I'm a bit frustrated from the GMAT =/. After reading my post, I hope you'll be able to help me with:
1. Better strategies:
a. What questions should I skip?
b. How many questions should I skip?
2. Suggestions on how to improve:
a. Specifically for nonnative English speakers
b. General tips given my status
Background:
- Not an English native speaker
- Degrees in Engineering + Economics
- Got a score of ~ 700 at an SAT equivalent test in my mother tongue language (not adaptive)
- My English is rather good (when I'm not under time constraints)
- My Scores in Kaplan simulations were around 31-34 in Verbal / usually 47 on quant
- Crashed in the official GMAT test to 44/22
Problems Summary:
- In general, I do not read fast in English, and as a result:
o I'm missing 5-6 mins in the quant (total 4-8 questions- 4 of which are due to bad time management)
o Verbal:
CR – takes me ~ 3 min / success rate ~60%
SC – takes me around 2 min & 20 sec / success rate ~50%-70%
RC:
• Easy-med –takes 4-5 min / success rate ~70%
• Hard – takes 10 min / success rate ~30%
- CR Specific problems:
o It seems that writing the evidence and conclusion, and thinking of the assumption takes a considerable amount of time for me.
o On the other hand, not taking the time to do so lowers my success rate
o In addition, if the question stem is verbose, It's hard for to mentally break down the question to evidence/conclusion/assumption, while reading the different answer since I get confused and forget the different subtleties of the question stem.
- RC specific problems:
o Background:
I'm working with a passage map and focusing on:
• The main point in each sentence
• Looking for "surprises" in each paragraph ("but", "however")
o In general questions (specifically on the type " the author present a problem/ a common belief" … etc) , I keep getting confused with the different phrasings (most of time I'm left with 2 options, one of them is correct)
o In inference questions:
If it's not obvious, it takes me some time to skim the entire passage ( in hard questions), and since I'm working fast, my understanding & success rate significantly drop.
- SC specific problems:
o I remember the rules, but I'm having difficulties implementing them under time constraints
o In long sentences, focusing on the logic comes on expense of searching for flaws (in hard questions mainly)
o In hard questions, specifically those who are long and does not contains splits at all, I'm taking 3-4 min, because I keep double checking myself (since it's very easy to miss something)
That’s it
Thanks for your help,
Cheers,
Alex