Louis14 wrote:
I want to ask you a question, sir, regarding verbal, because I most genuinely think that there’s no one else on this forum who can give me a better word on Verbal preparation. Sir, deadlines are coming close very fast. If I am to retake the GMAT, I’ve gotta do it in two weeks at max. Sir, is it possible to squeeze four to five points out of Verbal in this time period? If yes, could you please briefly share the main steps I need to take it that direction? I actually never studied for Verbal as such. That V34 came purely naturally. I think apart from a point or two on Quant, a four to five point increase in Verbal can put me in a great spot.
All eyes on your word, sir!
Yeah, that's one of those lamentably unanswerable questions. Four or five points doesn't sound like much, but it's a LOT on verbal (or on quant), and everything needs to fall into place absolutely perfectly for you to gain that many points in just a couple of weeks.
Think of it this way: the #1 thing that drives your verbal score is your ability to read with precision. If you struggle to understand the EXACT meaning of a sentence, paragraph, or passage, you'll have a hard time on the whole section, right? You won't become a fundamentally better reader in just two weeks.
The only way that you can make a big jump in that period of time is if your current approach to questions is fundamentally flawed in some way: you're reading too fast on RC, for example, or you're relying primarily on your "ear" in SC, instead of analyzing the sentences systematically. So if you're making those sorts of fundamental errors -- or if you're simply not all that familiar with verbal question types -- then it's possible that you could make gains quickly. In theory, weak grammar foundations could provide some low-hanging fruit as well, but that's less common than test-takers would generally like to believe.
You might want to check out
this video to get a sense of the types of things that can (and can't!) be fixed fairly quickly on verbal. The video is meant for potential private tutoring students who are starting in a much worse position than you are, but it might still give you some food for thought.
I hope that helps a bit, and good luck with everything!
Thanks for this extremely insightful response, sir. I've read a lot in my life, so I am familiar with reading lots of passages. I do, however, read the RC passage in this manner: I'll start reading the paragraph and skip everything that counts as details. Usually this translates into reading just the first two to three lines of each para. I've been told that this way I can save tons of time and if I wanted to answer any detail question, I could always come back anyway. Sir, I'm not very comfortable with this strategy as it seems that eventually it takes more time than otherwise. But, irrespective of my comfort, do you think it's the right strategy to follow in RC?
Sir, one more thing. I invariably end up making blind guesses in the last eight to nine questions on Verbal, and this also happened in my real GMAT. I think this time management issue in verbal is killing my scores. Do you think this could be the culprit in keeping my scores lower than my potential score?