I've gone through MGMAT's SC book and have exhausted the

just to add why i haven't been doing pretty well in SC
1. Applying the rules within 60-75secs is the key ,something that i haven't been able to do so..
2. understanding the purpose and meaning of the sentence in its entirety
following the rules requires a lot of practice and i have been doing it, though so far i haven'e met success

Some of the rules are seemingly interchangeable that I get confused looking at them. For example:

xxx because of yyyy
xxx due to yyy
xxx as yyy

it's hard to know what the GMAT wants!

Practice by applying the approach that works best for you.
There is no fool-proof way because all have their own approaches that suite them best.
I posted the way I do. But you may feel it is not the way for you.


For grammar, you should definitely know the basic principles. Learn them from a good grammar book. But the key is applying them in the way you need in GMAT.
From my limited understanding and experiences, I felt that GMAT does not want you to be a grammar expert, but one who can identify sentences that keep the intent(MEANING), are unambiguous (LOGIC) and are grammatically correct(GRAMMAR). Grammar is one of the factors, but not the only one.

Thanks for your insights! Kudos to you!

I should add that doing well is about being able to identify the pitfalls and traps on the exam.
Identifying what they are testing you on is very important.

Sometimes you might think they you are testing you on an idiomatic expression like "due to" vs "because."

But a good test taker will be able to glean the whole sentence and recognize that AHA! - they're actually not testing me on "due to" vs "because" - rather, they are testing me on this other part of the sentence.

Thus, the person who recognizes what is being tested will be able to save valuable time and actually focus on the stuff that actually matters.

But it's not as easy as it seems. Sometimes you need someone to point out these tiny details that can add up to a big difference to your final score.

Very true indeed...that's a good suggestion (hiring a tutor) although I've heard mixed reviews about the GMAT classes.

How would I analyze my strengths & weaknesses in SC? Do I look for a pattern of right and wrong answers, and if the wrong answers are all parallelism, then focus on parallelisms? Is this correct? Is this method correct? What about the problems that I get correct, and not entirely sure on the rules? Should this question that is right, be put on the weakness list, even though it's right?

You mentioned that you don't need to memorize the rules, just the concepts? Do you know of any web links that has examples laid out, like ( x, x, and y, not x, but y?) on an excel spreadsheet, or possibly a pdf?