How to improve Verbal from V12

Question

Hi All,

I took my 1st official Gmat exam this tuesday, and i don't know how to proceed further. Here are my gmat details-

Total score- 470 (Q47 V12 IR4). I have attached my ESR.

Although I am very much disappointed by my performance, but i am really looking for a guidance on how to proceed further. I am targeting to take my 2nd attempt after 1.5 months. My target score is 730+.

For verbal i have gone through following material before the exam -

1) Power score CR bible
2) Manhattan SC.
3) OG 2018

I am planning to finish below material in coming month -

1) SC- RON SC videos & 150 hardest and easiest questions
2) RC- RC butler 2 RCs daily.
3) CR- Egmat theories on CR and 150 hardest and easiest questions
4) Official questions review.

If there is anything else you guys can suggest then please let me know.

Thanks,
Akash

Verbal33 · Answer

Hi Akash,

Congratulations on your Quant score!

You look a lot more ambitious. I am not an expert but I would like to share a few things which might help you out.

First of all, you will have to be patient. This is GMAT and not an ordinary exam where you will study and get a good score. It works with your ability and to improve ability you have to give enough time. I am not saying it is impossible for you to achieve it within 1.5 months, you might be able to do it, but do not get disappointed if you cannot. Because very few people can achieve such a score in a little time.

Your verbal score shows that your concepts are not clear. You will have to read and understand the concepts for manhattan SC and Powerscore CR. Take slow steps. For example, if you have started studying Manhattan for SC learn the rules, make notes and stop whenever you feel you are not able to understand. Give time to absorb it in the brain. And make different notes for the rules which you do not know and revise them on a daily basis. It might take you a month to finish SC manhattan.

Same applies to Powerscore CR. And I can see that your RC is better than SC and CR. So just work on these both sections and you will be able to reach around V25.

I am not sure how to cross 25 because I am stuck there. But yes once your concepts are clear you will reach 25 and then you need a different type of strategy. After 25 how we can apply those concepts is important i.e. application.

You will be able to achieve your score.

If you find this post helpful hit the kudos button.

Thanks,

All the Best!!!

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi akash2703,

Since you scored V12 on your GMAT, regardless of prep materials, you need to ensure that you are following a study plan that allows you to learn GMAT verbal from the ground up. In other words, follow a study plan that allows you to learn each GMAT verbal topic and then practice each topic until you’ve gained mastery. If you’d like more specific advice on how to improve your verbal skills, feel free to reach out.

Good luck!

akash2703 · Answer

Thanks Verbal33 for you comments

Do you think that I should revisit Power score CR and Manhattan SC or should i change my material ? I feel that the concepts are there in my mind but there are few gaps which i need to fill. That's why i started looking into RON's Videos and while going through the videos, i am finding that there are few things that i actually missed when i read Power score CR and Manhattan SC.

akash2703 · Answer

Hi Scott,

Thanks for your valuable response !!

I am more worried about the test materials that i should use. Basically there are a lot of materials in this forum, but i want to know which materials i should be choosing ?

Shall i start with 600 level questions then move on to 700-800 difficulty level topic vise?
Which material to use so that i don't move far away from the standard official questions ?
Which mocks are close to official ones so that i can track my progress ? 
How often i should give the verbal mocks to track my progress ?

If you have any specific advise on the verbal plan that i should follow then please let me know.

Thanks,
Akash

Verbal33 · Answer

Yes. You should read the Powerscore and Manhattan once again. Even when next time you will read these books once again then you will see new concepts. Those books are really dense if you do it thoroughly.

CAMANISHPARMAR · Answer

Had you given any official mocks before your exam? If yes, did you give the same in exam conditions? If yes, did you see any repeat questions? If no, what were your official mock scores like? Asking because your quant score is good, however, for 730 you will need to try to take it to Q49+ (adviseable). I hope you did not have an off day on the Verbal section!

For Verbal, It appears to me you need to improve in all the three sections. Practice, read more, improve your comprehension, spend more time with the official questions and understand why you got the right questions right and the wrong answer wrong. Spend more time with each and every option. Develop good exam-taking strategies.

All the best!

akash2703 · Answer

Ok sure and thanks

Yes. You should read the Powerscore and Manhattan once again. Even when next time you will read these books once again then you will see new concepts. Those books are really dense if you do it thoroughly.

akash2703 · Answer

Hello,

Yes I gave following gmat exam packs -

Exam pack1 : Q39 V13 Total: 440 (No preparation before this exam)
Exam pack2 : Q44 V17 Total: 500 (Prepared quant but i wasn't able to even complete my half of the verbal section)
Exam pack3 : Q46 V12 Total: 470 (Prepared quant but again not taken verbal seriously)
Main exam : Q47 V12 Total: 470

In actual exam there was no repeated question. Infact there were no probability/permutation questions and word problems in the actual exam as compared to the exam packs. Its just that the official exam had all the variety of questions like graphs, cubic polynomial etc. but almost in similar lines to official questions.

I know for quant i will need a score around Q50. I need to cover more topics and one level higher questions to increase from Q47 to Q50.
It took me couple of months to improve in quants from Q39 to Q47, but for verbal i wasn't following any proper strategies.

For verbal i know i can follow a similar strategies for SC by excelling each topic.
But the official RC passages were really complex to understand and were long as compared to the exam packs and OG questions. It also affected my rest of the paper.

Half of the paper is based on comprehension (RC and CR both). Do you think that if i do RC buttler 2 RC passages daily, i will improve in RC? For RCs do you have any other recommendations ?

Thanks,
Akash

Had you given any official mocks before your exam? If yes, did you give the same in exam conditions? If yes, did you see any repeat questions? If no, what were your official mock scores like? Asking because your quant score is good, however, for 730 you will need to try to take it to Q49+ (adviseable). I hope you did not have an off day in Verbal!

For Verbal, It appears to me you need to improve in all the three sections. Practice, read more, improve your comprehension, spend more time with the official questions and understand why you got the right questions right and the wrong answer wrong. Special more time with each and every option. Develop good exam-taking strategies.

All the best!

CAMANISHPARMAR · Answer

Your real GMAT score is in line with your mock score and makes much more sense to me now.

You must follow what Scott said:-

Yes, doing two RC passages a day will really help you. Target to finish the passages in the official guides. Maintain consistency in your preparation. I feel, you might need to give yourself more time than just 1.5 months to take your score to a V39+.

All the best!

brains · Answer

Hello Akash,

Since you are decent enough in Quant , i would like to share my insight after going through your ESR.
P.S.- I am not even close to expert. You may follow or adopt any/none/all advice of mine at your own discretion!

So your verbal score is 12. Your ESR reflects that you have a very weak CR and SC. It does not mean that your RC is good (sorry to be blunt). 26 percentile in RC is a very low score. But there are always areas of improvement.

Now Assuming, you may not have devoted any good preparation time in your Verbal(since you already mentioned in your clarification of Mock scores) i would like to share these tips. I am too a Gmat aspirant and i am gonna retake again in few weeks.

CR- CR is a test of logic and really stressful if you do not know what is to be done or how to approach. My suggestion would be. Firstly , go through any CR book( Preferably ( Powerscore/Manhattan/ or few pdfs available in gmat club of various expers sharing CR notes and how to approach). However any book you choose, be sure to go through each and every section in a very detailed way. I mentioned above books not because i recommend those books but because there should be a guiding system which you can adapt to in the beginning and that will make you comofortable. Take one thing at a time. Fix a week schedule where you will learn only (lets say Assumption topic of CR). Rigorously find out about assumption as in " what is Assumption". What are the roles of assumptions. How it affects the argument. How can the conclusion be determined , What are the premises etc etc. Try to understand thoroughly. Take it slow , really slow. And after you finish assumption section, its time for practicing assumption questions. Dont just jump at 600 or 700 level questions. Start from very basic of 500 level questions. You will find them plenty in Gmat club forum. Do time the question when you practice it , however just forget the point that you have timed it. I am saying this because of two reasons. First by timing yourself, you will be able to track the progress when you reach a little comfort zone by comparing the "then" timed questions and "now" timed questions. Second, when you time yourself and you kinda ignore that fact , then its a good sign because you are not allowing yourself to distract which will prove very beneficial when you take the exam(Trust me:)) . After you finish 500 level , see what is your efficiency and accuracy. Ok , when you get any question wrong, try to find out why you got wrong. Is it because you did not understand the Argument or was not able to find any conclusion or were the answer choices too clumsy to relate , or were you not able to apply how it is affecting the argument. Correct those mistakes and reapply . I am sure you will sail through next time. Only when you are comfortable in 500 level move on to 600 level question and then 700. As a benchmark , % of accuracy in 500 should be 100 and in 600 more than 90 and then in 700 more than 50. Be sure to move on to next section when you could achieve at least 90% of desired ideal accuracy

Now repeat this exercise for every section such as Strengthen , weaken , Evaluate , Bold faced, Inference etc sections of CR.

SC: When it comes to SC, i would highly recommend egmat videos of SC. Try to get those videos. If finance is a constraint, then there are many articles posted by egmat in gmat club forum , you can go through them. I also recommend Sc book by Manhattan. That book might be one of the greatest contribution by Ron. Hopefully you will gain something from the book. there are very limited concepts in SC. Subject verb, Modifiers, Parallelism, Comparison, Pronouns, Tenses/Verbs etc, Go through each section one at a time and repeat the CR process i mentioned above. The process is same. Practice the questions and then move on to next section when you are comfortable and confident enough. One thing to note in SC is that you may struggle a lot in the beginning but as you adapt the process of elimination after applying concepts, you will feel much more comfortable. Make sure that when you choose answers , you chose it after knowing the fact that the answer you chose should be the one . And try to read Experts comments/clarifications as how they approach the question.

RC- when it comes to RC , i doubt that there are any specific rules that will apply to RC . Its a matter of reading and comprehending and if you are terrible at it , then it will surely take time. Take it slow,, really slow. Read the passage first and then understand and if you want to take notes , dont hesitate. Later when you are comfortable, you will gradually retain all information. Make sure that you read RC at a slow pace and try to find out if you are not able to infer or decipher the meaning because of the structure or topic or something else. After making sure that you understood the RC , attempt the questions. Try to eliminate the incorrect first by loudly speaking in your mind that " this is incorrect because-----_. This will help you. repeat this process , again and again

Make sure that you read daily 3 RCs and solve them. Do not get disappointed if all of them goes wrong. Believe me, it takes time to improve but when you improve, the learning graph is often exponential.

Hopefully after going through this process, you will be able to achieve your dream score. And dont forget to thank me then :P

Remember GMAT is not a test of mugging, intellectualism . Its much more than that. Its a test of strategy , time management and logic and ability

Please ignore some typos and grammar errors

All the best

akash2703 · Answer

Hey Brains,

Thank you so much for taking out time for such a detailed write up !! This is really helpful. For RCs do you think that i have to master each genres (humanity, social science etc..) one by one or should I practice randomly ?

brains · Answer

If time is not a constraint then you may adopt genres wise. Otherwise randomly would do the work

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Regarding verbal materials, take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for  verbal courses , and also read through some  GMAT success stories  to see what materials have worked well for other test-takers.

If you’d like specific advice on how to improve your CR, RC, and SC skills, feel free to let me know.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Regarding verbal materials, take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for  verbal courses , and also read through some  GMAT success stories  to see what materials have worked well for other test-takers.

If you’d like specific advice on how to improve your CR, RC, and SC skills, feel free to let me know.

VerbalBot · Answer

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