Expert advide needed: VERBAL

Then I would definitely not recommend any major changes. It's not easy to get a 750 on the practice tests, and I really believe that someone who can get a V36 and a V40 on the GMATPrep tests can get a similar score on the actual exam. This is to say that your V25 is probably not a reliable estimate of your ability.

1. Prep material: this must be your call. I'm sure that other test takers will post their opinions here soon (or you could go looking for some of those opinions). That said, I will say this much: I have seen massive score drops before, and they're usually due to time/exam pressure or issues on the day of the test. I am not convinced that your V25 reflects a massive gap in your concepts/ability.

2. You should get the remaining official practice tests. If I were you, I'd get 3 & 4 and keep 5 & 6 for a third attempt, just in case it becomes necessary.

3. Analyze your tests. Look for weaknesses, and work on them before taking the test again.

I just finished another GMAT Prep test (nr.3) and scored 710(Q51,V35)
What am I supposed to do in the next 3 weeks for the exam?
I want to improve my Verbal score from 35 to 40-42, but I already know a lot of grammar rules.
As I am a non-native English speaker and not a fast reader, I think that this improvement won't be easy as I keep making mistakes because my English vocabulary is not rich enough for the 700+ level questions. For example, I understand 95% of the English words in a magazine like the Economist.

Any tips?

Thanks in advance!

Hi 4EverIntern,

V35 is a solid verbal score. When do you plan to take your next official practice exam? Regarding how to improve your verbal skills, you have to go through GMAT verbal carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to find weaker areas, learn all about how to answer questions of types that you aren't that comfortable with now, and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving your score up point by point.

For example, assume you begin studying Critical Reasoning. Your first goal is to master the individual Critical Reasoning topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken question, ask yourself why you didn't get it right. 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 you would have had 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.

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 that there are types questions that take you 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 efficiently answer questions that currently take you 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, make some more areas stronger.

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 the 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 at least around 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better.

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.


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

Feel free to reach out with questions.

Good luck!

Hi 4EverIntern,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. When these types of score drops occur, the two likely "causes" involve either something that was unrealistic during practice or something that was surprising (or not accounted for) on Test Day. Before we discuss any of those potential issues though, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) What specific study materials have you used so far?
3) On what dates did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) What is your overall goal score?
5) Do you have your next Official GMAT scheduled yet (and if so, then when is it?)?
6) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

You might also choose to purchase the Enhanced Score Report. While the ESR doesn’t provide a lot of information, there are usually a few data points that we can use to define what went wrong on Test Day (and what you should work on to score higher). If you purchase the ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you.

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

Have you already booked the next appointment?

If you have, and you do not want to push that date back, I think you should not lose focus. Don't try too many new things unless you have identified major gaps in your prep. Don't suddenly add lots of new concepts just before your exam, as that is when you should be focused on execution.

If I were you, I would take the GMAT soon (-ish), and try to get a score closer to my actual ability level. A V42 or more would be great, but I'd try to push hard for that kind of score in a third attempt. It's usually a little easier to do that if you already have a good score.