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11 Mar 2019, 21:00
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Hello,
I took my first Gmat in November and I got a very disappointing 470, since then I've been studying like crazy but nothing seems to work. I new at the end of the exam that I didn't do well, but not even in my darkest dreams I thought I was gonna get a 470, especially since all my practice tests were in the 600s.
I've been following GMATClub since the beginning of my journey (it's gonna be a year in a few months) and I've read some amazing posts from people improving their grades like nothing. I also happened to notice that some people seems to be in my same situation and thrive after years of studying; however, I don't have the luxury to waste more time (and money) in this test with no success whatsoever.
So, I'd appreciate if any expert (or gmat god) could help me or at least give me some guidance on my studying, because so far the only thing clear for me is that the GMAT, despite being a standardize test, has no magic trick to get the right answer and hence, the general tricks of cutting corners won't do.
At the moment, I just can spend 3 hours (4 tops) on weekdays and 5-6 on weekends, some people say it's too much time and I can burn out before the test and some other people say I should spend more hours studying, but the truth is that I don't feel any improvement. Additionally, since my weakness is verbal (particularly RC), some posts here explain that the reason may be because english is not my first language and therefore it would be harder for me, in comparison with other students.
Any tip or suggestion is gonna be well received since I feel lost enough as it is.
Thanks
I took my first Gmat in November and I got a very disappointing 470, since then I've been studying like crazy but nothing seems to work. I new at the end of the exam that I didn't do well, but not even in my darkest dreams I thought I was gonna get a 470, especially since all my practice tests were in the 600s.
I've been following GMATClub since the beginning of my journey (it's gonna be a year in a few months) and I've read some amazing posts from people improving their grades like nothing. I also happened to notice that some people seems to be in my same situation and thrive after years of studying; however, I don't have the luxury to waste more time (and money) in this test with no success whatsoever.
So, I'd appreciate if any expert (or gmat god) could help me or at least give me some guidance on my studying, because so far the only thing clear for me is that the GMAT, despite being a standardize test, has no magic trick to get the right answer and hence, the general tricks of cutting corners won't do.
At the moment, I just can spend 3 hours (4 tops) on weekdays and 5-6 on weekends, some people say it's too much time and I can burn out before the test and some other people say I should spend more hours studying, but the truth is that I don't feel any improvement. Additionally, since my weakness is verbal (particularly RC), some posts here explain that the reason may be because english is not my first language and therefore it would be harder for me, in comparison with other students.
Any tip or suggestion is gonna be well received since I feel lost enough as it is.
Thanks
12 Mar 2019, 06:26
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hi sergio1290,
I am sorry to know that your score was not in line with your expectation. I can understand your disappointment given that you seem to have put in a lot of effort. A lot of non-natives face difficulty in GMAT Verbal but have eventually gone on to achieve their target score in it. So while it may seem like a wasted effort keep at it. Here are a few examples of students who were in your situation:
The key takeaways from the tool are,
A score of 470 shows that you have conceptual and application gaps. You must start bridge both these gaps in order to reach your target score. It will require dedicated effort.
I am sharing some of the free resources to get you started with preparation. You can get access to a lot more of these videos and practice questions once you sign up for the Free Trial.
Learning the concepts is not enough. Applying the concepts is the key and this requires effective practice. To make the practice more effective learn the right processes that will help you score high consistently. To do so you can attend the following free sessions that we are conducting this weekend. Learn through live interaction with the top-rated experts. Register below to reserve your spot.
1. CR session – Pre-thinking for Assumptions
2. Algebra Webinar
If you need further help with your preparation feel free to reach out to us at [email protected].
Regards,
Aditee
I am sorry to know that your score was not in line with your expectation. I can understand your disappointment given that you seem to have put in a lot of effort. A lot of non-natives face difficulty in GMAT Verbal but have eventually gone on to achieve their target score in it. So while it may seem like a wasted effort keep at it. Here are a few examples of students who were in your situation:
- • Aleksey: A non-native speaker (Russian) was able to score 700 - V35 (76 percentile) from a 530 - V17 (15 percentile). Click here to view his interview.
• Gabriel: A non-native speaker from South America (Brazil) was able to score 700 scoring a V36 (80 percentile) from a 430. Click here to view his interview.
What does it take to ace GMAT?
Consider GMAT as a project where you need to first plan it out well and then take one step at a time. I have listed out the steps below,1. Create a plan
This is the first and most important step of your preparation. Using the Personalized Study Planner you can create a plan that is personalized to your starting score, target score, strengths and weaknesses.The key takeaways from the tool are,
- 1. Clear milestones (target percentiles) for each sub-section tailored to your strengths, and weaknesses
2. Estimate of the overall time required to reach your target score and a tentative GMAT date
3. The sequence of study and an estimate of the time required for acing each sub-section
2. Execute the plan
Planning is only half the work done. You need to stick to the plan and execute it diligently.A score of 470 shows that you have conceptual and application gaps. You must start bridge both these gaps in order to reach your target score. It will require dedicated effort.
I am sharing some of the free resources to get you started with preparation. You can get access to a lot more of these videos and practice questions once you sign up for the Free Trial.
- - Verb-ed Phrases - Verbs or Modifiers
- Pre-Thinking- Concept 1 - Logical Gap
- Main Point Concept 1
Learning the concepts is not enough. Applying the concepts is the key and this requires effective practice. To make the practice more effective learn the right processes that will help you score high consistently. To do so you can attend the following free sessions that we are conducting this weekend. Learn through live interaction with the top-rated experts. Register below to reserve your spot.
1. CR session – Pre-thinking for Assumptions
2. Algebra Webinar
If you need further help with your preparation feel free to reach out to us at [email protected].
Regards,
Aditee
12 Mar 2019, 18:51
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hi Sergio1290,
I’m sorry to hear how things have been going with your GMAT. You did the right thing by reaching out, and I’m happy to help get you on a path to GMAT success. First off, since you have been studying for more than a year and have yet to break a 470 on the GMAT, you really need to look at how you have been preparing and make some major changes. Furthermore, since you scored 470, it’s clear that you lack the GMAT quant and verbal fundamentals you need for a high score. Moving forward, you need to follow a structured, linear, and gradual study plan that allows you to individually learn each GMAT quant and verbal topic, starting with the foundations before moving to more advanced concepts. By studying in such a way, you can ensure that you methodically improve your GMAT quant and verbal skills and leave no stone unturned.
For example, let’s say you begin by studying quant. If you are learning about Number Properties, you should develop as much conceptual knowledge about Number Properties as possible. In other words, your goal will be to completely understand properties of factorials, perfect squares, quadratic patterns, LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, and remainders, to name a few concepts. After carefully reviewing the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions, practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties. When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to around at least 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.
When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills.
Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see and types that you would rather not see, and types of questions that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.
You can work on verbal in a similar manner. For example, let’s say you start by learning about Critical Reasoning. Your first goal is to fully master the individual Critical Reasoning topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn about each question type, do focused practice so you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you get a weakening question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.
When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and instead focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and thereby comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect Reading Comprehension answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. You can perfect your reading strategy with a lot of practice, but keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be easy to read. So, to better prepare yourself to tackle such passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the Economist, Scientific American, and Smithsonian.
Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, you likely will have to work on all three of those aspects.
Regarding what you know, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not just a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.
This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending under two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns clearly refer to nouns? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.
There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and those reasons are not that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answer were always the one that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.
As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey meanings that make sense. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice repeatedly until you start to see the differences between the choices that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. It may take time for you to see what you have to see. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to be determined to see the differences and to figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.
To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. Are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did that resulted in your arriving at that answer and what you could do differently in order to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could have done differently to extend your streak.
As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your skills improve, you will then want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple Sentence Correction topics.
So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.
In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new quant and verbal materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the best quant and verbal courses. You also may find it helpful to read the following articles about developing the proper mindset for GMAT success and the phases of preparing for the GMAT.
Feel free to reach out with further questions. Good luck!
I’m sorry to hear how things have been going with your GMAT. You did the right thing by reaching out, and I’m happy to help get you on a path to GMAT success. First off, since you have been studying for more than a year and have yet to break a 470 on the GMAT, you really need to look at how you have been preparing and make some major changes. Furthermore, since you scored 470, it’s clear that you lack the GMAT quant and verbal fundamentals you need for a high score. Moving forward, you need to follow a structured, linear, and gradual study plan that allows you to individually learn each GMAT quant and verbal topic, starting with the foundations before moving to more advanced concepts. By studying in such a way, you can ensure that you methodically improve your GMAT quant and verbal skills and leave no stone unturned.
For example, let’s say you begin by studying quant. If you are learning about Number Properties, you should develop as much conceptual knowledge about Number Properties as possible. In other words, your goal will be to completely understand properties of factorials, perfect squares, quadratic patterns, LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, and remainders, to name a few concepts. After carefully reviewing the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions, practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties. When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to around at least 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.
When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills.
Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see and types that you would rather not see, and types of questions that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.
You can work on verbal in a similar manner. For example, let’s say you start by learning about Critical Reasoning. Your first goal is to fully master the individual Critical Reasoning topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn about each question type, do focused practice so you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you get a weakening question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.
When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and instead focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and thereby comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect Reading Comprehension answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. You can perfect your reading strategy with a lot of practice, but keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be easy to read. So, to better prepare yourself to tackle such passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the Economist, Scientific American, and Smithsonian.
Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, you likely will have to work on all three of those aspects.
Regarding what you know, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not just a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.
This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending under two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns clearly refer to nouns? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.
There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and those reasons are not that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answer were always the one that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.
As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey meanings that make sense. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice repeatedly until you start to see the differences between the choices that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. It may take time for you to see what you have to see. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to be determined to see the differences and to figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.
To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. Are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did that resulted in your arriving at that answer and what you could do differently in order to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could have done differently to extend your streak.
As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your skills improve, you will then want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple Sentence Correction topics.
So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.
In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new quant and verbal materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the best quant and verbal courses. You also may find it helpful to read the following articles about developing the proper mindset for GMAT success and the phases of preparing for the GMAT.
Feel free to reach out with further questions. Good luck!
