Need to improve CR score

Question

Hello Experts, I have my GMAT after a month and my target score is Q48,V40. I gave one mock (MGMAT2) today and scored 680 (Q45,V37). I'm confident that with more practice, I'll be able to score Q48 in actual exam but Verbal is giving me nightmares!! For past 1 month, I have concentrated most of my preparation on Verbal only. Sentence Correction score seems to have gone up but CR score is not improving

Presently, my CR accuracy is ~60%. I have read Power score CR bible once and made notes from each chapter. I'm not sure how should I proceed further. I am doing CR questions (OG/GMATPrep collection) and analyzing the answers but I really feel that there is something missing in my prep. I'm not able to devise any strategy for CR. Please advise. Thanks.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi hsambiguity,

I have a few questions about how you took this CAT:

1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT (including the Essay and IR sections)?
2) Did you take it at home?
3) Did you take it at the same time of day as your Official GMAT?
4) Did you ever do ANYTHING during this CAT that you couldn't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)? 
5) Had you seen any of the questions BEFORE?

In addition, have you had a chance to really review this CAT? Beyond defining the general types of questions that you got wrong, can you define WHY you got each question wrong?

After reviewing the section, how many questions did you get wrong....
1) Because of a silly/little mistake?
2) Because there was some math/verbal that you could not remember how to do?
3) Because the question was too hard?

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

hsambiguity · Answer

Hi Rich,

Thanks for reply.

1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT (including the Essay and IR sections)?
I did IR, Quant and Verbal. Not the Essay.
2) Did you take it at home?
Yes. Took the test at home.
3) Did you take it at the same time of day as your Official GMAT?
Yes.
4) Did you ever do ANYTHING during this CAT that you couldn't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)?
No. Took timed break of 8 mins after each section.
5) Had you seen any of the questions BEFORE?
Yes. 1 Question in Quant.

Regarding mistakes, in Quant I got wrong all those questions which I had guessed. I had to guess many questions because I was running out of time towards the end.
In Verbal, most of the 'primary purpose' , 'Find the assumption' and 'Inference' questions are wrong. And I don't know how to improve on these type of questions. Doing many questions of these type isn't helping much in improving accuracy

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi hsambiguity,

Test Day is a rather specific 'event' - the details are specific and they matter, so you have to train as best as you can for all of them. The more realistic you can make your CATs, the more likely the score results are to be accurate. The more you deviate, the more "inflated" your scores can become - and that's potentially what has happened here. By skipping sections and taking the CATs at home, you haven't properly trained for the FULL GMAT 'experience.' As such, this recent CAT result might not be completely accurate.

Thankfully, this is a relatively easy set of problems to fix. The big question now is "how long will it take you to properly get 'used to' taking the full GMAT in a realistic fashion?"

1) How have you scored on your other CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores)?
2) What study materials do you current have?

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

OptimusPrepJanielle · Answer

Hi hsambiguity,

You need to drill down deep into each problem type and understand where you are going wrong.

SC: The questions test various concepts such as S-V agreement, modifiers, parallelism etc. Find out what troubles you.
CR: There might be certain types of questions that are troubling you. May be Assumption, may be conclusion, inference etc.
You need to find that out and then practice them
RC: This again can be drilled down into different types of questions and also different topics. See what questions and topics trouble you the most and then practice accordingly.
Quants: Again try to break the questions in topics such as Algebra, Number system (very important), Geometry, PnC etc.

As an addition, start preparing an error log and keep a note of all the mistakes you made and the lessons you learnt from the problems. This will ensure you do not make the same mistake again.

Make sure you complete all of the OG and the Verbal review and if required, you can buy the Question pack1 from mba.com

GMATPILLBILL · Answer

Hi hsambiguity,

For CR, we recommend a visual framework approach to help you understand the complex short passages and how each item relates to each other.

Here is a video describing the visual framework approach: https://www.gmatpill.com/criticalreasoni ... Estate.mp4

Best of luck on your studies!

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