How to jump from 610 to 700?

HanoiGMATtutor thanks for getting back to me. I will do my best to describe how I approach CR questions.

1. I read the question itself and try to categorize what question type it is, i.e. Assumption, Weaken / Strengthen, Inference, and so on. Once I know the question type, I prepare myself to look for patterns that I learned from PowerScore CR Bible and some other resources such as youtube videos by GMATNinja and Ron Purewal.

This usually takes no more than 10 seconds. There are instances, though, when I fail to dissect what a question is really asking, and can spend about 30 seconds trying to understand what I should look for. In most cases such questions are easy to answer as long as one understands what question type he / she is dealing with.

2. I read the stimulus and, unless I am really behind on time (applies to test only), take short notes. I abbreviate aggressively, and will usually put (C) when I hit the conclusion, and also take note of a cause and effect diagram or of a sufficient and necessary condition.

For example, if the sentence says "To receive a high score on GMAT one must study thoroughly and learn time management techniques", I will note this as "ST & T mgmt -> HS".

I do my best to understand every single piece of each sentence in the prompt. If I don't get what the sentence is saying, I may re-read it again (this does not happen very often, but happens about 25% of the time on hard questions). I also pay attention and jot down indicators such as "however, but, yet, for example, etc."

I guess reading takes about 60-90 seconds, depending on the question difficulty.

3. After I finish reading the prompt, I usually think for about 10 seconds and try to digest what I read and connect facts to conclusion. Then I go to answer choices. Sometimes I have a clear idea what I may need (e.g. if it is an assumption question), but sometimes I do not know what exactly I need.

4. I start reading every answer choice and try first eliminate those which are completely wrong (out of scope, opposite, reverse, or too strong).

I would say that 75% of the time I am able to eliminate 2 or even 3 answer choices quickly, but then I might get stuck. In a very bad case, I may not understand the stimulus and then all answer choices look the same to me, and this is reasonable because I jumped to questions without understanding the prompt. I guess in such cases the best decision will be to bail and move on, because there is not much I can do.

1st round of answer choices reading takes about 30-45 seconds. If I get stuck, I may spend more time analyzing the contenders.

Total time spent is between 2 min (10 + 60 + 10 + 30 = 120 seconds) and 3 min (30 + 90 + 10 + 45 = 175 seconds).

Is there anything that you think is totally flawed? What approaches can I try to make myself quicker and not loose the accuracy?

Sounds like you've noticed yourself that you spent a lot of time reading and understanding the prompt. 90 seconds is almost all the time you have to answer each CR question. If you are not a fast reader in general, I would encourage you to read very dense materials to improve your reading comprehension. As far as CR approach goes, this is what you need to work out with your tutor. If your tutor likes your approach, improving efficiency is going to be key to your success. Read more. You'll get better at all aspects of Verbal. It's going to be time-consuming, but this is going to be time well-spent.

Hi mykrasovki,

Thank you for reaching back out. Glad to see things are going well with your tutor. Regarding verbal timing, I would explore your timing idea with your tutor, as she or he likely has a better handle on your verbal skills.

Once you take the GMAT, let us know how things go. Good luck!

ScottTargetTestPrep & HanoiGMATtutor thank you gentlemen. I will discuss with the tutor.

Since I am thinking to re-attempt GMAT in couple of weeks, I am looking for a strategy that will allow me to avoid falling behind on time in the Verbal section. Before signing for a real test, I will take an official mock to see how I perform. If I score within 30 points of my target score, I will register for the exam at the end of July. Otherwise, I will continue my preparation and postpone applications to R2.

Seems that with my current CR technique the only possibility to stay on time is to guess on 2-3 hard (or confusing) CR questions during the test. This is arguably better than running out of time and guessing last 3-4 questions. I will continue practicing CR & RC and hopefully my timing will naturally improve, but that may take some time (certainly more than two weeks). I reached out because I was looking for advice how to improve my timing quickly. It appears that short-term there is nothing I can do except for experimenting with guessing.

I will keep you posted about my progress. Thank you.

To echo what ScottTargetTestPrep said, your tutor probably understands your needs and capabilities the best, so if I were you I would work closely with my tutor. You're already paying the tuition fee - make it count!

I would like to also emphasize again your need to read dense English materials. I've noticed from your posts that your grammar is not too strong, at least in writing. This issue may seep into your GMAT practice. Observe proper grammar as you read and write down structures that you find foreign, and you'll get better at it.

Hey, First of all, you have provided great descriptions of your experiences. There is a weath of information in there. You are a good writer too, with patience and insight.

In my view, you have prepared harder than most testtakers. You have good insights into your preparation. You are able to plan and stick to study plans. All of these are unique characteristics which should make you proud.

Here are some tips:

1. You already have a lot of prep materials. Do not go for new ones. That will lead to more confusion. Pick out key topics that give you trouble and study those.

2. You mentioned that although you have solved a ton of questions, you have difficulty when you see novel questions that makes use of several concepts. I think this is a key observation.

I suggest that instead of now solving tons of more questions, pick out newer types of questions. Solve them first untimed, and then under timed questions. But do not get too frustrated if you get some wrong. The most important point is that you must understand why you are getting these questions both correct and incorrect. Chart a solution course for next time when you encounter such questions.

3. Overall, reduce your workload, don't work so many of the same problems. Solve much less but choose more variety of the more difficult and different types.

4. I also don't recommend doing a bunch of practice tests. Other than to develop pacing and thinking skills, you can use your time better to plan new solving and testtaking strategies.

You have done a lot of preparation. Now be smarter and focus on quality and not so much on quantity. I recommend that you postpone any new test dates until you have newer and better test taking plans. It's not about spending more money and hiring more people and buying more courses. You will need to first develop on your own new strategies. I feel that you are quite competent to do that. GL!

Hovkial, thanks much for your support. I have taken my 2nd official test earlier today and will post a de-brief about my study in the last 4 weeks.

Okay, time for an update. I have taken the 2nd attempt at the GMAT today and scored 640 Q45 V32 IR6 AWA5.0. I did the test in the following order - Verbal, Quant, IR, and AWA.

In my last 4 weeks, I have been working with a tutor; we focused primarily on Quant. He has a very analytical approach to the GMAT content and is one of the best tutors I have worked with so far, so I will be happy to provide a reference if anyone is interested.

The results of our work have been quite productive. I did not only improve my skills in Quant, but also learned some timing strategies that definitely helped me to stay on track during the test(s). More importantly, I feel more confident about majority of Quant topics now, so I should be able to elevate my Quant score by 2 points or so.

The reason why I decided to take the official test again is plain simple. Last week, I took two official mba.com diagnostic tests and scored 680 Q46 V37 IR2 and 690 Q45 V39 IR2. So, I decided to give the real thing a shot, and unfortunately did not fall into the 1-sigma range of the scores which I got lately.

In the real test, Quant seemed harder than it was in both diagnostic tests. Verbal was weird, especially SC questions. They were rather short, but most of them had weird structures and I could not easily eliminate more than 2 wrong answers, so POE did not work really well unfortunately (to my surprise). As you know, my timing in CR is usually slow, so today I had to randomly guess on 2 CR passages to catch-up on time (the same happened to me during the diagnostic tests, too). In my diagnostics, I performed really well in RC - I only got 1 wrong answer in four passages in each mock test, so I definitely made more mistakes today since my Verbal today is just V32.

The jump in my IR score from 2 to 6 is definitely a big improvement. This is pleasing considering that I was not confident about IR section after getting IR2 twice in my diagnostic tests and IR3 in the 1st official GMAT one month ago, even though I actually tried my best.

Overall, the significant drop in performance in Verbal section brought my overall score down. So, as you can perceive from the tone of my message, I am unhappy about the score and will continue my fight with the exam. Applying in R1 is not an option anymore, maybe this will lift some pressure off me.

So, I will continue working with my tutor on Quant (we have not covered all topics yet). In regard to verbal, I will continue reading quality material such as The Economist passages and hopefully that will help me with logics comprehension. I will continue doing 5-10 CR questions from OG and LSAT, and read explanations by GMATNinja and nightblade354. I will probably go through some Manhattan prep SC Strategy Guide chapters to refresh on the grammar, but I will primarily focus on solving SC questions from OG.

I will appreciate any advice regarding Verbal. I really need to become consistent. The results of the diagnostic tests show that I am capable of scoring in high 30s in Verbal, so maybe I just need to manage my stress in a better way... Easier said than done, though.

Hey mykrasovski , since you mentioned me, I thought I'll chime in with some quick thoughts after reading your debrief.

* You seem to have focused much on quant (not a bad idea, since you are covering many topics).

* Doing the above meant that you probably neglected Verbal (reflected in the lower and similar scores on both attempts). Doing well on verbal will significantly boost your final score to above 700, considering you score consistently in quant in the mid-40s.

Some verbal suggestions:

* RC: While reading so-called dense passages in random publications may boost reading comp to some extent, your preparation must be very focused. This means you must practice on OG GMAT. GRE, LSAT topics. Note that passages on GRE & LSAT are much harder, so you will benefit if you practice at higher level.

* SC: Practice on variety of questions and spend many hours dissecting responses. Drlling on dry grammar rules will only take people so far.

* CR: Related to RC.

Your second score is within the margin of error of the first one. So, I would say, you need to improve significantly for the third attempt if you are looking to break 700, which is a very possible target. I suggest giving yourself about two months (or more). GL!

Hovkial hey I appreciate your feedback. I did score 680 and 690 in official diagnostic tests last week, and I scored V37 and V39 in those two tests, respectively. So, statistically I am capable of scoring in high 30s in Verbal already. My speculation is that I was too nervous and my mental state affected my ability to focus.

You have incorrectly assumed that I neglected Verbal during the last 4 weeks of prep. While I indeed spent a lot of time on Quant, I did practice RC and CR from OG and LSAT at least 3 times a week (about 20-30 questions) and I also did around 20-30 OG SC questions per week. I thoroughly analyzed each of the Verbal problems that I attempted. This is why at this moment I am clueless what to do next. I will get the ESR report to check what really happened with Verbal, but one can only get a bit of info from ESR.

Your description was filled with mainly or only details of your quant prep.

Verbal ability takes time to develop. This is less about solving large numbers of problems and more about adopting a strategic and long-term approach.

Please see my other posts in regard to verbal prep. GL!