Hi All,

I need some suggestion on how to improve further on my score. I need to have atleast 700+ for the colleges I am looking for. Planning to give by Sep first week, hadn't finalized the date yet.

Here are my scores till now:

4 months back without prep : MGMAT1 580 (Q44, V25)
two months back : MGMAT2 610 (Q47, V27)
two week before : MGMAT3 640 (Q43, Q35)
a week before : GMAT PREP 670 (Q49, V33)

All in all, I was only concentrating on Verbal, with SC and RC is my weakest and, CR worst as it gets 700+ questions tag. Quant, I am OK, but I need to brush up my knowledge and tune myself to GMAT. I started preparing little bit, like going through Number properties from MGMAT and working on GMATClub Test. All of these in last 2-3 weeks. I just need to spent some more time in this section, and I think I can make 49 or so.

Now comes the hardest part , Verbal... I did MGMAT SC for first 7 chapters, and then I couldn't see lot of improvements for SC. Then I came across to Aristotle SC grail, which was super!, I was able to improve a little bit. As you can see from my score, But still as soon as a 650+ SC comes my way, I get totally confused and fell into trap. Similarly for CR and RC respectively. RC above 600+ is challenge to me and CR above 700+ . I don;t have much hope for RC, But I think I can increase Verbal by just spending more time on SC and CR. Not sure how ???

Finished OG Verbal 2nd edition with 90% success in CR and 80% success in SC (After 2nd run). Similarly for OG12, SC and CR is only 60% correct. CR I only started above 50 as I know I am comfortable with easy ones. I am reviewing all right and wrong questions, but looks like couldn't pass a certain limit. Also, sometimes OG's explanation is very confusing and I couldn't extract much information from it.

Can you guys, please help me in suggesting what should I do, what am I missing and where can I get most improvement. Also is 6-7 weeks is enough time to get my 700+ score. I can get 2 hours weekdays and 4 hours on weekend.

I am planning to do the following in next few weeks:
1. Geometry, Inequalities, probability from MGMAT
2. Powerscore for CR
3. Dive more deep into MGMAT SC
4. Try to find some time for RC

your experience comments will help me in getting a right direction. Thanks,

You need to become more familiar with proper written English.

Have you seen the GMAT Fiction thread?
Veritas also has some SC books.
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Thanks, Yes I saw the Fiction thread, and read couple of them. But time is the issue to read most of it. I will look into Veritas...

Dear Brandy

if you are doing 60% correct in CR &SC in OG
then really look into it
and learn from it
doing wrong is not a problem
but not learning from your mistakes is a problem

here is SC way
for 600-650 Level (OG 12th)
for 650 Level (Aristotle) (Kaplan SC work book)

you can take help of "Ron Purewal" videos also (available free on Manhattan website)

for RC do Aristotle RC 99
there is no shortcut for RC though practice is best

hope this helps


while doing all this
dont forget to maintain maths.......
all the best

Well, it is difficult to tell you what you are missing. Let me tell you, what I am doing and what I am planning to do to increase my score. Compare it with what you are doing and decide, what could be helpful for you.

1. STUDY, not read, the MGMAT SC entirely. Yes, it is painful because it is a very detailed book with many rules, but that’s what SC is about.
2. Study the idioms of that book. I think this makes the difference.
3. You must have an error log. Something that has helped me is to assign a column (in the Excel format of the error log) for each option. In that column I write what type of error that choice shows. There, you will see that any choice has at least two errors. This will help you to identify errors that you didn’t notice before.
4. There is a difference in the difficulty level between the OGs and the GMAT Prep, the later is harder. I am planning to “sacrifice” the GMAT Prep Test 1; I will study from the questions in that test. I will use Test 2 to evaluate my performance at the end of my preparation.
5. After using the Tests of the GMAT Prep, I will use the questions bank of the GMAT Prep. gmatprepsc-105446.html
6. In RC, I think that the RC Grial electronic book pushes you to improve your score. The difficulty level of the passages in the OGs are low.
7. In CR, the CR Bible by Powerscore is a great book. There is also a questions bank of the GMAT Prep for CR.

As you can see, in my particular case, I have done and I am doing many things to improve my score in verbal. Also, in my personal opinion, don’t push you to take the test in September if you don’t see that you are not ready. The only indicators that can tell you that you are ready are the CATs.

I know you will improve. Perseverance and hard work are the key to ace the GMAT.

I think I deserve kudos
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Thanks metallicafan, you sure do thanks for the valuable tip. I know I am pushing hard for Sep, but with full time extremely busy job and family, i am not able to hold too looooong

I am sure I had tools, MGMAT and aristotle etc, but not using it wisely or effectively. Also, even the way I am doing error log, I think is not helping me either in a great way. Will try to work harder...

Thanks Warlock! I will do RC99 and PowerPrep. For SC I need to start back with different approach. Even though with the same resource people are doing miracles and I am having hard time learning much.

As requested, here are my thoughts:

Let me first get Quant out of the way. If you are in the 45-49 score range, be prepared for some tricky number properties and some tough Algebra questions. There are lots of traps in number properties e.g. "non negative number" which means think about 0 etc. Make sure red flags go up the moment you see such words. Geometry questions are generally not very tough but probability can be tricky. Both these topics are covered in detail in separate Veritas books so if you have the time, you might want to look at them. Again, you will probably get a couple of questions of Probability so if you are comfortable with the basics on probability and would rather spend time building up more on Inequalities/Modulus, that's fine too.

Let's go on to Verbal now. SC - Pretty much a nightmare for many people. Most people dislike it probably because it involves grammatical rules which we haven't touched for years now and also because we speak incorrectly. That said, the effort required to answer 70%-80% is not much. Most errors that appear on GMAT can be categorized - Agreement errors, Pronoun errors, Verb errors, Modifier errors etc. Learn to spot these quickly. Learning a list of rules doesn't help. The list of idioms isn't worth the time either since most idioms are just smokescreens. You can arrive at the correct answer even without knowing the correct usage. Also, GMAT is focusing less and less on rules and more and more on logic e.g. above 700 level questions will often involve 'accuracy' errors i.e. grammatically an option is correct but it changes the meaning intended. We tend to overlook this error. So to improve SC, focus on the most common errors and make sure you know the correct usage. Then practice. OG12 has good questions to practice on. Go through the explanation of each and every option. Figure out why A, B, C and D are incorrect and why E is correct.

RC - Mainly practice will help. Read properly the first time around and note the scope, tone, organization and purpose of the passage. Then go on to questions. Do not make errors in the specific detail questions since the answer is right in front of you. Go back to the passage to confirm if you have a doubt. The extra 10 seconds are worth it. Veritas has an RC book which has many 650+ passages. In fact, some of them are the hardest that you could see on GMAT. You can practice from that book if you have the time.

CR - Very logical, very mathematical... My favorite Verbal section and I see you are comfortable with most of CR questions (which is no surprise since your Quant is strong). Again, there are some things which are very important to keep in mind, especially in 700+ questions. e.g. While working on Strengthen/ Weaken questions, focus on the conclusion of the argument. That is what you have to strengthen/weaken. Make sure that the option you pick strengthens/weakens your conclusion, not a premise of the argument. At the end of the day, every CR question comes down to some such detail.
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Thanks Karishma!!! This is very detail and good input. I think what I was missing in SC is I was only looking for one error for each choices and removing it, without concentrating more on the overall structure and meaning of Sentence. Will try to improve on that area. Whereas for RC, I am always scared, as it is very boring and time consuming, but looks like I don't have any choice

Thanks for the tips Karishma. You summed up the entire GMAT better than ever I have seen. Can't agree more with you. Thanks again, it was very helpful.

Thanks Karishma, as always very insightful! Got a few pointers.

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