From 640 to 740 in 3 months

Basically, as a Chinese who had a maths background back in highschool, my score combo is not the most common one - V41 Q49. My struggle had always been with Verbal. I got stuck at the 640 - 660 level until I figured out the correct way to study for Verbal. So I want to briefly share my experience of how I got to V41, which gave me a 740 score in my 4th attempt.

I can't stress enough how important it is to set the right mindset before diving into the practice questions. SC is all about rules and practice so I'm gonna skip that. For CR, You want to learn about some critical reasoning theories first, which is GMAT's way of thinking. No matter how confident you are in your logical reasoning, you should read up some CR materials (a lot of them are mentioned in this forum, such as Manhattan guide, kaplan etc) because it's not about your logic really. Its about getting used to how GMAT would like you to think.

For RC, you want to have a good grasp of what the common answer is gonna be for general questions in RC and test it out through practice. Not the other way around. Developing that sense might help you answer the question without even looking at the paragraph sometimes. For example, answers that are too specific or only talks about what one single paragraph does in the whole passage will never be the answer.

Also, 2nd thing I cant stress enough is that time management > accuracy, especially after getting on the 700+ level questions in the adaptive test. I think. You can easily see why from the following two scenarios:

1) Student A spent a lot of time getting most questions right and got to 700+ level questions early on, then he got even more difficult questions and ended up having no time for the last 5 questions, which resulted in massive drop of scores as he got the last 3 very easy questions wrong (those were easier questions because he answered 5th and 4th to last questions wrong).

2) Student B was not as good as A and guessed some of his answers after reaching the 700+ level, so his score went from 700 to 600 something, but then he was able to get the 600 level question right, which brought him back to 700+ level, the process repeated and he had enough time finishing the test.

Who do you think has a higher overall score?

I know some of you might think this is a flaw of the test, like I did. But well... If GMAT wants to test both your time management under stress and intellectual ability, there might not be a better way to do it.


Feel free to ask any questions as I cannot think of anything more to share that's not on this forum. Lastly, I want to say thank you to this forum as it helped maintain my momentum during early to mid stages of my GMAT journey. I also want to cheer up those who feel frustrated in this process, especially those who are working full time like myself (well...for a SC question that should be an error, the correct version should be "like me" ... jk) I did not get the score I wanted until I took a few days off using up my annual leaves. But I guess it was worth it after all.

Chris