Need Help! Starting Preparation. Scored 570 in free GMAT Prep test

Hi Santy94,

You can find below links to some more insight (tips) to improve verbal section.

https://gmatclub.com/forum/ultimate-sc- ... l#p1887645

https://gmatclub.com/forum/experts-topi ... 41004.html

https://gmatclub.com/forum/experts-topi ... 43170.html

Regards,
Raxit T.

Hi Santy94,

Many GMATers spend 3 months (or more) of consistent study time before they hit their 'peak' scores, so giving yourself that study time is a smart choice. In addition, since the Average Score on the Official GMAT hovers around 550 most years, your first 2 CAT Scores show that you have some solid critical-thinking skills already - which is good. That having been said, you'll need to learn and master a variety of Verbal AND Quant Tactics to get to the point that you can consistently score 750+.

From what you describe, your immediate study plan is 'book heavy'; unfortunately, many Test Takers who study in that way end up getting 'stuck' at a particular score level. Even the best books are limited in what they can teach you; they also can't force you to approach questions in a certain way and their explanations are often one-sided. While you don't have to change your study plan just yet, you will likely need to invest in some addition, non-book resources at some point.

Before I can offer you any additional advice for your studies, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on your timeline and your goals:

1) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
2) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

Thank you everyone for replying to my post.

I am planning to apply for Round 1 of the top 10 US B-Schools (Booth, Wharton, CBS, Stern, etc.) in September 2020. As of now, I feel that I can improve in Quant (got Q45 and Q48 scores in recent test) with some more efforts. However, I feel that my verbal section is disastrous.

It would be great if you can guide me for some good verbal focused online courses.

Hi Santy94,

In addition to advice regarding materials, would you like some general advice on how to improve your SC and RC skills?

Hello Scott,

I will be really happy if you can guide me on SC/CR/RC. In fact, my verbal section is pretty weak and any inputs from you regarding a strategy or general guideline to study verbal section would be highly appreciated. Many thanks again for taking out time and helping me out.

Hi Santy94,

"Review" is an exceptionally important part of the GMAT training process; your ability to define WHY you're getting questions wrong is essential to defining the areas that you need to work on (and the specific things that you need to 'fix'). As such, I'd like to know a bit more about your last CAT. While a full Mistake Tracker would provide a lot more information, there are some basic questions that you should be able to answer (and the more EXACT you can be with your answers, the better):

After reviewing each section of this recent CAT, how many questions did you get wrong....
1) Because of a silly/little mistake?
2) Because there was some math/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) How many Verbal questions did you 'narrow down to 2 choices' but still get wrong?

When it comes to studying for the GMAT, there are a variety of different study materials that you might use. Most GMAT Companies offer some type of free materials (practice problems, Trial Accounts, videos, etc.) that you can use to 'test out' a product before you buy it. We have a variety of those resources at our website (www.empowergmat.com). I suggest that you take advantage of all of them then choose the one that best matches your personality, timeline and budget.

If you have any additional questions, then you can feel free to contact me directly at any time.

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

Any specific reason why you are only looking for online courses?

No specific reason for online courses. However, i prefer them as they are self paced and I can adjust according to my busy work schedule. Any suggestions for resources that can help improve verbal section for non native English speaker would be very useful.

Thanks !

Just a word of caution: self-paced could ultimately also translate to a pace slower than what you are actually capable of. In any case, quite a few online courses have an expiry date, while quite a few offline courses have unlimited validity:).

So, it's not really black n white.

Sure, I can do so for Sentence Correction. Our sentence correction book Sentence Correction Nirvana is perhaps the only book that offers a score improvement guarantee, and is especially designed for non-native speakers.

After reading the book twice (yes! it's an academic book, and so must be read twice in all seriousness, to reinforce the concepts), you will start looking forward to solving SC questions!

The book is available on Flipkart and Amazon.in. You might want to refer to these sites, to also read testimonials of how readers have benefited.

See here how Mohit, who scored 750 on GMAT, vouches for our book.

If you want to sample a chapter before deciding to go ahead with our book, please PM me your mail-id (along with the chapter that you would like to sample) and I will be happy to send that chapter to you by mail. In addition, the entire Grammar section of the book is also available for free preview at pothi.

Hi Santy,

I can feel the pain of going through the preparation process multiple times and not being able to improve your scores. The key to mastering GMAT Verbal lies in understanding the core reason why you're scoring low in the first place. The key reason why we non-natives struggle with Verbal section is because we don't follow a methodical approach for solving questions. We either try to randomly apply concepts or follow shortcuts. The end result is we are generally stuck with 2 close choices in Verbal which leads to a 50-50% chance of getting a question right and on an adaptive test such as GMAT, it is important to get a streak of questions correct.

I recommend that you learn the Meaning Based approach for SC and Involved Reading Approach for RC. Also, you need to refer to a source that ensures that you learn the methods along with the concepts and at the same time ensures that all explanations are provided using the same methodology. I highly recommend that you check out https://www.gmatwhiz.com as it is an application driven course. Students have improved their Verbal scores by 13 points in as less as 30 days. We can connect over a private message if you would like to discuss further. All the best for your preparation!

Sure thing. I’ll start with CR.

When studying CR, first, you need to ensure that you fully understand the essence of the various 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 such that you 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. 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 Reading Comprehension, 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 easy to read. So, to better prepare yourself to tackle such 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 that 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 meanings that make sense. 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 to 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 Sentence Correction skills improve, you’ll then want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple SC topics.

For quant, as already mentioned, you’ll want to engage in focused practice. Let me expand on that idea further. For example, if you are reviewing Number Properties, be sure that you practice 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see and types that you would rather not see, and types of questions that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.

That was so elaborate and accurate. I am really indebted to you for taking out time and addressing my concerns. Thank you so much again !

My pleasure!