Need advice raising verbal score...

Question

Hello everyone!

So I took the GMAT test on Dec 15 and scored 550 V28 Q36. Since then I've been practising and doing mock test almost every weekend with the following scores;

510 V24 Q37
550 V28 Q37
640 V31 Q48
550 V25 Q41
570 V24 Q45

I'm planning to take the test again end of February/early March. I'm confident with my Quant score but my Verbal is where I'm stuck. I've studied the Manhattan Prep and a few other videos through Veritas. I'm not really sure what to do anymore to move my score up. I'm aiming for a V30 in about 2-3 weeks. I study about 1-2 hours a day on weekdays and 4-5 hours on weekends doing gmatclub questions. I'm planning to add more hours and do 5-6 hours on weekdays and 7 on weekends up until my test date. Is there anything that I can do that will help me reach that?

Appreciate all the advice!

Thanks

rohan2345 · Answer

Hi lunama, Welcome to GMATCLUB. To improve your scores in verbal, you can consider e-gmat verbal online or the e-gmat verbal live course. They are both amazing courses especially designed for non-natives. They offer almost 25% of their courses for free so you can try out their free trial to decide which one you want to go for. Plus the e-gmat Scholaranium which is included in both the courses is one of the best verbal practice tools in the market. You can easily track your progress in that you can identify your strengths and analyze and improve on your weak areas. Further taking multiple mocks might help. Apart from the GMATPREP, Manhattan GMAT tests and Veritas Prep Tests in my experience have good verbal and Quant section and will certainly help you point out and improve your weak areas. Further another advantage of taking many mocks is to build up your stamina. Apart from the GMATPREP tests, taking practise tests of any major GMATPREP company ought to do that. I would also encourage you to purchase the GMATPREP QP 1 for some great additional practice. Here is a link that will help you with your decision. https://gmatclub.com/forum/best-gmat-ve ... ml?fl=menu Hope this helps. All the best.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi lunama,

GMAC has publicly stated that the Official Score that you earn on Test Day is within +/- 30 points of actual ability. Assuming a similar 'swing' in how your CATs function, most of your CAT score results - along with your Official Score from December - show that you essentially performed the same each time (about 540 +/- a few points); the 640 is a significant 'outlier', so we cannot assume that your current 'ability level' that high. You handle certain aspects of the GMAT consistently well, but you also make certain consistent mistakes.

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) What type of study routine have you been following? 
2) Did you take the full CAT/mock each time (including the Essay and IR sections)?

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

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

lunama · Answer

Hello Rich and Rohan, thanks for your input.

To answer Rich's questions:

Studies:
1) What type of study routine have you been following? 
I'll talk about how i studied for verbal since that's the relevant part. I initially did the manhattan prep books then watched the veritas strategy videos on sentence correction and critical reasoning. After that I started doing gmat club questions. Initially I started doing sub 600 verbal questions but quickly moved to 600-700. I think that was one of my mistakes because I didn't really see how many i was getting wrong and didn't take the time to go through them and understand the simpler concepts before jumping into the difficult ones. I now went back to doing sub 600 questions and also picked up the official guide and started with the "easy" verbal questions online. I just completed the easy questions for SC CR and RC and have scored 85%+ on both SC and CR but around 65% on RC. For each question, I went and read the explanation and analysis for the answer as well as why a multiple choice i wasn't sure about was wrong. I am hoping to start doing the medium level questions within the next couple of days. I honestly can't spend $200+ on the eGmat course so I am looking into free content, methods, or strategies to help me.

2) Did you take the full CAT/mock each time (including the Essay and IR sections)?
No I only do the quant and verbal sections

Goals:
3) What is your overall goal score?
600

4) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
I've submitted my applications and they are waiting for my gmat score

5) What Schools are you planning to apply to?
EADA, ESADE, BOCCONI, MIP

I am hoping to write my exam first week of march. How realistic is my getting a 30 on verbal?

Thanks

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi lunama,

To start, since you're clearly dealing with a short timeframe, you need to better define the specifics of your situation:

1) You can hit 600+ on the Official GMAT without scoring a V30+, so it would help to know whether you're in some type of special situation or not. Do any of the Schools that you have applied to have a 'requirement' of a V30+?
2) Do you have specific Test Date yet or not? What is the latest that you could take the GMAT and still complete your applications as needed?
3) What 'steps' do you go through when dealing with a typical RC, SC and CR prompt?

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

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi lunama,

I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. Since your first and last verbal scores were a 24, it’s clear that despite studying for some time, you really have not been able to improve your verbal skills, and you still lack the fundamental GMAT verbal skills you need for a high score. Thus, you need to look at HOW you have been preparing and make some changes, right? To improve your verbal skills, you should follow a linear and structured study plan so that you can individually learn each verbal topic, starting with the foundations before moving to more advanced topics. This process may take longer than just a few weeks. If necessary, could you move your exam to a later date? In any case, here is some advice you can follow to improve your verbal skills.

When studying Critical Reasoning, you need to ensure that you fully understand the essence of the various Critical Reasoning question types. Do you know the importance of an assumption within an argument? Can you easily spot a conclusion? Do you know how to resolve a paradox? Do you know how to properly evaluate cause and effect? Do you know how to properly weaken or strengthen an argument? These are just a few examples; you really need to take a deep dive into the individual Critical Reasoning topics to develop the necessary skills to properly attack any Critical Reasoning questions that you encounter.

As you learn each Critical Reasoning problem type, do focused practice so that you can track your skill in answering each type of question. If, for example, you incorrectly answered a Weaken the Argument question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. You can perfect your reading strategy with a lot of practice, but keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be stimulating. So, to better prepare yourself to tackle such bland passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the Economist, Scientific American, and Smithsonian.
 
Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, you likely will have to work on all three of those aspects. Furthermore, the likely reason that your Sentence Correction performance has not improved is that you have not been working on all three of those aspects. 
 
Regarding what you know, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not just a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.
 
This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending under two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns clearly refer to nouns? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.
 
There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and those reasons are not that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answer were always the one that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.
 
As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey logical meanings. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice repeatedly until you start to see the differences between the choices that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to be determined to see the differences and figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.
 
To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. Are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did that resulted in your arriving at that answer and what you could do differently in order to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could have done differently to extend your streak.

As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your skills improve, you will then want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple Sentence Correction topics.
 
Ultimately, if you are unable to learn and practice in the manner described above, you may consider looking for additional verbal prep resources. If you are unsure of which resources to choose, check out some reviews here on GMAT Club.

Feel free to reach out with any questions.

Good luck!

lunama · Answer

1. I know that a 600 can be achieved without a V30 however for the applications having such a large gap between Q and V will not look good which is why I'm aiming for the 30.
2. I haven't registered for a specific date but the absolute latest will be the end of the first week of March.
3. For verbal questions, I usually read through the paragraph, read the question and try to come up with a solution of what I think might be the correct answer. For RC, I usually have issues with grasping the bigger picture of what the paragraph is about. As I am a native speaker, I find my biggest issue with SC is choosing the answer that sounds the most correct..

lunama · Answer

Thank you Scott, that was really helpful. For the next set of questions I do, I'll take into consideration what you said. At the same time, I'll look more into understanding the different question types for CR and RC.

Unfortunately, I can't defer the test past the first week of March. I'm trying to put in as many hours as possible but do you think its possible to reach V30?

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi lunama,

Since you cannot move your GMAT, I would not worry about what may or may not happen regarding your verbal score. Just dive into your prep and work your butt off until your March 9 exam.

Certainly, keep me updated and reach out with any further questions.

Good luck!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi lunama,

Based on what you describe about how you handle the Verbal section, I think that there are some 'inefficiencies' in terms of how you're working through each prompt. Doing work "in your head" is the WORST way to approach a GMAT question - so if you're not taking the proper notes when you handle CR and RC, then that could significantly impact your overall performance. SC is one of the 'technical' categories on the GMAT - whether you're a native speaker or not, it's far easier to correctly answer an SC when you know the grammar/idiom rules involved.

You're actually closer to a 600+ than you probably realize - and you do NOT need to correctly answer any questions that you think are too hard or too weird to earn that Score. However, if you find yourself "narrowing the answers down to 2 choices and then 'guessing'" too often in the Verbal section, then that could keep you from your Goal.

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

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