Frustrated over Verbal - need help to improve verbal score

Question

Hi Everyone,

I had taken a diagnostic test last Sep and got a 590(QA 49, VA 27) in the old gmat prep software. I got busy with work and not start my GMAT preparation until a few months back. I have been studying the verbal concepts and practicing verbal questions from the OG 12 for the past two months. I just took a practice test from the new gmatprep 2012 and was very disappointed with my results. Got a 570 (QA 48, VA 21). I was not expecting a 40+ score in verbal but 21 is disastrous. I expected myself to be atleast around the 27-30 range but now I am really not sure where I am going wrong.

Below is the study plan I followed for Verbal in the last 2 months.

1) MGMAT SC guide latest edition for SC. Spent two weeks on this.
2) Powescore Bible for CR. Spent two weeks on this.
3) Practiced all SC and CR questions from OG 12 over a period of 3-4 weeks.
4) My error log shows me that I have an accuracy% of 47% in SC and 50% in CR.
5) Surprisingly practiced only 10 RC passages from OG 12 and RC accuracy% is 57%. Although I am not really proud of this.

I need some help on how I push this score up. Has anyone of you been in a similar situation during your preparation? If so please let me know how do I improve my accuracy %?

I made another observation that I got about 90% of the questions right in my second attempt in SC & CR which were wrong in the first attempt. I don't know if this observation holds any value but just thought I put it out there.

What makes me feel worse is I did not even practice quant at all and still its at 48. Two months of work into VA and it still stays at 21. It's like as if all the preparation was a waste.

All your help and guidance will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

prakash111687 · Answer

First word from me would be  " Don't Give up on your hope " .

Try to analyse your mistakes. Try to familiarize those concepts again.

While analyzing keep track of your timings for each questions, were you under so much pressure, etc. Check if the performance degraded because of timing, if so then try practicing more similar questions.

I hope this two-cents from me would light you up.

hbsaspire · Answer

Thanks Prakash! I was analyzing my practice test and found that I got 17 incorrect in verbal and the last 6 questions were all wrong. Maybe that is what really brought my score down. And yes I guess was under pressure. Timing wise during practice I was going at 45 secs for SC, 1:30 mins for CR and 10 mins for an RC passage. But I am pretty sure I went over those time limits in the actual test as I fell short of time for the last few questions.

I am thinking of registering for the e-GMAT course. Heard a lot of good reviews for that on this forum.

I am thinking of registering for the e-GMAT course. Heard a lot of good reviews for that on this forum.

arun@crackverbal · Answer

hbsaspire! 2 things that caught my attention:

hbsaspire

Thanks Prakash! I was analyzing my practice test and found that I got 17 incorrect in verbal and the last 6 questions were all wrong. Maybe that is what really brought my score down.

Do not focus on accuracy. It is a wrong metric and won't tell you the "real" story. Instead focus on what you can learn from the mistakes. Here is a better metric for you to follow: www.crackverbal.com/nailed-it-missed-it ... crewed-it/

hbsaspire

And yes I guess was under pressure. Timing wise during practice I was going at 45 secs for SC, 1:30 mins for CR and 10 mins for an RC passage. But I am pretty sure I went over those time limits in the actual test as I fell short of time for the last few questions.

10 minutes is an awful lot for RC! Let us do some math here:

4 passages X 10minutes = 40 minutes
Total time for the test = 75 minutes
_______________________________
Time remaining = 35 minutes
_______________________________

Total questions = 41
RC questions = 14
_______________________________
Questions remaining = 27
_______________________________

So you have 27/35 = 77 seconds per question!

A recipe for disaster. My recommendation - just focus on improving your RC skills and you would do well! Here is a blog I wrote just last week on this topic: https://www.crackverbal.com/why-reading- ... -of-india/

Hth,

Arun

GMATPill · Answer

If your verbal raw score is still 21 after going several weeks with the resources used, you need to find another approach. Getting a great score on math and weak score in verbal is going to look imbalanced and business schools frown on that. They prefer balanced scores and the weighting on the scores will reflect this. Your RC at 57% also needs to be boosted up.

If your last 6 questions were all wrong, it must be due to lack of stamina or lack of confidence in marking the right answer. You absolutely need to increase confidence that a particular answer choice is the right answer choice.

I would recommend doing "sprint" practice sessions. Time yourself on one question at a time and do it as fast as possible. THen break, then repeat. Do the same for RC passages...race yourself on reading through the passage, connect the ideas, then resummarize before tackling the first RC question. How fast can you do it? Building up on sprints will help you build stamina on the real test.

Frustrated over Verbal - need help to improve verbal score

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