Disappointed! Scored today 550 (Q42 & V24)

Question

Hi everyone,

i just came back from the gmat exam today and scored a 550 after 4 months of studying. I really don't know what I need to do. I know my math is really good and just a bit more effort and can raise it to the high 40's. However, I really don't know where to begin with my verbal. I would really appreciate any help or advice that you guys can provide me with. So far, I've used the following prep materials:

1) OG11
2) Kaplan 800

You guys will see me a lot more often on this forum. Would someone give me any suggestion of where I can start or re to seek additional help? Thanks!!

Ravshonbek · Answer

Math seems ok but how good r u on math. 42 is fine. but you need to improve it anyway at least to 45.
Verbal seems not good. I would suggest u to first, figure out whether u r fine with CR, RC or SC and based on that buy books.
for CR. get Criticalreasoning bible. and for SC MGMAT 7 series is fine. 
i think u might have problem with your time management. u did not post actually what happened during the test. did you have enough time? did u just guess some of the answers how did you manage?....
just give broader briefing and you will see flow of suggestions.

good luck

tarek99 · Answer

thanks Ravshonbek, well my math is good. I scored 42 because i was almost out of time and so i had to guess about 4 questions in order to save time. when i was practicing on gmatprep, i was scoring about 47. Verbal, however has always been in the mid 20's. My strongest section on the verbal is the sentence correction. I'm really horrible with my CR and RC. How good is the critical reasoning bible that you just mentioned? Would it really help me?

tarek99 · Answer

one more thing Ravshonbek, as for my timing, well on math, i had to guess about 4 questions in order to save time. Plus, there were about 4 more questions which i had to guess cause i was clueless about how to solve them and that brought my score down to 42. As for the verbal, I managed to complete everything before my time was up. However, the RC was soo brutal that i had to guess in order to keep my pace in order not to waste time.. I felt the same way with some of the CR questions. tell me more as well about the ciritical reasoning bible....how usefull is it? does it add anything new on top of the manhattan books? I just purchased the manhattan books and should be receiving them shortly.

thanks Ravshonbek, i really appreciate your consideration to my issue.

nervousgmat · Answer

CR Bible is far more detailed than the MGMAT CR guide. If you are lacking in CR, I recommend buying this book.

tarek99 · Answer

is that the "The PowerScore GMAT Critical Reasoning Bible"?

tarek99 · Answer

nervousgmat, i've purchased that CR bible that you recommended. I have to say, i've read 3/4 of the book and I really found the book to be incredibly helpful! wow, i've gain so much more confidence and insight for CR. I thank you so much for your advice and can't thank you enough. Any other advice that you would recommend for approaching the verbal section such as RC? I think I will be set once i'm done with the CR bible, but what would you recommend for the RC?

GMATBLACKBELT · Answer

Do you have MGMAT SC?

tarek99 · Answer

Thanks for your input! yeah, i have the MGMAT SC. in general, i think i'm ok with the SC. My 2 major concerns are CR and RC. I got the CR bible and it is wonderful. i'm now trying to resolve the RC. Any recommendation about RC?

RVD · Answer

for RC, i read all the stuff in the books about jotting down notes, reading the first and last sentence of each paragraph, summarzing paragraphs in your own words, etc.

but i find that i do best simply by just concentrating and reading the entire passage. i don't take notes, i don't do any tricks, etc. i just sit there and concentrate and read and then read the questions and re-read areas of the passage.

sorry that there isn't any mind blowing info.

RVD.

DTM · Answer

how much time does one need to go through the CR Bible?
My test is in a little less than a month

gablaze23 · Answer

I think you'd have a good shot of getting 650+ and above. Religiously studying the verbal part of the OG(especially in verbal) could raise your score to the high V30s. That's probably a hundred points already. Get the OG books

Don't take it without em

They are the most representative of the verbal score.

tarek99 · Answer

DTM, I finished the CR bible in 6 days. Although the book consists of 300 pages, but if you organize your time to read 50 pages per day, you can finish easily finish the whole book in 6 days.
Immediately after finish readying the book, i took a verbal practice CAT test on 800score and I saw a score of 41 with 93 percentile! I was soo happy! I got 11 mistakes: 3 SC, 2 CR, and 6 from RC! before, the maximum score i ever got on practice CAT test for my verbal was 31!

DTM · Answer

wow tarek, that's great news!
congrats!! that is a huge improvement!
I will have to manage my time wisely in the next few days as I am starting a calculus class next week at the extension college.

I'll have to think hard to see whether I'll have enough time to review this book. Thanks for your help.

kidderek · Answer

I suggest you read a scholarly periodical daily. Just read and read to understand. At this point, you shouldn't aim to score a 44v, just aim for a 33v. This means take extra care to get the easy questions right and guess on the difficult ones.

tarek99 · Answer

kidderek,
where can i find that scholarly periodicals?

tarek99 · Answer

DTM,
you really NEED to read the critical reasoning bible whether you like it or not. it has seriously cleared most of my doubts, if not all of them, on CR. and by the way, if you manage really hard to improve your skills in both SC and CR, your section score will automatically be in the 30's. to me, that's a blessing!

DTM · Answer

thanks tarek, I will trust you on this one. I scored a 31 in verbal on my last GMAT. I used to think CR was easy, but I don't have a firm grasp as I had once thought. It would be nice to be 100% sure of the logic that is going on. The only factor now is time.

tarek99 · Answer

ok, i just took the free kaplan test online and this is what i got so far:
Q38 (Percentile 77)
V36 (Percentile 81)
Overall: 600

Is kaplan free online test suppose to undermine your true performance? what do you all think about this result? I am planning to take the gmat test in 1 month time. will it be possible for me to reach to 700+ by that time?

DTM · Answer

Tarek, although I can't say specifically about the Kaplan Free Online test you took. Kaplan tests, in general, are typically a lot lower than what you would score in the actual test. If you haven't already done so, try practicing on some Manhattan GMAT tests. If you already have the SC book, you have access to 8 of them. Although the math will be harder, the total score is usually pretty accurate.
Good luck

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Disappointed! Scored today 550 (Q42 & V24)

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