Hi All,
For my misery , please follow my one only one post before this one
And now here is the debrief for my rise, as I would say ... not sure how good is the score of 720 is for my profile, but experience of scoring it has been satisfactory . Though I am not a active contributor to GMAT club forums, but I wanted to share back to the community that have helped me shaping my preparation. For me the motivation for the last attempt was the inspiring stories of other GMAT aspirants who have struggled and conquered !! I hope I add one such experience through my debrief ...
I wont be able to point out anything on QUANT, as I am a quite comfortable with that and really never worked that hard on that section. Though at the end I might have as I would have landed in the elite club of 750 .. but never mind, improvement is name of the game !!!
So here is the my struggle with verbal and moderate victory to overcome this debacle... If you see that you are left with two choices at the end of Verbal question and finally land up with wrong answer, following pointer might help you, as it did to me ..
VERBAL is SIMILAR to QUANT --- I stopped being tempted with the answer choices in the verbal section... This was one of the most significant leap in my strategy shift ... and possible the reason for my 10 point jump in verbal. I always used to wonder that why I used to be left with twoo choices at the end of each question.. back then I used think GMAT is tricky it gives two good options and ask us to choose one correct. But I was totally wrong ... GMAT is a standardized test with one and only BEST answer !!!
What I was lacking was thinking CRITICALLY in the verbal section... Its very important.. I found a analogy with QUANT.. where you solve a equation then solve it to get the answer .. This is exactly whats needed in VERBAL ... Let me put in my words how this analogy works in all the VERBAL section...
SC - The EQUATION that you needed to deduce here first is equal to MEANING ... Once I deduce MEANING, the SC becomes a quick run. I stopped seeing two answer choices. Also very hard SC question , I was able to solve with this strategy. Ya you need those GMAT grammar rules but they are applicable only when you get MEANING .. I stopped seeing the answer choice , till I figured this equation.
CR - Here there are two variable and equation needs to be deduced using both -- Variable 1 --> Question Stem - rephrase the question stem before attacking the CR argument --- Variable 2 --> Conclusion of the Argument ... I trained my brain to work out these two variable first in the CR passage and once I have these clear in mind - 1) What is operation is required ( Variable 1) and 2) On what this operation needs to be applied (Variable 2) - , its a matter of time to figure out the correct choice. This approach is applicable to Assumption , Weaken and Strengthen question types, which in my experience constitute of 50 - 50 % of CR question pool on the test. I resisted the temptation to look at the answer choices before I had these two variable clearly in my mind. Wowww, I could see accuracy jump ..
RC -- For RC the analogy of equation might not be applicable but I followed the strategy of not seeing answer choices till the time I figured out what needs to be done . I trained my brain to comprehend rather read the passage. I read the passage with a motive of finding the Main point and figuring the treatment of that main point. GMAT is smart in hidding the Main point under the layers of dense words and convoluted sentences. But give your self a challenge while reading, that you will figure out the Main point... Once I had the main point , it was quite easy to figure out the rest of passage .. Trust me I was scoring good on Humanities passages, which were my nightmare before. And really by taking this challenge, I actually forgot that I am reading some abstract text, but rather started enjoying the challenge of figuring a explicitly stated main point.
For answering question on RC, I always refer back to Passage to confirm my answer choice... This was final trick that improved my accuracy ... I stopped falling in the trap of wrong answer choices... as for RC section you just need to either pint out explicitly stated answer choice or at max deduce a logical inference whats being stated... I found this applicable to all question types of RC.
So long story short ... Think in Verbal before you hit Answer choices.. Here are the tools that helped me work on this strategy:
1)
E-GMAT coarse came in handy for making me understand the value of CRITICALLY thinking in verbal rather than trusting the answer choices. This coarse made very comfortable with VERBAL as I am with QUANT.
2) Comprehension -- Dedicated 1 hrs a day reading NY time over the period of 2 month ... Now its a habit
A good source of GMAT standard english and a careful read really helps in building up the reading edge, needed for GMAT VERBAL.
3) Practice --
OG 12 ,
OG Verbal Review 2 and
E-GMAT questions.
4) Prep tests -- Kaplan , Manhattan and Gmat Prep. Use GMAT prep decisively.. There are very valuable.. And while analysis, I not only focused on reason of getting a question wrong, but also considered what could be factors behind it .. I found timimg used to bring my performance down, so I worked hard to improve my accuracy in the timing pressure.
Please appreciate with a"Kuddos" if you find this useful in any ways.. I am open to criticism and questions
Please pardon my drafting errors or grammar !!!
Best of luck to all the aspirants out there !!!
As quoted in movie Hunger Games --- " Let the Odds be in your favor " !!!! Never give up !!