My Journey to 625 (Q89, V78, DI77) Seeking Verbal & DI Guidance

Question

I've been preparing for the GMAT Focus for around 7–8 months now while simultaneously preparing for CAT. My target is ISB PGP YL and eventually a top MiM/MBA program abroad. I'm an IIT Roorkee engineering graduate with one year of international work experience in Japan, and despite having a quantitative background, this exam has been much more challenging than I initially expected.

My latest official mock was  625   (Q89, V78, DI77) . Quant is currently my strongest section, where most of my mistakes are due to rushing or careless errors rather than conceptual gaps. However, Verbal and Data Insights have been my biggest bottlenecks. Critical Reasoning, maintaining focus in Reading Comprehension, and managing time in DI—especially multi-source reasoning and Table Analysis—have been particularly difficult.

Over the past few weeks, I've shifted my preparation from simply solving more questions to analyzing every mistake. I maintain an error log, practice CR and RC daily, solve timed Quant and DI sets, and spend more time understanding  why  I got an answer wrong than just checking the correct option. One thing this journey has taught me is that the GMAT is less about knowledge and more about decision-making, consistency, and staying composed under pressure.

I'm still far from my target score, but I'm committed to the process and taking it one improvement at a time. I'd love to hear from anyone who made a significant jump in Verbal or DI—what worked for you, and what changes made the biggest difference?

bb · Answer

Hi. Congrats on hitting 625.

The key to data insights is that these questions are solved differently from the problem-solving. I want people try to approach these question types the same way but that is a mistake. Most of the time you don’t want to do exact calculations (this is the reason they allow you to use the calculator cause it doesn’t matter) and the faster way is to approximate or estimate and not doing calculations.

PS. This looks like it was enhanced or written by A.I.. Do people not write anything on their own anymore?

zitipiti · Answer

Hello, BB, First of all, thanks for the advice. 
I am more concerned about verbal right now because somehow I have managed to increase my sectional score in DI but still plateaued at verbal despite daily CR and RC practice. I think my major drawback is attention span while reading RC.

And yes, for that AI thing... what I do is ask AI to write my concern in a better way.

PS: Preparation and my mock scores are 100% human generated LOL. If only AI could take the GMAT for me too :p

bb · Answer

No problem - I just see everyone sending everything to me in AI. It is weird. I just need to get used to it I guess. In terms of verbal - you should be able to improve it as long as you stick to the strategies for RC and CR - e.g. the MGMAT or Powerscore book strategies. Have you tried those? or they did not work for some reason?

SarfrazAP · Answer

Forget test takers, I find most "experts" also don't write posts themselves these days

SarfrazAP · Answer

For CR, see if you are able to dissect arguments (for Assumption, Evaluate, Strengthen, Weaken and Flaw questions). And pre think the Assumption. Because that will take you to the answer. People typically spend more time on CR because they keep reading every answer choice multiple times and eliminating. Not a good idea.

For RC, it seems your problem is concentration. Here's a simple hack - put pen to paper. I mean write something for each paragraph. In shorthand. Even if it's just a few words from one or two sentences. The act of writing forces you to concentrate. Also works on CR. Of course, don't spend too much time doing this.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

zitipiti · Answer

Ummm, I'm sorry I wasn't aware of this powerscore book; do I need to purchase it? Also, regarding MGMAT, I have already purchased egmat and magoosh, but I do not believe these have improved my verbal score.

zitipiti · Answer

Thank you for the advice! I tried this way of penning down a short summary of each para in RC, and it eventually helped me too, but again, the problem with this arises in terms of timing. I consume a lot more time to attempt them. For CR, yes, it's difficult for me to point out conclusions, arguments, pre-thinking... So I assume this might be the drawback that I am not able to figure out the correct option. (Idk, but most of the time I am always stuck between 2 options, and idk how the other option, which I left thinking, "Huh, you can't be right," turns out to be correct.

) one of my lowest score in verbal was only 3 correct.

egmat · Answer

Hi,

Before anything else, let me point out something in your own post that I think you are underweighting.

You are an IIT Roorkee graduate sitting at  Q89 , and you describe your Quant errors as rushing and carelessness rather than conceptual gaps. That combination tells me your ability to reason logically and hold a precise chain of inferences together is not in question. And yet, after 7–8 months of preparation, you are at  V78 . That is not an ability gap. It is a  method gap  — and method gaps are the fastest kind to close, provided you attack them in the right order.

Why Verbal is the only lever that matters for you right now

At Q89 you have almost no headroom left on Quant. Your entire remaining score upside sits in Verbal. And there is a second-order effect people miss: a large part of DI — MSR especially, and the reasoning layer of Table Analysis — is a  verbal reasoning task wearing a data costume . When your Verbal reading and inference process becomes reliable, DI improves at a fraction of the effort. The reverse is not true. So the sequencing question answers itself: fix Verbal properly, then let DI follow.

Here is the sequence I would put you on.

Stage 0 — Change what you optimize for

Right now you are almost certainly reading fast, understanding partially, and then compensating by eliminating among the options. That is what a 78 looks like from the inside. For the next few weeks, take timing completely off the table. Go slow. Deliberately, uncomfortably slow. Accuracy first; speed is a by-product of clarity and comes later on its own.

Three process metrics to hold yourself to — track these more religiously than your daily accuracy:

Read once. No rereading.  Every time you go back over a sentence or scroll up to the passage, log it. Rereading is the single clearest signal that you did not construct meaning on the first pass — and it is also where most of your time is disappearing. 
  Visualize as you read.  After each sentence of a CR argument or RC passage, you should be able to state in your own words, without looking back, what that sentence said and how it connects to the one before it. If you cannot, you processed words, not meaning. 
  Pre-think before you look at the options.  For every CR question, articulate what a correct answer  must  do before you read A–E. This is the pre-thinking process from your CR course — and if you have been quietly skipping it under time pressure, that alone accounts for a large part of your CR gap. It is the step that converts the logical ability you clearly have into accuracy. Choosing between five options is a weak skill. Predicting what the answer has to look like is a strong one.

Stage 1 — Medium questions, untimed, to 90%

First, define difficulty precisely, using GMAT Club ratings:

Medium  = rated up to 655 
  Hard  = rated 705, 755 and above

Start with CR. Do 40–50 medium questions, untimed, applying the three metrics above, and do not move on until you are at  90% accuracy on medium . Not 75%. Not 80%. If you enter hard questions at 75% on medium, your accuracy on hard will collapse to the 40s and you will conclude — wrongly — that hard CR is beyond you.

Stage 2 — Hard questions, ~100 of them, to 65–70%

Once medium is genuinely at 90%, move to hard. Plan for about 100 hard CR questions, still prioritising accuracy over the clock. Your target here is  65–70% on hard . That is the accuracy profile that produces a V84 — you do not need 90% on hard, and chasing it is a waste of your time.

Stage 3 — Repeat the identical cycle for RC

Same structure, same thresholds: 90% on medium, then 65–70% on hard. For RC the read-once and visualize metrics do even more work than they do in CR, because your stated problem — losing focus mid-passage — is a symptom of passive reading, not of attention span.

Stage 4 — Sectional mocks

Only now bring timing back, through Verbal sectional mocks. This is where you will see whether the process has stuck under pressure, and this is where you should see  V84  show up.

What that does to your total

Once you are at V84, DI 83 becomes a far easier target than it looks from where you are sitting today, because the reasoning process transfers directly. And Q89 with V84 and DI in the low 80s puts you at  705+  — comfortably in ISB YL territory, and in range for the MiM/MBA programs you are targeting.

One note on your error log

You are already doing the most important thing — analysing mistakes rather than piling on volume. I would only push you to change  what  you analyse. Most error logs record the answer-level cause ("missed the assumption", "fell for the trap option"). Yours needs to record the  process-level  cause: did I reread? Did I pre-think? Could I paraphrase each sentence? Fix causes at that level and entire clusters of errors disappear at once, rather than one at a time.

And one thing you should stop doing alone

I see that you are an e-GMAT student — which means a lot of what I have described above is already sitting inside your account, along with the data needed to diagnose it precisely. So let me ask:  have you written in to the e-GMAT team, or worked with any of our mentors so far?  If not, that is the single easiest thing to fix this week.

Specifically, you look like a textbook fit for our  Last Mile Push  programme. Consider your profile: Q89 already banked, one clearly identified bottleneck, 7–8 months of disciplined effort behind you, a maintained error log, and a plateau that is process-driven rather than knowledge-driven. That is exactly the situation LMP is built for — a mentor looks at your actual attempt data, tells you which of the three metrics above is breaking and where, sets your accuracy gates, and holds you to them so that you do not escalate to hard questions before medium is genuinely locked. Left to yourself, that last part is the step almost everyone skips, and it is the reason plateaus persist.

You have the raw ability. What you are missing is a measurable process, hard accuracy gates before you escalate difficulty, and someone looking at your data with you. Put those three in place and the 78 will move.

Write to me at  rajat@e-gmat.com  — send me your error log and mock breakdowns, and I will look at where the process is breaking and get you connected with the right mentor personally.

All the best,
Rajat

zitipiti · Answer

Hi, thank you for the suggestions! I am currently solving sorted questions of the 655-705+ range, hoping that maintaining accuracy would eventually build up my pre-thinking about the question. 
And yes, I enrolled in egmat with my name as Ashita. But that was a 3-month course and couldn't be extended due to budget constraints. I am currently practicing on GMAT Club quizzes and tests.

egmat · Answer

@zitppiti - Did you write to the team. Write to them, even if your account is expired. Your data still exists and we can provide valuable insights on where you are faltering. I cannot get to your account from your name.

-Rajat

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

One line I want to push on. You wrote that the GMAT is less about knowledge and more about decision-making and composure. Decision-making does matter. But be careful with that ranking, because good decisions on this test run on content fluency underneath them. Take CR, which you named. If what an assumption is and how it functions inside an argument isn't fully solid yet, composure won't get you through an Assumption question under the clock. There's nothing precise to reason from. The risk in that framing is that it points you toward drilling pacing when the content underneath is what needs the work.

On the score. For ISB and the programs you're eyeing, plan toward 705 to 715 or higher, and the Indian pool is competitive enough that I'd aim at the top of that. From 625 that's 80 to 90 points. A 50-point move on Focus usually takes weeks to months of structured work, so you're looking at roughly double that, on top of the months already in. Doable, but it needs a concentrated block rather than more of the current cadence.

Quant first, briefly. I wouldn't take the careless-error read at face value. The bar for a truly careless miss is high: you'd have to be able to say you fully know that question type and would get nearly all hundred of them right. If you can't say that, the label is usually hiding a concept that holds untimed and breaks under the clock, or a setup that isn't automatic yet. Some misses genuinely are careless, and then the fix is slower setup and cleaner notation. Just test each one against that bar first. And keep Quant in the weekly rotation. An 89 won't hold on its own through months of Verbal and DI work.

Verbal and DI both need their own track, running in parallel, not one then the other.

For CR, the process depends on the question type, so name the task before you read the stimulus. Strengthen, weaken, assumption, paradox, inference: different jobs. Forcing them all through find-the-conclusion-and-the-gap is what leaves you stuck between two answers. Then work the choices in two passes. First pass, cut only what you can clearly rule out, and hold onto anything that feels strange but that you can't actually eliminate, because correct CR answers often don't look obviously connected to the argument. On the last two, state the exact logical reason one does what the question asked and the other doesn't. If you can't state it, you're picking on feel.

For RC, the focus issue usually comes from how you're reading. Don't try to hold every detail. Get the structure: main point, why each paragraph is there, the author's stance, where the details live. Too slow and you lose time. Too fast without structure and you lose accuracy. Reading for purpose also helps the concentration problem, since attention holds better when you're reading toward something. Do this untimed and get accuracy high before you add the clock.

DI runs on Quant and Verbal concepts in unfamiliar packaging, so Verbal gains show up there. It still needs its own study. Format familiarity buys an early bump; after that it's tactics by type. On MSR, the first pass through the tabs is for comprehension and for knowing where information sits, not for absorbing it. Go back for specifics when a question asks. On Table Analysis, the skill is knowing how to sort the table for each statement, then reading the inference off the sorted data.

Your error log is already ahead of most. Two upgrades. Tag every entry by cause: concept gap, process error, recognition error, task error, trap answer, careless, timing. One miss is data; a cluster of the same tag in the same topic is a study decision. And write the next action as a trigger plus response. Not "be careful with except questions," but "when the stem says EXCEPT or NOT, circle it and write the inverted task before touching the choices." Review weekly, not daily, and log the correct answers you weren't sure about.

Last thing. Running GMAT and CAT together splits your attention across two exams that reward different things, and that may be part of why the effort hasn't converted. If your CAT date is locked, keep GMAT work light until it's behind you, then give the GMAT a real block. If it isn't locked, sequence them.

You've done the hard months. Aim that same discipline at the specific gaps in Verbal and DI, and the jump is there.

zitipiti · Answer

Thank you so much for such wonderful guidance! I really mean it. As of now I've booked my slot on 22nd Aug nearly 20 days left.. I am rigorously practicing verbal and DI sectional tests. further analyzing my error log and noting which topic I made the most mistakes in. I am trying to solve all such similar questions where I am lagging. One thing is that no matter how hard I try in terms of 805+ questions i hardly attempt 2-3 questions correctly in a normal quiz out of 10. which I completely understand may be due to lack of foundational thinking while solving CR. 
While doing DI, I have seen a lot of improvement, like currently 3-4 questions wrong (and those too are questions above a 755+ rating). Therefore, I suppose that working on it could serve as a supporting backup for both quant and my overall score. 
Also, the CAT exam is fixed on 29th Nov, so there's a lot more time, and my current concern is the GMAT only right now. I typically give weekly mock exams, which essentially keeps me in practice, and I am already at the 99.2%ile range there. So there's no such blocking kind of thing in my preparation.

egmat · Answer

zitipiti  - given your grades on platform, I can say that you need to focus on building core skills - the abiltiy to visualize, draw inferences while reading, and critically evaluating answer choices. Focus on building those skills - one skill at a time and you will find that improvement happens in a trackable and predictable manner. If you just solve questions, then you will likely find that skill building and consequently improvement is slower. After all, we do not go building business (semi-successful or failed) to learn the frameworks for decision making.

	Manhattan Prep: $99 Bonus Score Higher on Your GMAT Exam. Guaranteed.
	Target Test Prep - Save up to $599 $400 Discount + $99 Bonus GMAT Club Tests
	e-GMAT: 60% Off on GMAT Focus Get to 735+ from any starting point
	Magoosh increases your score, guaranteed - 15% off ALL Magoosh GMAT plans with code GMATCLUB15 + Free GMAT Club Tests.
	Experts' Global - ~~$1720~~ $960 End-to-End GMAT Prep + App Support: 150+ Videos, 2000+ Questions, 15 FLTs +
	GMATWhiz - $299 ~~$499~~ Experience the course through a free trial.
	GMAT Club Tests - Free Included with every course purchase of $149+ View all deals

My Journey to 625 (Q89, V78, DI77) Seeking Verbal & DI Guidance

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards