HELP...scored a 640 Q49 V28

Question

Hi ,

I took my gmat on aug 10, scored a 640..Q49, verbal 28
i was hopin to get something around the 700 mark...as i think my prep was decent and i was scoring well in my mocks..

princetn - 710
gmat prep 680
manhattan 1 590
manhattan 2 670
manhattan 3 690
manhattan 4 710
gmat prep 680
manhattan 5 710
manhattan 6 700 ( one day b4 the exam)

i feel like i got nervous during the eng section, and i cud see that i am not performing to the mark..i not happy with the score and will take it again as i feel i wont get thru to a good collg with such a score..
my initial plan was to apply this year, bt i doubt that wud happen now...i have 2.5 years of expricnce in IT , working on the tech front of SAP.

i think CR n RC are my strnghts...bt nothing worked out in actual paper, it was as if i cudnt understand anythn..and was jus marking away as i had to keep up the pace..

please advice..i dont know how to proceed..
want to give it again within 2 months...

thanks,

BrushMyQuant · Answer

Hi,

Am not a verbal guy so my advice might not be so helpful to you, but still i will try sharing my thoughts!
Refer powerscore CR bible(which i had referred too!): Once you are done with reading the CR argument, are you able to predict what kind of question is going to come and what will be the possible answer? (I was able to do those things once i was done with powerscore CR!)
Also, did you try grockit for practice? It helps a lot in improving the speed. And am very sure that once you are with powerscore then you can get almost all CR questions correct.

For RC
Did you try reading articles from following sites
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/
https://www.economist.com/
You can try RC99 but its hard questions are really hard!

For Sc
Did you try Thursdays with Ron?

I will suggest you to maintain a error log and follow study-practice-study cycle. Error log might looks something like

Prepare a xls sheet (topic by topic).. and keep a track of your progress on a daily basis. Use color coding (Red,Orange,Green).
Red: You are weak in theory - brush up your concepts.
Orange - Done with theory but weak in application of the concepts
Green - Done with the topic

Good Luck with your prep!

egmat · Answer

First of all, I understand your frustration. I do believe that you need to work on improving your core skills. The good thing is that at V28, you have shown the potential to do well on verbal and get to a range of V37-V40 provided you put in the hard yards. Just, yesterday one of our students reported that he was able to improve his score from V27 to V41 in a couple of months. You need to figure out your strengths and weaknesses and work diligently on them. There are two ways to do that:

1. Take a mock test at Grockit and use your skill data to do that.
2. Take the free diagnostics (SC/CR/RC) at e-GMAT.com. This would allow you to judge where you stand. Over 20K people have take our diagnostic.

Below is a testimonial from a former student who was in your shoes about an year back and improved in 10 days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nH2XaBOJk4

Regards,

Rajat Sadana

heygmat · Answer

hi nktdotgupta, how are you?
all over your suggestion and guidance are best among all's. 
thanks a lot for inspiring persons like this one and me.
you really deserve for your position.

can you please tell me how you raised your verbal score from 19 to 31?

what sources are needed for this?
how much time needs to par with this?

i used og-10,11,12,13, and 2nd edition
verbal & math test paper question sets 1-30 sets.
gmatprep questions and gmatprep question pack 1
 but my verbal score is 18 two times in my exam.
how can i raise verbal score to 30+?

plz tell me your pattern if possible.

BrushMyQuant · Answer

hi,

The first time i wrote gmat then my Verbals core in Mock tests was always 30+ but i don't know how i landed at 19!
Then i went and did some analysis and found that i was never really confident in SC!
So , i searched and got link to Thursdays with Ron Videos(link in my signature)
Then i followed the steps I ahve written in "how tos tart gmat preperations" link in signature.

I took it chapter by chapter and then did easy and medium questions and if i was doing good then I used to mvoe to harder questions else i useed to go back to theory and re-read it. Thats how i did for both SC and CR

RC i was never really confident but i tried doing "passage-map" thing. But it never worked for me and in original exam you don't really get so much time.
So, i tried Thursdays with Ron Videos for soem fo the topic and I found his videos very useful for Main Idea questions. Other than that I did a lot of practice from various sources. Preferrably easier RCs as they gave me more confidence. I was expecting a 36 in Verbal but i got only 31(not sure why). But in mock tests and even in gmatprep tests i got close to 40 this time in verbal.
I don't know if my points will help you but i hope they do.

Good Luck!

heygmat · Answer

thank you very much. actually you were in a good position, unfortunately you had low score on verbal.
however, fortunately i am in a position to get 18 on verbal. so what should i follow excluding ron's video.

BrushMyQuant · Answer

I will suggest you to go through all the theory once again and do problems chapter by chapter as I mentioned in how to start GMAT preparations.
Once you are done with all the theory and bit of practice then you should go and write mock tests... After everything so done then to strengthen your concepts you should watch Thursdays with Ron videos.

Good luck for your preparation.

HELP...scored a 640 Q49 V28

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