question for 700-scored people

Question

Guys, for all of you scored above 700, how did you do on the OG during preparation time? Like the percentage of right and wrong!! My range is always 50% - 70% questions right. I just want to know how I do now compare to you guys. Thanks.

Paul · Answer

Correct %
95%SC
93%CR
83%RC
Ended up with 710
Even though you have a low correct %, the important thing is that you  understand  your mistake

qhoc0010 · Answer

Is that percentage on your first try? Or how long after you prepared until you did the OG? 

I do understand my mistakes. However, some SC required people to even understand the "meaning" of the sentence to correct it. Mostly, I just read through and find "grammatically" mistakes.

Also, for CR, would "understanding mistakes" help to improve my score? Since this topic is so broad and ETS seems to expect the people who had experience to get them right. "Plain study" does not seem to improve much but it is a matter of "life experience". Am I wrong?

Paul · Answer

I would say that for CR, doing many problems will help. With proper practice, you will "see through" the passage and sometimes maybe even guess what the answer will be before seeing the answer choices. Doing LSAT problems will also help you, I discussed this many times already. 1 month before my exam, I did all verbal question from OG although I do admit that I have seen some of its problems in this forum. Nonetheless, I most likely did not remember most of the questions and answer because the question base is just so broad. In SC, it is not indeed not sufficient to find the grammar error in the sentence: you also have to understand the meaning of the sentence. OG, I find, is a good source and very representative of the exam although if you depleted most practice material, you could go over 885SC which will be more than enough for the exam. Make sure you keep an error log and go through your errors a month later so as not to make the same errors again. 

The last, and first, time I went through the OG was 1 year ago. I failed to analyze the questions in a proper way as to "understand" them back then. I got a 650...

qhoc0010 · Answer

The problem I have is my weak vocabulary. Now I am doing OG RC and learn all the new words from every passage. I wonder if the RC in real GMAT has some similar topics or vocabulary sets like in OG?

Paul · Answer

The RC is very similar to OG. The thing that might make it seem harder is back to back RC. Usually 2 back to back early in the first 15 questions. ETS seems to like that lately. Otherwise, the OG mirrors GMAT RC very well.

qhoc0010 · Answer

I hate passage about bio which is more likely to contain new words. It is hard to try to replace them with X,Y,Z or so. I think it may be better if I just learn the new words by looking up in dictionary or other resources. What do you think, Paul? Will that worth my effort to enrich my vocabulary via OG?

Paul · Answer

The problem is that you will perhaps not even find those words in the dictionary because they are considered technical jargon. Really, I dont think that words like "adenosine triphosphatase" or "trichloroacetic acid" will do anything good to "enrich" your vocabulary. I would suggest you to perhaps remember where the word is located in the passage but do not get bogged down to remember the word, letter for letter. Just have a vague idea of where you've seen it in the passage would be enough. Besides, all that verbiage will not likely be useful for you in any other context than the GMAT anyways

qhoc0010 · Answer

I agee with you Paul. How did you start out on the percentage of right question for RC?

Paul · Answer

As I mentioned above, I ended up with an 83% correct in RC. However, when I first started on the OG 1.5 year ago, I must have got something in the 50%. This is because I had no strategy while tackling RC. I read it without trying to find the author's intent. I tried to skim passages. I applied Kaplan's method which doesn't work at all for me. See "very very scared of RC" sticky in this forum for that. You can definitely improve your RC skills by doing many CR.

srg · Answer

I am not a native english-speaker. My vocabulary is very limited and now practicing by replacing words with X,Y&Z. I am somewhat convinced that adding new words to my vocabulary is not the wise use of my time, since I am planning to take GMAT in next 3 weeks.
But I find reading not-so/not-at-all interesting topics found in magazines (such as economist) hepls me build stamina and improve my skills on skimming thorugh information. (I'm 30 yrs old with 10yrs of work experience!!!)

kayser1soze · Answer

building vocab by reading material on various topics espacially from magazines such as fortune, money, inc, business week, newsweek, forbes will benefit any non-native speaker of english. i am one of them and i followed the advise of my eng.lit prof who made it very clear that no matter if one is a native speaker of english or not, if one is taking a standardized test , which includes a verbal section, one should do everything possible to train his brain to read more extensively and improve his/hers vocabulary by constantly absorbing new words. my 2 cents - read more; read more quality material - don't read maxim or stuff  ; use flashcards , go on ebay and buy some cheap lots of books   and just read. hope that helps

Questor · Answer

Hi. Thank you all for suggesting that we go over questions we got right as well as the ones we got wrong. I learned a few new tricks while reviewing the 50 OG math that I did the other day. The whole process took about 2 hours, but it was worth it.

Yesterday I finished 84 Verbal OG questions. Time spent: 2:30 (two timed 75-min., 41-questions sections mixing up the three types of questions) Total errors: -3 RC, -6 CR, -4 SC. My error rates were as follows:

First test: RC 85%, CR 79%, SC 86%.

Second: RC 94% (did 14 q's), 79%, SC 83%. 

Apparently, I still have ways ago during the next two weeks.

qhoc0010 · Answer

Paul, looking over some of your post. Your English is the third language. How long have you been learning English? And did they speak English where you work?

I am a Vietnamese. So we have a little bit in common. I just think that 1.5 months left to prepare for the GMAT does not seem enough. I work 12 hrs/day.

Paul · Answer

Hi qhoc, khoe khong? :lol:

I learned english about 9 years ago and yes, I now use 50/50 french/english at work but I also have vietnamese clients I have to deal with. I still use vietnamese fluently at home though. Indeed, 1.5 month left is not much but it also depends where you are starting from. If you went through the OG in detail, you should be able to make it.

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