Disastreous First Attempt :-( - 590(Q - 49, V - 23)

Let's look at this positively.

Half the battle is over in the sense that you don't have to study further for quant anymore.

Now, to take your score to the next level, let's come up with a sound game plan.

First thing you should do, is figure out which verbal section you are weak in - whether that is SC, RC or CR.

If SC is the problem, pick up the MGMAT SC guide and read each chapter. Don't do any problems, just read and take lots of break in between to prevent brain fatigue.

If CR is the problem, pick up the MGMAT CR or Powerscore CR Bible and read the chapters. I found that Powerscore CR Bible is too long and breaks down too much. I would go with MGMAT guide to kick it off. Again, don't do any problems. The idea is to learn the fundamentals, strategies, and grammar.

If RC is the problem, this is one section where you won't improve that much compared to SC or CR in short period of time. Therefore, don't grab any RC guide and try to read the chapters. Instead, go grab a GRE Reading Comprehension guide and do those problems right away. GRE RC passages are ridiculously tough. If you get used to doing those and figure out why you are getting your answers wrong, you might improve a bit.

Now, after doing any of the tasks above, grab the OG guide. I would prefer Verbal OG guide. OG guide questions can be from 100 to 200 per section. Towards the beginning of the section (questions numbers lower than 100 for example) are the easier level questions.

Practice only questions below #100 ONLY at first. This is because your verbal score is in the lower 20's. You need to master and practice lower level questions first. Don't bother practicing questions above #100 for now.

Do 25 questions at a time. Give yourself a break. Then continue.
Read explanation to the answer whether you got it right or wrong. Make sure you agree with the explanation and understand them.

After you are done with initial sample of first 100 questions, do those 100 problems AGAIN. You should have higher accuracy and understanding now.

Then move on to question numbers higher than 100. (100 to 150 for example)

nink,
your advises are invaluable... always right on spot. I am struggling with verbal as well so, hopefully, I follow ur plan and see good results in V.

mrsmarthi ,
I too was expecting better score in Quant for you. your posts in math section are awesome. did you feel quant section in real exam tougher than GmatPrep 1 & 2? or is it the time management issue?

Verbal section is really tough if we are not well versed with english grammer (I am also one). SC section is unpredictable to me .... some times get atleast 80% corrects and some times just 30%. reading MGMAT SC, and using 1000 SC for practice.

I think CR will be easy for you since you are good with quant .. read power prep book once ( I know the examples in the book are really tough but once you understand the tougher problems, gmat cr would be easier for you).


please share you are thoughts on quant section in the real exam ...


thanks.

nink has good advises for all who have problem in verbal. I agree with him/her.

Just to add on RC: First read short and easy passages (business, politics, and social science etc.). Read actively and focus on where the passages are leading up to. I had trouble understanding RS mainly science passages because I had wrong approach. So having right approach is also very important.

If you are focused and have confidence, using any approach works.

1: Reading whole passage
2: Skimming the passage: Read first para in detail, then read each sentence in every para and final sentence of the passage.
3: Reading questions first and searching answers.

I always used to do first but that was time consuming that ultimately put me under pressure. So I changed my approach to 2nd one. Its much better. Sometime, I also use 3rd approach as well when I am highly confident....

I'm sorry to say this mate, but wellcome to the club

540-q-49-v-17-i-don-t-understand-anything-73315.html

I was (better am) in the same position. In this third time I've focused all my efforts in the verbal part. I've followed all the advises given here (they have been posted several times along this forum) and I have to say that they work

And I'd add a new one. Spend your free time reading in english, read whatever you can and about everything. This task will improve your reading speed and your comprehension. I do that in my job, while coming back to home... and it really works

And don't give up mate, put all your efforts there.

Next April 28 (less than 2 weeks!!!) I'm taking the real thing for 3rd time... will see if I could improve my verbal skill

Cheers

what score were you getting when you took the practice tests? i've seen your responses on this forum; i'm surprised. keep trying though - don't give up!

Wow.......Didn't expect so many responses for my post. I am glad that there are some fellow forum members who do recognize me.

Economist,

If you see my posts, most of them are from Quant. I hardly participapted in any of the verbal forums. I know from beginning that I am poor in verbal. But did the least effort to bring the score up. I thought fixing the D Day will give a strong push for my preparation. But as the time is ticking, didn't get enough time to practice in Verbal. Ofcourse not trying to give any execuse. But, now I am going thru couple of posts to come up with a game plan that fits my verbal preparation. Let me see what I can do.

Nink,

Thank you for providing some suggestions on improving the verbal. Believe me, I have almost all the material that you are referring to. And I even have gone thru the books. I was under the impression that I was doing good until I took my GMAT Prep. The score busted with Prep 1 being 22 and Prep 2 being 28. After that how many every times, I did the Prep exam, the score is swinging between these scores. In fact to be frank, I went forward to take the exam, to try my luck even thouhg my prep score was only topping 640.

ugimba,

W.r.t Quant, I cannot compare my GMAT Prep results with actual GMAT. Simple reason, most of tricky questions that appeared in GMATPrep did appear in the forums. And most of them I did solve them in the forums even before I took my GMAT Prep exam. Most of the times my Quant score in prep exams was 50. So I was thinking that if I get a raw score of 35 + in verbal, that will help me in reaching my target score. But in actual exam I scored only 49 in Quant. But that is ok.

After coming out of the exam center, I was trying to understand where things went wrong. And one reason as I already mentioned, very less Verbal preparation effort. Second, my speed in grasping the Verbal things was way too poor. My SC or CR, which should normally be the time savers, I was using atleast 2 min. And by the time I was half way thru the exam, I lost my energy and patiece and almost gave up on the exam. I believe this weakness can only be improved by reading more and more boring stuff and trying to understand what is said in the content that we read. So this is where now I am concentrating on. CR is ok I would say only around 2 - 3 questions were wrong, that too without much practice.

GMATTiger,

Yes RC is definitely my weakest area. There is ample scope in this section for me to improve. Hope I will do good.

JohnLewis1980

Hope you will do good in your third attempt. Do let me know the result once it is done. BTW, one thing I can say is that, Verbal is very much on par with GMAT Prep. So what ever least you are scoring in the GMAT Prep, is what I believe you can expect in the real exam. Atleast that might be the min provided you are not practising too many GMAT Prep questions in the forum even before you take the exam. If you do so then your GMAT Prep might reflect your actual score.

gmat911

My scores in GMAT Prep were 590 and 640. Very much in line with actual GMAT. So I was not very confident that I can get some thing above 700+ with these scores in Prep. But still, there is nothing I can do other than giving the exam. I hope I will improve my score in the second attempt.

If any of the moderators are going thru this post, I have a request which I am not sure if it is possible and feasible or not. Can we have a seperate forum for GMAT Prep questions alone. This can help some of us(like me) who do not want to go thru the GMAT prep questions even before evaluating overselves.

Thank you mates, for checking on me and providing your opinions. Happy preparation.

are you from a technical background. Your quant score is very impressive. can u tell me what books you referred for quant.
i am also weak in verbal. i also do not take interest in preparing for verbal and focus more on the quant.

ALD,

Yes I am a quant person. So from beginning I am good at quant. Ofcourse might not be a 50 / 51 range but I am quite comfortable with Quant. I just brushed up my skills from OG11, Couple of MGMAT strategy guides and participated in GMAT forums. That is all I have done for quant.

Verbal is not my piece of cake. It tastes bitter to me. But I will have to enjoy the flavour of it else, I can never enjoy the taste of GMAT score.

mrsmarthi,

I have the opposite problem, i.e., I'm good at verbal and bad at the quant (however, planning a retake and my quant is much better). My suggestion would be to really make sure you understand grammar rules. If you understand how a sentence is structured it becomes easier to spot the flaws. I'm serious when I tell you to go back to the basics. Pretend like you know nothing about grammar. Seriously. Can you identify the subject of the sentence? Can you identify the predicate. Can you identify a modifier? Do you understand parallel construction? These might seem like silly questions but you need to know this stuff. I went back to the basics for quant and I have found that I forgot many math principles/formulas, etc. It has made a huge difference in my preparation.

As for critical reasoning, my suggestion would be to focus on argument structure. I'm a reformed lawyer (don't ask! ) so admittedly this is an easy part for me. If I were in your shoes I would focus on argument structure, e.g., weaken, strengthen, etc. Get down to the nuts and bolts of an argument. Really understand the logic behind the argument. I used my LSAT prep books to refresh my memory on the various reasoning questions.

Hang in there and keep plugging away. You're going to improve. Just keep after it!

Franklin Delano Bluth