Is it just me or is Kaplan Verbal very tough?

Yes I agree that the answers are debatable/reasoning is not properlyjustified.
Kaplan 800 is decent book. Why dont you try Knewton test?
I would say its better to stick with MGMAT and GMAT prep + knewton

Well usually I never get bogged down by scores but this is something! I Guess I ll keep practising and pray for the best on test day!

Btw one question- How did you manage to score 770-780 consistently on MGMAT? 0 Verbal Mistakes - that's commendable!
When is your test?
Can you share your study plan in short ? or help me with Verbal?

I have finished OG 11,12 and Verbal Review. Plus the Aristotle Question Bank- which was a waste. I still have OG 10 but the questions are too easy - I had an accuracy of 95% on SC,CR and RC.

I also do have LSAT Papers. Should I continue using them? or should I practise Kaplan 800 ??

For SC : Aristotle SC+ Manhattan SC( did twice): Practice OG 12, Verbal review, Kaplan( 800, verbal workbook, premier,and advanced), Gmat paper tests, winning prep SC question bank, Knewton practice questions.


CR : Powerscore CR Bible : Practice OG 12, Verbal review, Kaplan( 800, verbal workbook, premier,and advanced), Gmat paper tests, winning prep CR question bank and NOVA GMAT- LSAT


RC: No strategy , Just read the passage and answer: Practice OG 12, Verbal review, Kaplan( 800, verbal workbook, premier,and advanced), Gmat paper tests, winning prep RC question bank, Aristotle RC99( only hard ones)

I dont think LSAT is a great resource for gmat CR. I did some 100 Questions though from NOVA. I will stick to only the official books.

Do let me know in case you require any further information.

Thanks
Sudhir
PS: Havent taken a Test date, but plan for Aug 18th - 20th

Hmm and I thought I used a lot of material!

Are the paper tests any good? I heard that they use American Lingo and the language now is much different from the paper tests! Did the paper tests help you?

Also did the RC99 Help you? I used them but left after a few passages because they were utterly boring and passages had no structure. So thought I would rather use only official material.

Can you tell me which Verbal Material other than official is really worth practising at this point - time is not a constraint!

akhileshgupta05 - I am planning to buy the Question bank of Aristotle SC as the Guide was pretty good. But, your comments seems to suggest that there is nothing to gain by practising those questions. What is your take on Aristotle SC Question bank ( $5 for 100 Q's looked quite a bargain)

If you have the Guide you will get the question bank along with it!
Email Aristotle Prep company and I think you should get the question bank!

hi,

You probably deserve more, as other think of themselves too, but hte reality is that you got 19 questions WRONG.
For verbal the number of questions one gets corrrect correlates more strongly with the raw score per section.
So for 19 mistakes in verbal I would expect even lower score. Try to have 19 in gmatprep and you will see the raw score below 30.

I am not discouraging you, I am giving you a sence of reality.
19 mistakes is a lot for your goal to score 750.

I have an old guide that doesnot have a question bank. So, do you think it is worth $5 for the question bank?

Well I guess you misunderstood me. I am not saying that with 19 mistakes I should have scored more. The scoring system is just fine!
But I am talking about the Questions that appear on the test. I never get more than 9-10 mistakes on Verbal. In GMATPrep I had 7 (0 Guesses). Only on Kaplan Tests do I get so many incorrect. So I am asking that is Kaplan's Verbal over-difficult ? If that is not the case, then my strategy has a loop-hole that I need to find. But if thats the case then I can continue practising without worry about it!

Well I have never given Kaplan test but I have studied from the book kaplan 800 and I can vouch for the fact that you need to read few strategies and understand few explanations from kaplan before hitting a good hit rate in solving kaplan verbal questions. I will say that if you have a kaplan guide then go through its strategies and questions and then attempt the next kaplan cat. If you just got 7 incorrect in verbal section of gmatprep then don't stress over one bad test. Knewton's verbal section is also very good, you can access your verbal skills by giving knewtons free test but just disregard the quant raw score you get on knewton.

Hmm makes sense thanx man. Guess I will try Knewton test tomorrow. Till then I will work on Kaplan 800. I realize that that most of the questions in Kaplan have 2 options very-very close, which is where I falter!

First of all, man... you guys give me complex with the amount of material you have covered :p. I wish I had more time in a day. 1-2 hrs on weekdays and full-time on weekends, I don't think I could even imagine covering all that material in even 6 months :p. I guess I would have to go full-time GMAT for 3 months to cover all that. So-far I have only done MGMAT SC/RC/CR (reviewed multiple times), Powerscore CR, OG12 (2nd round in progress) and OG verbal (once).

Regardless, back to Akhilesh's main question. I would recommend taking MGMAT instead of Kaplan. I think MGMAT verbal is very close to GMATPrep. MGMAT quant is more computation intensive; GMATPrep question I used ONLY 1.5 sheet of paper to solve ALL the problems, whereas in MGMAT I use upto 7 sheets. I have not given Kaplan, but as far as all the reviews say it only demotivates you if you consider the score seriously. If you are just looking for practice, then I think it is fine.

I think you still have 4 more MGMAT CATs to go. If I were you, I would focus on MGMAT, and then towards the start of last or penultimate week on the GMATPrep 2.

Have you considered retaking GMATPrep 1? I still don't know if the 2 sets are mutually exclusive, so I can't recommend.

I guess - Believe me man I am having a hard time breaching that V40. I will take GMATPrep 1 at the end of this month. Then other tests and then GMATPrep 2 when exactly 15 days are left. regardless of what score I get, I will take the GMAT on 20th. So I want to have plenty of time to work through every single GMATPrep problem!!!
But it would have really helped even if I got say a 720-730 on Kaplan!!! But, Oh well!

I know it's not that easy to consistently breach v40 consistently. After a point, it really gets nasty. I think you are in a great shape and if you build up the confidence you definitely deserve at-least v40 - which should be close to enough for you goal.

To add to my misery, I am planning to take a Kaplan test soon to see how worse I would perform :p

Based on my past experiences with standardized tests, I've come to believe that its important to stick to questions that are very similar to the ones that appear on the test. Practicing questions that are harder doesn't necessarily help because ultimately what seems to matter is being used to questions that appear on the final test. So I would stick to GMATPrep and MGMAT and stay away from most other sources.

Just my opinion, but I would almost anything by Kaplan. I found there to be too many LSAT influences in their material for my liking. OG12, Verbal Review 2nd Ed, and GMAT Prep, along with MGMAT will be your moneymakers (although there is some crossover between GMAT Prep tests and VR 2ed). Maybe a little Princeton Review too (just a little). You won't get any closer to real GMAT verbal than the resources I wrote above.

You meant retake, correct? So did you make sure, retaking GMATPrep 1 multiple times would not have any affect on GMATPrep 2. I mean if there are repeats then it will skew the test 2 results.