How do I get to 720+ from 680 in a month?

Question

I scored 680 in the official GMAT with 3 days of preparation. My Quant is pretty strong. Should have got a 50/51, but ended up with 49. However, that isn't my worry. I'm sure a 50 isn't far-fetched. I scored a 35 in Verbal. I'm not sure of the mistakes I made. Its not that I struggle dealing with hard questions in specific. Sometimes, I cruise through hard ones and sometimes even the easy ones bother me. I'm planning to retake sometime around February, so I can focus on CAT preparation from March. I'm looking for a 720+ so I can get into a top Analytics program. I don't need anything that gets me started from scratch. I just need suggestions for what sort of material would be suitable for someone to get his/her verbal scores to 40+ from a 35.

bb · Answer

You need to figure out what your weaknesses are. It is not like only certain topics are tested after V35. You have CR, SC, and RC to cover and without knowing what you know or rather don't know, we don't know what to recommend... but you can see this post: https://gmatclub.com/forum/how-to-go-to ... l#p1143075

DisciplinedPrep · Answer

bb  - Thanks for the insights.

Vishalcv  - First, three days of preparation is almost equal to no preparation. Therefore, the 680 you scored can be judged as a score without any preparation. A baseline score of 680 is phenomenal. You are either gifted to do well in standardized tests or familiar with concepts tested on the GMAT. Hence, a score of 720+ is within your reach. However, please note that a single score does not perfectly depict your scoring ability, and therefore you may have to take 1-2 tests to make sure your scores are consistent. When doing so, please make sure you do not exhaust all your official CATs early on. At this point, I would advise you to review all areas tested on the GMAT; perhaps you could do a quick revision and take another practice test in 7-10 days. If you still score in the range 680-700, then you could safely take the test in a month's time.

Russ19 · Answer

If you go through the articles and videos of GMATNinja, it must help you how to approach verbal problems. explore the link given here: https://gmatclub.com/forum/all-gmat-nin ... l#p2396353

A special thanks go to bb for offering gmat club sessions with GMATNinja for free on the platform from time to time.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Vishalcv,

680 is a great start! To improve your GMAT score to a higher level, you need to go through GMAT quant and verbal carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to learn all about how to answer question types with which you currently aren't very comfortable, and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving up your score point by point. For example, if you find that you are not strong in answering Number Properties questions, then carefully review the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions and practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see, types that you would rather not see, and types that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

You can work on verbal in a similar manner. Let’s say you are reviewing Critical Reasoning. Be sure that you practice a large number of Critical Reasoning questions: Strengthen and Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, find the Conclusion, Must be True, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what you had to know to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.

So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new verbal and quant materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best quant  and  verbal courses .

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!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Vishalcv,

First off, a 680/Q49 is a fantastic Score, so it could be enough to get you into your first-choice School. As such, a retest might not be necessary. Depending on the Schools that you plan to apply to, you would likely find it beneficial to speak with an Admissions Expert about your overall profile and plans. Those Experts should be able to answer your Admissions questions and help define the specific areas of your profile that could use some improvement. There's a Forum full of those Experts here:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/ask-admissio ... tants-124/

Many GMATers spend 3 months (or more) of consistent study time before they hit their 'peak' scores, so the fact that you scored 680 after only 3 days of studying shows that you are a naturally-strong overall critical thinker. By extension, you won't necessarily need 3 months of prep to pick up the additional 40+ points that you are after, BUT at this point it's not clear what your 'weak areas' are - since we don't have months and months of 'data' to refer back to. We also don't know if you were a bit 'lucky' in certain areas on Test Day (again, since we do not have lots of prior Score data to compare this one result to).

If you took your GMAT at a Test Center, then you might choose to purchase the Enhanced Score Report. While the ESR doesn’t provide a lot of information, there are usually a few data points that we can use to define what you should work on to score higher). If you purchase the ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you.

Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

1) What study materials do you currently have access to?
2) Did you take any practice CAT Tests/mocks before taking your Official GMAT? If you did, then how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?
3) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

Regularly reading articles from The Economist may help.

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