Hi nikitadadhich,
I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. So, you’ve taken a variety of practice exams and your scores have ranged from 250 to 450. When you take practice tests from companies other than GMAC, you may find some variation in algorithms used and thus variations in your score. In any case, let’s focus on the 250 you scored on your official mock. I understand that you’d like to take your GMAT by November 15, but given that you scored 250 on your GMATPrep exam, you likely won’t achieve a 620+ GMAT score by mid-November. Furthermore, I suggest that you hold off on taking any further practice exams until you have substantially improved both your verbal and quant skills.
You mentioned that you don’t understand the language in Reading Comprehension questions. Thus, it’s likely that you don’t understand the language in Sentence Correction and Critical Reasoning either, right? Struggling with the meaning of a lot of what you read is a sign that you lack some basic, fundamental skills in GMAT verbal. Your first order of business is to go back and really learn the foundations of ALL verbal topics. Once you feel that you have sufficiently learned those foundations, then move on to more advanced topics.
Overall, you likely have to slow down in order to speed up in GMAT Verbal. You have to learn to comprehend what you read and keep it all straight, and to use what you are reading to arrive at correct answers. So, at this point, your best bet is to focus on getting the correct answers to questions one at a time, taking as much time as you need to see key details and understand the logic of what you are reading. If you don't understand something, go back and read it one sentence at a time, even one word at a time, not moving on until you understand what you have just read.
For instance, if you are working on a Critical Reasoning question, read each sentence of the passage carefully, asking yourself whether you understand what you have read so far. If the answer is ‘no,’ then reread the passage one word at a time until you get it. Then, identify the conclusion of the argument, if there is one, and figure out how any conclusion is supported. You can handle Reading Comprehension passages similarly; take your time and learn to understand exactly what is being said, reading one sentence at a time or even one word at a time, if necessary. There is no way around this work. You have to learn to comprehend what you are reading. Your goal should be to take all the time you need to understand exactly what is being said and arrive at the correct answer. If you can learn to get answers taking your time, you can learn to speed up. Answering questions is like any task: The more times you do it carefully and successfully, the faster you become at doing it carefully and successfully.
To get better at seeing what is going on in Sentence Correction questions, take your time with every choice, noticing the key differences between choices, how effective each choice is, and why one choice is better than the others. You could even review Sentence Correction questions that you have answered already, as there is plenty in each question for you to learn to see. The point here is for you to work differently from how you have been, seeking to completely understand what is going on and to arrive at correct answers consistently without worrying about time constraints. Only once you consistently arrive at correct answers should you seek to speed up.
By doing this type of work, you can improve your reading and analytical skills, and eventually, those skills will be so good that even when you are faced with time constraints, you will comprehend what you are reading and correctly answer verbal questions.
Now, regarding quant, although your quant is stronger, it wouldn’t hurt to gain a few more points in that section, right? The more overall points you can gain, the closer you will get to your score goal. So, if you’d like some detailed advice on how to study GMAT quant, feel free to reach out.
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 further questions.
Good luck!
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06 Oct 2018, 12:23
