I have just taken GMAT 31May2012. the verbal is very bad.

Not sure about LSAT, but you can validate your approach to RC by going through this sticky :

how-to-destroy-reading-comprehension-passages-by-rhyme-30247.html#p205035

I don't think there's really any specific way to improve your reading.

RC is a bit more time-consuming than both CR and SC, for sure.

If you have trouble with your time, try saving time by doing SC really fast.

I've been doing GMAT club tests as well as GMAT prep questions (the official software one) - the mean time per question has been consistently 50sec ~ 1.1 min out of 2 min allowance.
Most of the time is saved from SC

Thanks all for your support

Actually I did all GMAT club tests & Kaplan test before taking GMAT exam, the score is also not too bad as following
MGMAT 2 640 ( 43M, 33 V)
MGMAT 3 640 ( 44M, 32 V)
MGMAT 4 600 ( 44M, 28V)
MGMAT 5 610 (44M, 30 V)
Kaplan 1 580 ( 39M, 27V)
Kaplan 2 590 (39M, 28V)

But when I took the real test, I was very disappointed because my verbal score was so bad that i could not believe, I just got 19V, I do not understand how it happens. I practised all OG12, Manhattan SC, Bible Critical Reasoning, 3000RC, All 25 Math tests, all verbal questions in GMAT club tool kit, But I do not recognize where the gap is. Now I do not know how to prepare again ? Heiza.. also, I am not sure I can improve my verbal score. Now I plan to buy 400 new questions of mba.com and practise the questions bank of GMAT prep published in this forum, Is it better for improving my score If you have any idea for study gmat more effectively. Please share with me ?



Thanks alot

are you a native speaker?

Hi heintzst

I am non-native English speaker . I am trying to study for next exam in September. I try studying GMAT at least 5 hours / day, around 15 sentences for all type each day as what i did in the past time. But this time. I am not confidence that my GMAT score will be improved well. Now I am trying to do MGMAT & Kaplan tests again to get score 700+. Is it the good method ?

If you're not a native speaker, you should focus on improving your general English competence first before doing GMAT. You know the bias is there - it's like taking a German version of GMAT without speaking German quite well. Kinda a problem, huh? If you have problem with GMAT verbal, you probably have problem with TOEFL as well - which will altogether reduce your probability of getting into a top school.

I don't know how much time you still have left. If you can still tolerate a bit of waiting - I suggest that you read magazines, starting from Newsweek, New Statesman, TIME, to more sophisticated ones such as Economist and Foreign Affairs (by council on foreign relations) . But I have no way of knowing if these are available at all at your place. WSJ and NYTimes are good stuff, too and you can just skim them every day - there are always new articles.

From my experience, an ESL student has pretty noticeable English improvement after reading these magazines for an extended period of time, say, 6-12 months. But you shouldn't expect to have a sharp improvement in, say, 2 weeks or even 10 weeks of cram. Don't waste time on fiction - novels are always written in lightheaded, if not frivolous prose that sound like daily conversations. I was just picking up "The bonfire of vanities" - supposedly a I-Banking classic on the masters of the universe, and I find the prose disgusting. Sounds like some fool babbling on the street. The Economist is widely regarded as well-written, and they even have a style guide for sale (style, as in good way of writing). For books, pick up some history or political science books. For one with more dense prose, try George Soros' "Alchemy of Finance" -which both appeals to business interest (finance that is) as well as practicing enduring boring academic writing.

Also try : https://www.the-american-interest.com/contents.cfm

Thanks heintzst

Along with practising GMAT tests, from now on, I will spend around 1-2 hours per day on reading The NYTimes & Economist. Indeed, I am also familiar with The NYTimes before taking GMAT test, But I just skimmed around one article a day before. I should skim to get the main idea. is it right ?Actually, during a period of preparing GMAT test, I also read intensively, every day I read 4-5 passages in 3000 RC, I practised from Feb to take GMAT exam in May. I just can not understand why I could not perform as well as I practised

You really probably just haven't read enough. Let me tell you my story. I'm a native English speaker, but I spent countless - day and night - hours reading stuff : US history, European history, politics, economics. Mostly books. The purpose? To bolster my SAT reading and writing score. You know the benefit of reading a lot, I mean a lot = reading one book a day consistently, that is 360+ books per year. The only drawback of that is the high cost - at one point I'd spend over $1000 per month just to buy books. At the end, I had so many examples to write on my SAT writing that I didn't even bother looking at any "strategies", "formula" ...\

On the exam, I just started throwing everything I read from whichever source, and I ended up writing more words than allotted - of course, I scored a 12 out of 12 (which is the same as 6.0 on AWA) For the SAT reading, I scored a 780 (out of 800), with not too much prep either.

Buy a Kindle (https://www.amazon.com) if you have the opportunity. Saves you a lot of money, a $25 hardcopy is $9 on Kindle - you can always read it in a day and return it the next day for full refund. The good thing about Kindle is that it's thin and light - you can read while eating at a restaurant. My favorite route every day is to walk out and take the subway to a Whole Foods Market (where I can get countless fruits, smoothie and other goodies) , sit down with my book, eating, reading, eating, reading. Repeat the pattern every day. You can also hold the device without much pain while you're on the train - on the beach, anywhere. ALSO, it has a built-in dictionary that allows you to learn words way faster than reading off a paper back, for which you'd have to aid with an external dictionary to look up for words.

There's a reason why SAT verbal is highly correlated with socio-economic status of the individual in question. It is because that in high SES households, there tend to be a lot more books available. Moreover, books tend to be expensive, out of the reach of working class Americans. More analysis see Charles Murray's "Coming Apart" : https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-Stat ... 0307453421

Overall: Just Read.

If you get V19 then I assume you can still have room to improve in SC and CR. My thinking is that you should focus on these two first before RC.

Dear heintzst

Thanks for your sincere sharing. Actually, I also took SAT in the past time, around 1100/1600 with two-years preparation, After that, I jumped out of english world for 2 years, Then, I came back and planed for GMAT examination. But the result is really bad. I will try to improve reading spead as you suggested for next 5-months, Hope that, the scenario in GMAT will be improved

Hi gmatfighter12,

I also check more grammars in e-gmat website, But I still get stuck with CR, I do not know how to improve CR ?

By the way, I am reading " The World is Flat " by Thomas Friedman. Is it the book I should read at this time

Yeah sure. I read it too but apparently some people don't like it. If you like the book, you should follow the author's column on New York Times every day.

One more book to recommend : "fooling some of the people all the time: a long short story" by David Einhorn. I just went through the book. Pretty interesting.

David Einhorn is a Long Short, focus hedge fund manager who started his Greenlight capital in 1996. He has a BA in Government from Cornell (with honors thesis being on the airline industry, so he's more interested in economics)

He started his career out of college at DLJ as a banking analyst, then switched to a hedge fund called SC two years after.

Heintzst , like this recommendation too much

Actually, yesterday, I was mentoring a 12-year-old just entering junior prep school this year. He asked me what he should read to maximize his SSAT, PSAT, and subsequently SAT. I brought him to Whole Foods where there's a newspaper stand from which you can grab free paper to read while dining. The paper stand has almost all the good publications: New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Globe and Mail (Canada), Guardian (UK). I told him to ask his daddy to subscribe all of these for him. He doesn't have much to do every day as a kid, so might as well spend time early on reading. But before he goes to college he still has some five years to build up his reading.

It's not just for RC. Sentence correction becomes a cakewalk after a year of Economist. (it's the most manageable section on both SAT and GMAT) My practice on SAT writing section consistently scored above 750 with even sometimes lousy writing score


Guess what, he finds GMAT math "simple" because he did Math Olympiads when he was in grade 6. Except, when I asked him to choose 3 people from a group of 15, he didn't know what to do!

Are you a teacher ? Is it right?I just guess But I see that The Economist give viewers free access to many articles of a day. Right ? According to my experiences, The New York Times gives 20 free access a month ? And The scientists have no barriers, I can read as much as I can in The Scientists. Is it right ? I think your boy will read hard to dig all free source

no I'm not a teacher...I'm entering college this fall, so a student.

Also: don't try to save $5 on a $200,000 degree such as MBA. WSJ online costs $108 to subscribe to, the Economist, $135, NYTimes, probably $200. Pay the money, otherwise you're not gonna get superior service.

In fact, it is generally a bad idea to skip subscriptions of these papers at all at any time. Without reading NYT/WSJ every day, you're blind and deaf - when you try to have an intelligent, informed conversation with anybody, whether it is your friend, your co-worker, someone you just met a cafe, you'd lose big time.

If you think about it this way, newspaper and magazine subscriptions are not just must-have, but also value investments at a bargain. An average preparatory school in New England (for example, Choate, Andover, or St.Albans in DC) costs $48,000 per year tuition and boarding. So the total cost of education for a kid from age 12 to 17 is about 5 * that amount, or $220,000. Let's say that's 200 grand. But if you're from a family of obscure and impoverished background (let's say, income lower than $80,000 per year), you'd get full ride for these schools because they have general endowments. So if you had read extensively prior to age 12, you'd probably outperform 95% of the kids who take that exam, taking a full-ride of $50000 per year for five years until college. An investment of $1000 on newspapers and magazines amounts to about just 1.5% of the total annual family take-home pay - tiny. I'm only explaining this concept for low-income households, because the rich don't give a damn about $1000 - they burn it for fun.

With that good, prep, education at hand, you'd probably continue to read and outperform in SAT, getting a full-ride for Harvard. If you trace the cause of these chains of successes, the originator is the investment on reading made prior to age 12 - mostly in forms of papers, books and magazines.

The only thing you can leave out is FT, which costs somewhere around $250 for a year's online, regular subscription (premium costs as much as $450). The reason why you should not get Financial Times is that the articles may be too specialized to be useful for you. That said, Financial Times has some of the best general business intelligence (especially the A-List, which has high-rung politicians, top academics as contributors). The same reason applies to "The Banker", which is a even more specialized publication by Pearson, the same company that publishes both Financial Times and the Economist.

If you want cheap, go for Foreign Affairs, which is $19 per year, so is American Interest / National Interest.

FYI: That boy's daddy is a multi-millionaire.