Need help with boosting my Verbal Score from 20s to AT LEAST 41

Question

Hi,

I am a 25 year old Business Analyst at a well-renowned MNC and have always aspired to do my graduation in MBA from a top B-school. I have what I would like to believe a strong profile so far, with good academic scores, diverse and business-intensive experience across industries, and strong LORs of alumni from Booth, Wharton and Ross all of whom I work closely with on a daily basis. At the start of 2018 I had planned to finish my GMAT within the 1st half of the year and then apply to B-schools for fall 2019. Unfortunately, I was immensely burdened with work till April-18 end, and started preparing for GMAT only in May 1st week.

My plan of preparation was to replicate what 1 of my friends did who had scored a 720 a couple of years back. He had used GMATclub tests for quants; He gave mocks, made notes, and eventually improved his score on quants to a consistent 47-49. For SC, he used Manhattan Prep for SC, and said that he was fully prepared for SC, but he did nothing for CR and RC till his exam date. For RC and CR, he used to practice 1 passage and 10 questions respectively, everyday for the 2 months of his prep, but still wasn't confident even on test day.

Always in the top 10 %ile in math since school, I knew I would be able to handle quant, so I started with SC from Manhattan GMAT prep on May 1st, and I must admit, I prepared for SC very slowly by lazying out taking the entire month of May. During the SC prep, I never touched CR and RC. May 25th, I started off with CR and found the OG questions relatively easy. And with that over-confidence, I booked my GMAT date of June 30th. After 4-5 days of CR practice, I started solving RC questions from OG. I knew I was doing it miserably, but thought if my friend could do it, I could too. Mind you, all this while, I had not given a single mock, neither verbal nor quant. On 4th June, I decided to shift my focus to quant. I bought GMATclub tests and my first test I scored a miserable 37 in quant. I knew I had to work on it, and then for the next 10 days, I gave multiple quant tests and made notes alongside, and was eventually hitting the 47-49 mark by 17th of June. Throughout the quant prep, for verbal I was just solving 10 questions on SC everyday from the GMAC.wiley site. By now, I was confident of Quant, but I had no idea how I would deal with verbal. I had read an article of someone who scored a 740 who too said that CR and RC are topics that no amount of prep can help, and it's all about how quickly you read and comprehend. I thought SC I might still be able to tackle, but CR and RC is something I will improve through mocks. Always a top-tier achiever at school, undergrad and now at work, I thought I would do well with GMAT too. On 18th June, I gave my first MGMAT mock and scored a miserable 500. I was shattered. But somehow, I gathered hope because I had heard quant is way tougher on MGMAT than actual GMAT. I practiced 3 to 4 more quant GMATclub tests and started scoring 48-49 consistently, and then again gave my MGMAT mock 6 days before my GMAT. This time I got a 580 (Q43, V28). I gave another mock the next day and scored a 590 (Q44, V29). I knew then that I would not do more than a 670 in my final GMAT, so kept that as my target score for this attempt, with the vision that I would narrow down on my verbal score for my next GMAT attempt. 3 days before the GMAT I gave my GMATprep mock and got a 630. And finally, I randomly ended up giving a GMATclub verbal test just 2 days before the final exam in which I scored a 20! My confidence on verbal was completely gone! From V28 I came down to V20 that too 2 days before my GMAT exam. My attitude on exam day and 2 days before that was such that, I had lost hope of scoring even a V28 or V29. I was already in a mindset where I told myself that I will definitely have to take another test, but in this 1, I will at least make sure I do well in other sections.

During the GMAT exam, I chose the order: Quant, Verbal, IR, AWA; And ended up scoring a Q49 and IR5, which I was satisfied with, but I scored a V20. I was really disappointed with this score, because I wanted to hit at least the V28 or V29 mark.
I introspected about my preparation and realized the following mistakes in my prep -
1 - Lack of time - I started my dedicated preparation only after registering for the exam date; And ended up giving only 1 month of prep
2 - Slow reading skill - Though from a well off English speaking school and society, I was never an ardent reader and always knew my Verbal score would be a challenge that I would have to overcome, so I should have dedicated more time to Verbal preparation; What worked for my friend may not work for me
3 - Lack of structure in approaching verbal questions - I had no structure of solving problems at all in verbal; Every question I answered in verbal on the GMAT I wasn't of any of them
4 - Not giving mocks early enough - Giving too many mocks in the last week of the test; This was a result of starting my preparation late, and this completely demoralized me
5 - Lack of dealing with time pressure in verbal - No practice of giving verbal test in a timed manner; Solving verbal questions individually might still be easy, but attempting them with accuracy in 65 minutes is a challenge that needs practice

With a not so bad quant score it is now clear where I need to narrow down on, that is, the whole of verbal. Now, I am going to give my GMAT after 2 months and want to score nothing below a 740. That is, at least, a Q49 V41. Yes, it might seem ambitious given the scores I have previously got but I am quite confident of my capability and about dedicating my time to achieve my dream. I just need the right guidance, strategy and techniques.

The bottom line is, now while I continue with my quant mocks (weekly 2 to 3) to not lose out on my quant score and start reading articles/books out of my areas of interest for at least 1 hour everyday, I need help with boosting my verbal score from 20s to AT LEAST 41. For this purpose, I am looking for the best (irrespective of paid or free) tutoring options / online material / online tests / reading strategies, for VERBAL only, to grasp and stick to an efficient structure, to pickup techniques for increasing my speed and to improve my accuracy in solving Verbal questions to get to this score of 41.

Your help and suggestion will be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Harghun

Arro44 · Answer

Hello my friend,

I would recommend to read the following topics:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/how-to-impro ... l#p1643215

https://gmatclub.com/forum/experts-topi ... l#p1863647

https://gmatclub.com/forum/verbal-strat ... l#p2082192

All the best for your prep,
Chris

GMATPill · Answer

To improve your verbal score from the 20s to 41+, you'll need to really focus on specific areas and religiously re-quiz yourself.

Stop taking so many quant mocks! Focus on the problems first.

You need to demonstrate incremental improvements.

During your SC studies, we encourage you to follow along expert video explanations to guide you in your thought process.

Here's a shared Google doc of video links you may find helpful:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1f_ckd ... H1HmTgctJI

RC is a critical component:

For RC - the best way to improve is to practice.

I highly recommend Harvard Magazine articles? Why? Because they have a lot of short articles - that are very similar to what you might see on the GMAT exam -- usually 4-6 paragraphs citing some kind of social or science research.

Favorite this:
https://harvardmagazine.com/topic/Research

Look for where it says: "Select a topic:" - Humanities, Social Science, Science, International

Go to the above link and read some of the articles.You'll see these are almost the exact topics you will see on the actual GMAT exam.

Here's one example:

https://harvardmagazine.com/2018/02/how ... lationship

Are you able to quickly read through it - ideally without reading every word - and identify WHO is writing it and WHY they are writing it - WHAT's the whole point to the author spending time to write these passages?

These are great for RC comprehension - with practice, time management becomes a non-issue.

This is what we recommend for our students!

See if this video helps: https://www.gmatpill.com/readingcomprehension/intro.mp4

You can also get more RC Practice with our online question bank:

https://www.gmatpill.com/gmat-practice-t ... questions/

---and the best material for RC is saved for our RC Pill course where we actually walk through dozens of RC passages showing you where to read and where not to read.

Just look for "Vishal" under the "Verbal Improvement" tab of

https://www.gmatpill.com/testimonials

-- read his story (and video) about RC improvement.

You can learn more about GMAT Pill at:

https://www.gmatpill.com

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Harghun,

From what you describe, much of your prior study time was spent working on random practice questions and trying to 'figure it all out' through repetition. The Verbal section is as consistent and predictable as the Quant section is - so you CAN train to score at a higher level. The key word there is "train"; you have to focus on learning the proper content and the necessary Tactics/patterns of the Exam.

I'd like to know a bit more about your overall timeline and goals:

1) Do you have a specific Test Date in mind (and if so, then what is it?)?
2) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
3) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

harghunsingh · Answer

Thank you all for your replies, this is really helpful.

EMPOWERgmatRichC , to your questions -
1) Do you have a specific Test Date in mind (and if so, then what is it?)?
Answer - Latest by September 30th, 2018. I want to invest my time now in getting a minimum score of 740 in GMAT till September, and then invest my time in further strengthening my overall profile (leadership skills, community service) over the next year.

2) When are you planning to apply to Business School? 
Answer - Will apply in September, 2019. For Fall 2020 batch. By the time of MBA course commencement, I will have 5 years of work-ex, out of which, the latest 3 being in 1 of the world's top tech MNC (cannot mention the name here but you can take a guess and it'll be right!).

3) What Schools are you planning to apply to?
Answer - I am planning to apply to the following B-schools: Harvard, Booth, Wharton, Kellog, Stern, Ross, NUS Singapore, INSEAD. I have 3 LORs from alumni of Ross, Wharton and Booth, all of whom I work with on a daily basis (the Booth guy is my Boss) and who trust my work and capabilities. And at the time of application, I would have over 4 years of work-ex.

Let me know what do you think about this. I personally do not want to leave any room for slack in my profile, hence I am targeting a 740, and needed guidance in verbal to achieve the same.

Thanks,
Harghun

egmat · Answer

Hi hargun , Congratulations on being a high-achiever all throughout. It will definitely help in your applications. It is commendable that you are determined to score a 740 and not leave a stone unturned in this endeavor. Looking at your scores of Q45 & V20 it is clear that most of the improvement that you seek in your overall score needs to come from Verbal. Before diving into specific strategies for Verbal, it is imperative that you understand what is required to ace GMAT. What is important to score V40 on GMAT Verbal? It seems like your preparation for GMAT Verbal has been around practicing questions. While that worked for you in Quant it doesn’t seem to be working for you in Verbal. Your scores indicate conceptual gaps and further gaps in your ability to apply those concepts. Solving questions alone would not be enough to cross the V40 mark; you need to have conceptual clarity and a good hold over applying those concepts to GMAT level questions. To do this, you must follow a structured approach and use an application process that is reliable and repeatable. Here are a few students who were in the same shoes as you and then improved their Verbal scores by following a methodical approach. • Chintan gave too many mocks while preparing for his first attempt and ended up getting only a 630. In his second attempt, he realized his mistake, followed a methodical approach, got his fundamentals strong and improved to a 710(V38) from 630(V27). Click here to read his de-brief . • Murali (740) started his GMAT journey only by practicing questions from OG. Soon realized that it required a methodical approach to ace GMAT and set out to do just that. Click here to read his amazing debrief . • Askul tried coaching institutes and books but could not improve. Finally, he used a structured approach to improve his score from V17 to V40. Click here to read his de-brief . Another of our student – a high achiever - got admits from Harvard & Stanford. I think you would find her story inspiring. Click here to read her interview with Poonam Tondon from MyEssayReview. Learn the methods employed by Chintan, Murali, and Aksul You can register for e-GMAT Free Trial and get access to 25+ videos and 350+ practice questions. I am sharing direct links to some of these videos for your easy reference: • Learn to identify "Verb-ed" forms that don’t act as verbs - Play Video Lesson • Learn to understand the "Main Point" or purpose of a RC Paragraph - Play Video Lesson ATTEND THE FREE RC WEBINAR THIS WEEKEND We are conducting a free RC webinar this weekend. Register now to reserve your spot and learn the methods to get ahead in your RC prep. Write to us at support@e-gmat.com once you register to get a customized Study Plan to cross the V40 mark. Regards, Aditee

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Harghun,

Based on your Score Goal, you would likely need at least another 2 months of consistent, guided study to regularly score at that level. Thankfully, you appear to have that time - which is good. The type of score that you're after in the Verbal section requires a strong knowledge base (for grammar/idiom rules) and commonly used GMAT logical arguments (for CR/RC). You also have to be a strong note-taker and you have to learn how to spot the patterns in the common wrong answers (so that you can avoid choosing those wrong answers). You do NOT need to be a 'fast' reader, but you have to train to properly 'engage' each prompt that you face. These are all skills that take time to develop, but the GMAT is a remarkably consistent Exam, so you can train to properly handle all of it.

1) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week?

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

Need help with boosting my Verbal Score from 20s to AT LEAST 41

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