Gmat Way forward

Question

Hello.

I have been lurking around this forum for quite some time. After studying for about 3 months , I gave my Gmat on the 21st of November and scored a miserable 610(Q48,V25).
I am very sure that this doesnot represent my current ability. It was probably the test nerves that played a major role in my downfall.

The Gmat official Prep scores were:
Gmat prep Test 4: 740 (Q50,V40)----Inflated score. I had seen various questions on the Verbal. Quant: All new questions
Gmat prep Test 6: 720(Q50,V38)----Verbal slightly inflated again. I had seen about 3 to 4 questions.
Gmat prep Test 5:700(Q48, V35)----Verbal apt score. All new questions. Something went wrong in quant. I got stuck in some of my problem areas.

I have given about 10 of the gmat club tests. IN the last 5 tests, I was consistently scoring between Q49 and Q50.

Since my average score were in this range, I was very disappointed to score such low grades on the actual exam.

Nevertheless, I have to give my exam by the end of the December and I am willing to go ALL IN.

Material used:
1.I have a subscription from Egmat and have religiously completed their course. While I have seen a remarkable improvement in Sc, I cannot say the same for CR.
CR is apparently my achilles heel. It is also evident from my ESR, which says that I have a 15 percentile on my CR. 
I do recognise I have a problem, but I never thought my score could drop so low.

2. I have gone thorough the Verbal OG religiously. I am at a point that I almost remember all the answers for almost every question.

Way forward:
1.I need to work on my critical reasoning but I don't know where and how to start again from scratch.
I can either go through the CR power bible or the Ron CR videos. But I don't know which videos should I watch. Since there a lot of videos available on the forum and on youtube, I don't know which ones should I watch first
Or should I just use the scholaranium platform to continue to practice questions.

2. For RC, I plan on completing all the Verbal Review passages first. After that, I will be practicing from the scholaranium platform.

I am also attaching my ESR, and would love some feedback from the experts and the community on the WAY FORWARD.

Regards
Nitesh

EducationAisle · Answer

Hi Nitesh, did you see this performance trend (very  low  scores in CR) in your mocks as well?

What is also conspicuous is that you relatively spent the most time per question in the exam, on CR.

nitesh50 · Answer

CR was not always low. But, it was definitely one of areas I used to struggle in. I do remember that on the last gmat Prep Mock, I made 9 mistakes and got 4/5 CR incorrect.
So yes it was weak, but I don't think it was 15 percentile weak.

Regards

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi nitesh50,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. When these types of score drops occur, the two likely "causes" involve either something that was unrealistic during practice or something that was surprising (or not accounted for) on Test Day. If you can answer a few questions, then we should be able to figure this out:

When you took your CATs:
1) On what dates did you take each of your CATs and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for each)?
2) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT each time (including the Essay and IR sections)?
3) Did you take them at home?
4) Did you take them at the same time of day as when you took your Official GMAT?
5) Did you ever do ANYTHING during your CATs that you couldn't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)? 
6) Did you ever take a CAT more than once? Had you seen any of the questions BEFORE (re: on a prior CAT, in an online forum or in a practice set)?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Nitesh,
I’m sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT. Based on your ESR, I agree that you need to make some major improvements in Critical Reasoning. Looking at your previous study routine, it appears that you may have followed the approach I call “practice first and figure the rest out later.” In other words, you were practicing problems before understanding the concepts on which those problems are based, and thus trying to learn solely from reading solutions to problems. To improve your Critical Reasoning skills, you really need to go back and start with the foundations of Critical Reasoning. After you have mastered those foundations, begin doing focused practice.

When studying 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.

Another major mistake that people make when training for CR is that they do practice questions too fast. To get Critical Reasoning questions correct, you have to see exactly what's going on in the passages and answer choices, and you likely won't learn to do so by spending a few minutes on each question. At this stage of your training, you may need to spend even fifteen minutes on each question, learning to see what there is to see. Here is a way to look at this process. If you get a new job in a field in which you are not experienced, you may not be as fast as the other people working with you, but you know you have a job to do and you make sure you learn all the angles, so that you do the job well, if not as quickly as those around you, Rushing through the job and doing it incorrectly would not make sense. Then, as you gain more experience, you learn to do the same job more quickly. Think of Critical Reasoning questions similarly. Your job is to do what? To get through questions quickly? Not really. Your job is to get correct answers.

So, first you have to learn to get correct answers, generally at least 10 to 15 in a row consistently, and more in a row would be better. That is your job, and if it takes you fifteen minutes per question to get correct answers consistently, then so be it. Only after you have learned to get correct answers consistently can you work on speeding up. Working quickly but not doing your job is useless. Better to work slowly and learn to do your job well. You can be sure that with experience, you will learn to speed up, and then you will still be doing your job well, i.e., getting correct answers consistently.

Finally, a key aspect of getting correct answers to Critical Reasoning questions is noticing the key differences between trap choices and correct answers. Trap choices can sound temptingly correct but don't get the job done. The logic of what a trap choice says simply doesn't fit what the question is asking you to find. So, to get better at your job, learn to see the key differences between trap choices and correct answers.

If you’d like any further advice on how to improve your CR or RC skills, feel free to reach back out, and I can provide some detailed advice.

Good luck!

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