Just can't seem to crack Verbal

Question

Hi Everyone!

I'm new to this club and this is my first posting. I've been scanning these forums for the past 10 days and have been very impressed by some of the posters, especially the experienced ones and their desire to help students achieve their goals. 

I'm a finanical analyst in New York and am planning to take the test at the end of this month so only have 3 and a half weeks left. I have pretty hectic hours which makes it hard to study, but am determined to do well on the GMAT. I enrolled in the Kaplan calssroom course which I have not found to be very helpful to be honest. 

My goal is to get 700+. I took my second practice test (Kaplan gives its students 8 CATs to work on) today and scored 650. I got a 48 in Quant and only 30 in verbal. I'm stronger at Quant but I didn't expect to get so low in Verbal. To be honest I have only seriously practiced for the past couple of weeks or so, so I still have a lot more work to do. I'm hoping I can get up to 700 within the next 3 weeks but I am genuinely worried about Verbal because I feel like there's only so much I can improve there. My strategy is to go thru OG 11 and Kaplan 800 over the next 3 weeks and do atleast 8 more CATs (a couple of PR ones as well as GMATPrep along with the Kaplan CATs) but I'm not sure if that will be enough to improve substanially in Verbal. My target is to get a score of 50 in Quant and 40 in Verbal - I feel like Quant is possible but Verbal will be hard.

My question is should I do anything different strategy wise to improve substantially in Verbal over the next 3 weeks? I am not much of a reader so I find myself under significant time constraints during Verbal. May be I'm approaching it wrong or maybe its just that I'm not that good but I really want to improve here. Would really appreciate any feedback, especially from some of the expereinced folks here.

Thanks a bunch in advance.

willget800 · Answer

i am in the same boat..
working on the sc 1000, cr 1000, rc 1000...

just cant seem to get the hit ratio more than 70%..

tried the error log strategy too.. but still cant seem to improve it..

rhyme · Answer

Not to plug my own thread here, but...

https://www.gmatclub.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=30030

Try the RC strategy here (scroll way down)... its very powerful. Where are you guys making your mistakes? SC? CR? RC?

willget800 · Answer

SC... hit ratio 60-70%
CR.. hit ratio 80%
RC hit raio - 80%

My SC is killing me... and the CR and RC.. I a mnot able to really get it up.. the CR from the LSAT passages, I am down at 75%..

the problem is the errors for SC are really all over the place..

Rhyme, 
I am not able to concentrate and say this is my problem.. since the mistakes vary each tinme....

Scudman_79 · Answer

I am going to try Rhyme's RC strategy as well as get the MGMAT SC book because Kaplan sucks. As Rhyme says CR is something which either you have it or don't and practice will only help a little. But I'm confident I can practice RC and SC more to get it up. The key is focussed practice and I'm hoping these new strategies will help.

Hjort · Answer

Rhyme's post has some great information but I respectfully disagree that CR is an innate skill. Indeed, I have taught many people these skills. Please send me a PM if you wish to discuss further.

rhyme · Answer

You got 2000 posts. You can disagree all you like

Pranay_ju · Answer

I would strongly recommend the Princeton - Cracking the GMAT techniques for CR. Helped me a lot.

The key is, you have to paraphrase the passage in simple words before you look at the answer choices. And yes, don't forget to read the stem before you start reading the passage.

~Pranay.

chiragr · Answer

I totally agree with Hjort, CR can be taught!, For me in verbal CR was the only part where my hit rate was good....around 70%(untimed). Though, crossing this ration seemd impossible, but once I went through following book, I am really getting hit rate of 90%(untimed)

The GMAT Critical Reasoning Bible: by David M. Killoran

Bit detail analysis and lot of redundancy, but once you go through the whole book you really see some patern in CR questions

SpongeBoob · Answer

If you want to improve on verbal, use PR's techniques instead of Kaplan. They make a lot more sense.

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Just can't seem to crack Verbal

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