Trust the process - From 700 (Q51 V34) to 770 (Q51 V42) - ESR attached

Introduction
I scored 700 (Q51 V34) in my first attempt. Three weeks later, the score improved to 770 (Q51 V42). I want to share what I did differently in my second attempt. I wish my experience could help you improve verbal to 40+ as well.
I have also attached the ESR reports for both attempts, so you can have an idea what level of correct % you need to get a 700+ score.

Summary
1. Overall: Quantity doesn’t matter without quality. Solving lots of practice questions is not the best way to prepare GMAT. Achieving V40+ is very difficult just by memorization and repetition.
2. SC: Solid grammar can only help you solve easy to medium level questions, but “grammar + meaning” will carry you all the way up to V40+
3. CR: Answer CR questions as if there is no answer choices. “Pre-thinking” is a game changer
4. RC: Look at every answer choice with the mindset of “you gotta prove it to me”
5. Resources: e-GMAT verbal, this is hands down the best resource for verbal, especially if you are aiming V40+.
6. Finger trick: to save time that adds up for 2 questions: https://gmatclub.com/forum/from-740-q50-v40-to-770-q51-v44-237066.html

SC:
Stage 1: Solid Grammar
First of all, in order to get to 700+ level questions in the exam, you need to be solid at easy to medium level questions. It means you should get majority of the first 10 questions right. With solid grammar, there should be no problem for you to get there.
When solving questions, quality is always more important than quantity. “Quality” here I mean, how much time you spend on reviewing each answer choice and how you can apply what you learn from solving this one question to other questions in the future.
Imagine if you have the same amount of time, you can either:
(A) solve 1 question, in regardless you got it right or wrong, analyze all the answer choices, read the solutions and identify all the errors in each wrong answer choice; or
(B) solve 5 questions, only look at the choices that you get it wrong.
Which one do you choose? Guess what, the right way to study is always A.
Stage 2: Pattern Recognition
At the beginning of the exam, I wrote down the followings on the right corner of my yellow pad:
“Pronoun”
“AND”
“SVA/Verb”
What it does is I do not allow myself to miss a question because of those reasons above. Whenever there is pronoun in the sentence, I immediately get very suspicious. Whenever there is “AND”, I start to think of parallelism. Whenever I see Verb, I double check SVA and the Verb tense.
I always spend the first 3 seconds to compare the beginning and the end of all answer choices. It will help you get a sense of what this question is testing. That is important, because you will develop a sense of purpose when reading the original question.
The good news is you can practice this skill set and this is what you can do. Open OG, find a question, only look at the answer choices (not even the original sentence), and see if you can tell/guess what this question is testing. Do that from question 1, all the way to the last question, write down your guesses and compare with the solutions. This is a really effective way to improve your SC pattern recognition and speed.
Stage 3: Meaning, meaning and meaning
In order to get V40+ and solve hard 700+ level questions, grammar is not enough. You will soon realize, there will always be 2 answer choices left that are both grammatically correct. They could be
1) Same modifier, but move around; or
2) Different sentence structures, but change the meaning from parallelism to cause effect
In both cases, you have to compare with the original sentence and figure out what exactly the meaning is and make an intelligent choice base on the intended meaning.

In my experience, I started to get those questions in the second half in both attempt. In my first attempt, I completely ignored meaning aspect of the SC question. I got stuck between the 2 grammatically correct choices, it took me a long time to decide and ended up guessing between the two choices.

CR:
For easy to medium question, all you need is common sense. But when it gets to 700+ level questions, you have to do “Pre-thinking” - pause after you read the question and come up with a solution as if the answer choices are not available. It doesn’t matter whether the answer that you come up with is in the answer choices or not. That is not the point. The reason to do the “pre-thinking” is to help you focus on the logic and not deviate from the key argument when “trap” or “out of scope” answer choices show up. Have you ever been persuaded by a sales person and ended up buying something that you did’t plan to buy at the first place? Same idea here, all the trap choices are there to trick you to change your mind, you have to stick to your ground by pre-thinking.

In my first attempt, the biggest mistake I made is I read the question and then jump right into the answer choices, I pick the one that sounds right to me. As you can tell from my ESR score, my sub-section rank for CR is only 39%. I was just shocked when I see the percentage. The worst part is, I didn’t even feel those questions were hard at all during the exam. I thought I did pretty well. Apparently, those trap answer choices tricked me very hard.

RC:
My only advice for RC is for every single choice, either right or wrong, you have to find proof in the message. If you eliminate a certain answer choice, find where in the message that includes information that proves it wrong. No matter how certain you are, find it and prove it to yourself. Don’t just use your memory and pick the choice using your gut. That is a strategy for disaster and is not gonna work on the hard questions. You might only do that when you are running of time.

My experience with e-GMAT:
The best part of e-GMAT course, is the easy-to-follow structure. All you need to do is to follow the step by step plan and stick to the process. You will be constantly practicing the meaning based approach in SC and pre-thinking in CR. That’s is pretty much the “secrete sauce” you need to get V40+.
The other great thing about e-GMAT is the support they provide in addition to the online course. After I scored 34 on my first attempt, I reached out to e-GMAT and asked for help. e-GMAT’s Strategy team has been very helpful. They immediately arranged a session with me analysing my ESR report and came up with suggestions for improvement. They also followed up with a detailed study plan for the next 3 weeks. That made my life very easy and all I did is to execute diligently and trust the process.