reasons are 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 answers were always the ones 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, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to put in the necessary time to see the differences between answers 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. 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 to arrive at that answer and what you could do differently 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 do differently to extend 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 skills improve, you’ll then want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple SC topics.

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 questions.

Good luck!

If you felt that the questions were getting tougher, e.g, by question 18 on verbal, then that may mean that you are beginning to see tougher questions and hence trend towards higher scores. However, I caution that you should not try to guess difficulty of questions on test day. That will be waste of time and cause stress. Instead focus on answering that one question.

If you want to do well on tougher questions, you will need to build both speed and accuracy. This means that you must be comfortable with fundamentals and be able to quickly see the plausible solutions. Practice and analyze regularly.

Use third party tests to try out things. Do not take their scores seriously. Only the official tests count. Note that on test day, actual performance may take hits due to many issues. So keep those situations in mind as you practice. GL!

Posted from my mobile device

Hi all, thank you for all the feedback. I have purchased the ESR. Looking at my verbal, i could manage to get only 25% correct in the last section. And for the first three section, the difficulty was consistently Medium-High.
I think that last section was the reason for the score to plunge to 35. Although, the reason i was short of time in the last section is because i was uncomfortable in the previous sections in the first place.

I have attached my ESR. Any help in reviewing the ESR would be highly appreciated. Also, i want to know whether an improvement from V35 to V40 is possible in 3-4 weeks., as per your experiences, personal or otherwise.

Yes i agree. I was not trying to guess difficulty of verbal questions at the beginning. But when i started spending more time on questions, i guess i let stress get the best of me.

Any specific tips on how to do tougher questions? I am reviewing the OG questions that i got wrong, and using GMATClub to practice 700-800 level questions.

Hi greenisthecolor,

With this 670, you'r closer to a 720+ than you probably realize. To hit that Score Goal though, you will have to make some fundamental changes to how you 'see' (and respond to) BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections. I've sent you a PM with an analysis of your ESR and some additional notes.

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