Last 10 days left for GMAT exam but still difficult to crack RC

Question

Hello Experts,

My GMAT is scheduled on 13th Oct'17. Almost done with preparations. Have solved OG18 along with Verbal and Quant Guide.

Targeting for a score of 700. But i find difficulty in getting through RC passages and Questions. I am able to narrow down to 2 options and mostly mark the wrong one while choosing the best. The accuracy is at around 60-70%.

I have gone through many discussion forums on this club and employed the same RC strategies but still do not have confidence in this section.

Seek your advice on what should be my strategy for these last 7 days to improve at-least another 10% or so on accuracy.

Thanks
Satish

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Satish,

Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) How have you scored on each of your CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for each)?

Goals:
4) What is your goal score?
5) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
6) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

Heseraj · Answer

Well, this is my advice since i was on your shoe. 
The first and most important things is perfecting the other parts of Verbal, SC and CR. If you could an ability of 90% on SC and 85% on CR, you can let your RC be in the same range of 60 to 70 % and still get an score as good as of 39, which is 89 percentile. This is exactly what happened to me. SC 92, CR 86 and RC 58.

Now, RC does require good comprehension and my suggestion is that do good guess on inference question and save up the time on other RC question types. RC however comes with Practice. I was 30 percent initially and could get my ability to 70 to 80 percent on practice but on the exam i got 58. And i am not a native speaker and was working on this issue for last four months.

It is your call now how do you want to deal with it. By now you should think of strategy how to take the exam but not how to perfect your understanding or your skills.

satish060290 · Answer

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Satish,

Your 2 practice CAT Scores are remarkably similar to one another, so assuming that you took those CATs in a realistic fashion, then you're closer to a 700+ than you probably realize. That having been said, it's not clear whether RC is only area that might be keeping you from your score goal.

After reviewing the Verbal section of this recent CAT, how many questions did you get wrong....
1) Because of a silly/little mistake?
2) Because there was some verbal that you just could not remember how to do?
3) Because the question was too hard?
4) Because you were low on time and had to guess?
5) On how many questions did you 'narrow the answers down to 2 choices' but still get the question wrong?

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

KarishmaB · Answer

You might want to evaluate the kind of questions on which you make the most mistakes in RC. Read up on how exactly to approach them and then practice those specifically. Even a 10% improvement in your accuracy at this time would be quite commendable. Don't worry too much though - in the last 2-3 days recap and relax. If your accuracy in CR and SC is better, overall, you should get a good score in Verbal.

Last 10 days left for GMAT exam but still difficult to crack RC

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