How to score a 720+, need help and suggestions.

Hi Kumar Abhishek,

Since you already have an MBA - and you're asking for School suggestions - 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/

In addition, since you already have some GMAT resources to work with, you might want to use those for a few weeks to see how well they help you to improve. After 2-3 weeks of study, you should plan to take a NEW, FULL-LENGTH CAT/mock - and make sure to take it in a realistic fashion that matches-up with what you will face when you take the Official GMAT (take the FULL CAT - with the Essay and IR sections, at the same time of day as when you'll take the Official GMAT, if you will be at a Test Facility, then wear a face mask, etc.). Once you have that Score, you should post back here (or you can feel free to PM me directly) and we can discuss the results and any adjustments that you might make to your studies.

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

660 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.

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Hi Abhi3492,

First of all, 660 with a Q49 is a solid score to secure in your first official GMAT mock test. However, as you have time on your side, a significant improvement of upto 100 points is possible in your case provided you prepare in a structured manner with consistent efforts guided in the right direction. Let me help you.

How to Ace your Verbal Prep?

For GMAT Verbal, it is very important that you follow the right methodology and the logical approach. Your focus has to be on eliminating four incorrect choices rather than choosing the right one. The key is to develop a solid understanding of the concepts that are typically tested on the GMAT and master the process skills that are required to solve GMAT questions. Only then, you will be able to smartly avoid the traps set by the test makers.

Before you start learning, it's important to understand what is actually tested using the questions. Each module in Verbal (SC, CR and RC) has to be approached in a different way. For example, before you start learning the concepts of SC, you need to understand that SC questions on GMAT test your ability to convey the right meaning without any ambiguity. So, it's important to approach them from a meaning stand-point. You might have often come across answer choices which are both grammatically correct and convey a logical meaning but are indeed incorrect because they do not convey the intended meaning. So, the process to approach SC questions is to:
• Comprehend the original meaning of the sentence
• Identify errors if any (both grammatical and meaning wise)
• Eliminate answer choices which either are grammatically incorrect or do not convey the intended meaning

You can go through the link below to understand the process in a better way:


Also, improving in SC alone won’t fetch you the desired score. You need to prepare for RC and CR as well in a structured and efficient manner. You have to follow a methodical and systematic approach while solving the questions in order to work on your accuracy and increase your score. For example,
• In CR, you have to understand the argument, identify the premise and the conclusion and then pre-think the answer before looking at the solutions.
• In RC, you need to have the right reading strategies to understand the inferences which are not directly stated in the passage.

I’d recommend you to follow this order for the verbal part - SC->CR-RC. The reason for this is very specific. Each question type on the GMAT is testing a specific skill. SC tests your comprehension skills. CR tests comprehension & analytical skills. Finally, RC builds on the previous two skills and also tests your ability to be able to grasp the central point of the passage i.e. Your inferential skills. Thus, when you learn in this order, it's much more effective.

The need for a personalized study plan:

I understand that maintaining a balance between work life and studies can very challenging. To do so efficiently, it is always advisable to follow a study plan with clear deadlines.

As you are a working professional, a generic study plan wouldn’t suffice. You need something more personalized so that you can finish your preparation in given time. By personalized, I mean something which takes into account the number of hours you can dedicate in a week and creates a study plan based on that. It should have clear deadlines so that you can focus on finishing those tasks scheduled for the week. This will help you concentrate better.

I understand that creating a study plan can be a tedious task, so you can check GMATWhiz which can help you create a personalized study plan. There is a free trial for which you can register and create a study plan with weekly deadlines based on the number of hours you can dedicate in a week. This way it would be easy to follow that and also you can completely focus on the preparation instead of spending time on making study plan. And the best part about the plan is it is totally integrated with the course. All you need to do is click on the Start button and it will give you the right lessons and quizzes as you’re supposed to go through in the right order.

Hope this helped and feel free to contact if you have any further queries.

You can always write back to me here or the better way would be to connect over a call and have a discussion. You can schedule a free consultation call using the below link.