Re-take and not satisfied: 630 to 680

Question

I started my journey back in Sep '12 and till now it doesn't seem that the journey has ended.

Score improvement:

Q47 to Q50 (3 pt)

V29 to V32 (3 pt)

And guess what the total.

Screwed up again : 680

Mocks:

Veritas Prep Practice Test #1 2014-03-16 49 36 690
GMAT Prep 2014-03-30 49 28 650
GMAT Prep 2014-04-06 49 36 710
Veritas Prep Practice Test #2 2014-04-21 50 34 680
800 Score 2014-05-04 42 33 610
800 Score 2014-05-11 47 31 640
800 Score 2014-05-13 40 36 620
GMAT Prep 2014-06-01 49 41 740
GMAT Prep 2014-06-08 49 32 680
Veritas Prep Practice Test #3 2014-06-16 50 32 670
GMAT Prep 2014-06-22 50 40 730
Veritas Prep Practice Test #4 2014-06-29 49 39 710

Mock Feedback:
Worst : 800Score
Best: GmatPrep EP1
Average: VeritasPrep

Resources:
OG10/11/12/13 : Many times
MGMAT Verbal guides for SC (Prepared own notes)
Veritas Prep OD course (Found the RC strategies very nice, but practice is must)
VeritasPrep Question bank (Average)
GMAT Prep Questions (Excellent)
CR:60
SC:340 (Accuracy of 80-90%, Timing: 80-90 seconds)
RC:90 Passages (With an accuracy of 80-90%, time for short passages :7 Min and for long passages :9 Min)
OG Verbal Review
GMAT Prep QP1 and EP1 (QP1 is excellent image of what Actual GMAT Math comprises of. I found QP1 tougher than Real GMAT 8-)

)
GC Tests for Math (To get to Q50/51, you would definitely need them)
Aristotle Verbal series(CR/RC/SC) [ Aristotle SC and RC are best in my high opinion, CR is average]

I was getting an accuracy of 80-90% in RC and 80-90% in SC closer to G-Day.

And since answering CR was not inherent/intuition to me , closer to exam I preferred to answer the CR questions purely by logic.

Don't know what went wrong since in all my mocks I was able to do full verbal with 2-3 minutes left.

In Real GMAT I skipped one long RC to pace up my timing.

Suggestions invited.

Apologies for grammatical and logical errors in the above content

) GC Tests for Math (To get to Q50/51, you would definitely need them) Aristotle Verbal series(CR/RC/SC) Aristotle SC and RC are best in my high opinion, CR is average ] I was getting an accuracy of 80-90% in RC and 80-90% in SC closer to G-Day. And since answering CR was not inherent/intuition to me , closer to exam I preferred to answer the CR questions purely by logic. Don't know what went wrong since in all my mocks I was able to do full verbal with 2-3 minutes left. In Real GMAT I skipped one long RC to pace up my timing. Suggestions invited. Apologies for grammatical and logical errors in the above content

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear TGC , I'm happy to respond to your message. :-)

First of all, I want to assure you: by nature, I am very much a teacher, not a salesman. I am genuinely concerned with communicating knowledge and providing opportunities for students to learn and grow. When I recommend Magoosh, I do so because I deeply believe it can help folks, not because I am primarily concerned with making a "sale." I've worked in schools my whole life --- this whole "making a sale" thing is actually quite new and foreign to me. :-)

First of all, I will correct a bit of Diction what you wrote. advise = (a verb) to give counsel, to provide valuable information; to give advice advice = (a noun) valuable information; counsel; what someone who advises you gives you Everywhere in the private message you wrote, you used " advise " where what you meant was " advice ." That Diction point is not necessarily something crucial for the GMAT, but it brings up an important point. To build the deep Verbal skills you need to master the GMAT Verbal, you need to do a lot more than just practice GMAT material. You need to READ . I would suggest reading at least an hour a day -- that's over and above any GMAT preparations you are doing. You need to read hard challenging material in English. Since you are planning to get an MBA, you already should be reading the Wall Street Journal every day and the Economist magazine from cover to cover every week. The Econ omist is full of arguments, real world arguments about issue of important in international politics & business. That's precisely why the GMAT has a CR section --- they are trying to prepare you to understand the real world arguments you will encounter as a manager in the postmodern electronically connected business world. You will only understand the full breadth of CR arguments when you have a deep background in all the real world issues you will encounter in reading those sources. BTW, for other reading suggestions, see: https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-reading-list/ This is a very funny thing about the GMAT CR. It's absolutely true that, in any individual argument, they will provide the individual factoids logically necessary to answer the question, and that you don't need to bring outside knowledge of that particular issue to the argument. The mistake many GMAT students make, though, is assuming that all outside knowledge is irrelevant. NO! That's a HUGE misconception! You see, when you are well-read in real world arguments, you develop intuition for the forces that move the market and the motivations that different players have, and this intuition is invaluable in spotting things that are reasonable or unreasonable in the GMAT CR. If you are well-versed in real-world arguments of the economic realm, you have an incalculable advantage in GMAT CR. Here's the first article in a series that talks about some essential issues of which you should be appraised: https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-supply-and-demand/ If you are taking the GMAT, you implicitly are saying that you want an MBA and you want a career as manager in the business world. If that's what you really want, act like it: read as much as you possibly can about that world and what's at stake in it! That's precisely why I recommend reading the periodicals above. Now, when you took the real GMAT, you noticed a score drop from your practice tests. This is very typical. See this blog: https://magoosh.com/gmat/2014/lower-on-t ... ice-tests/ For your GMAT, you need to practice stress-management skills as assiduously and rigorously as you practice all the content & strategy for the GMAT. You have already used a great deal of material. I will point out that the OG2015 and the OG Verbal Review 2015, while identical in print form to the earlier editions, come with a large bank of online questions, so that's a great way to get access to more official questions that you haven't done yet. See: https://magoosh.com/gmat/2014/the-offici ... uide-2015/ Another good source of practice questions are the old paper GMAT tests: https://magoosh.com/gmat/2014/gmat-paper ... -practice/ Between all of these, you still have many official questions you can practice. Now, in addition to all of that, you asked about Magoosh. Frankly, I will say: of course, the very best questions are the official questions --- as someone who writes GMAT practice questions, I am simply in awe of the consistent high quality of the questions that GMAC produces. After those, I would say the best questions I have seen are those of MGMAT, Magoosh, and I think I would also put Veritas in that elite group --- I have been impressed with many Veritas questions I have seen. It sounds as if you have already been through MGMAT and Veritas, but have not touched Magoosh yet, so for you, it's an untapped source of high quality questions. Why are Magoosh questions high quality? Well, we don't just write questions and leave them untouched: we have a sophisticated automatic feedback system, which allows us to monitor constantly the quality of questions. As a question starts to show indications that it is low quality, we revise it. We are constantly revising our questions with statistical data. I know that GMAC also uses extensively statistical procedures to revise and rank its questions, and I can only assume that must MGMAT & Veritas do something similar. Many other companies just hire contractors to write the questions, and then they are done: once the questions are written, they are never revised. That's precisely why many companies have mediocre questions. No matter how intelligent a question-creator is, it's hard to tell how effective a question will be until many people answer it and patterns emerge. All this might be far more than you wanted to know, but this is why Magoosh has high quality questions. As you may know, Magoosh has a score guarantee: https://gmat.magoosh.com/score-guarantee If you sign up for the Verbal course and do all the work, we guarantee a 3-point increase, an increase from 32 to 35 for you. If you sign up for the entire Magoosh course, Quant & Verbal, we guaranteed a 50 point increase on the total GMAT score --- for you, that would be 730+, or your money back. I realize you need a big improvement in Verbal, but I would urge you not to neglect how important it could be even to make a modest gain in your Quant score as well. If you improve both Q & V, that will significantly boost your overall GMAT score. Here's a three-month study schedule designed for someone in your position: https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/3-month-gm ... l-focused/ Of course, you have already used the entire OG, but as I indicated above, you can substitute official questions from those other sources I recommended. We recently revised all of our Verbal lessons. We continuously gather feedback on our lessons from our users, and these revised lessons have all been rated quite highly. (I will point out: our users are not a bunch of "yes"-people: when they don't like something, they let us know extremely vocally in no uncertain terms, so if they are all happy with something, that's quite a statement!) Here's a free SC lesson: https://gmat.magoosh.com/lessons/944-substantive-clauses Here's a free CR question: https://gmat.magoosh.com/questions/3746 Here's a free RC question: https://gmat.magoosh.com/questions/3623 When you submit your answers for each of those questions, the following page will have a complete video explanation. Each one of Magoosh's 800+ GMAT practice questions has its own VE, because having this immediate feedback right after you have done a question enormously accelerates learning. Even if you decide not to purchase Magoosh, I hope you get a lot from all these other resources. I wish you the very best of luck, my friend. Mike :-)

suk1234 · Answer

And that is why I like Mike!

TGC · Answer

Hi Mike,

Thanks for sharing your insights.

I have read and re read your post almost 10 times since you wrote here.

Since I have some personal issues, I have planned to cancel my GMAT date. Meanwhile, I want to read a lot.

Hence, I revisited your article today. Also, I took NYT membership.

I need some suggestions from you.

(1). Does scientific american restrict one to limited articles?

(2). What portions of NYT you suggest me to read?

(3). Economist has limited access I think.

(4). How to read the passage (a). Critically or (b). or skimming like reading a RC passage.(focus on organization of the passage)

(5). What portions do you suggest to read in scientific american?

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear TGC, I'm happy to respond. :-)

My friend, keep in mind that I am person who is old enough to remember the world before the internet existed, so I have this old-fashioned idea of reading from hard-copy print materials. I find it infinitely more satisfying to read relaxed in a chair with nothing electronic engaged, but if you prefer to read online, that's fine as well. Just keep in mind both options. First of all, I would strongly suggest --- go to a library, perhaps a university library to which you can get access, and look for the magazines there. That would be an excellent way to get 100% access. If you can, explore other magazines: look for stuff that's really challenging. For the NYT, political and economic articles would be important. Also, if you get the Sunday NYT, the Book Review can contain a wonderful assortment of different disciplines, as they review books on all topics. For the Econ omist , if you can't get full access at a library, I would highly recommend subscribing to it, a full subscription, either to the online version or to the print magazine. That is a highly intelligent source, perhaps the most valuable in terms of preparing for the GMAT. This is the one source for which I definitely would recommend paying money. I have no idea how much access you can get to Scientific American online. If you can't find this at a library, don't worry --- there are plenty of other ways to get exposure to science writing. You may go to a used bookstore or a university library, and look for first-year & second-year scientific textbooks. Even Wikipedia is an excellent source for science writing --- the sentence quality is not always so good, but the information is sound. If you see any scientific issues raised in the news, and they mention some scientific idea with which you are unfamiliar, go to Wikipedia and read an article in detail about that topic. For example, recently the Nobel Prizes were awarded: = Dr. O'Keefe, the two Dr. Mosers won the Physiology prize for discovering a cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain . What does that mean? How does that work? = Dr. Akasaki, Dr. Amano, and Dr. Nakamura won the Physics prize for the invention of an efficient blue light-emitting diode . What is that? Why is this such a big deal that is deserves a Nobel prize? = Dr. Betzig, Dr. Hell, and Dr. Moerner won the Chemistry prize for their investigations of stimulated emission depletion microscopy and photoactivated localization microscopy . What in tarnation is that? If you can't get easy access to Scientific American , forget it. You could just go back and research the Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine/Physiology over, say, the past twenty years, and read in detail about each discovery. That would give you plenty of practice in reading about science. I would NOT recommend "skimming" even the GMAT RC. I would recommend reading once thoroughly. See: https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-readi ... ully-once/ I would recommend reading everything this way --- read once, and then be able to answer almost anything about what you read. 1) RC skills: Pay attention to main idea, role of each paragraph, why individual details are mentioned, what you can infer, and the author's perspective & tone 2) CR skills: For any arguments, think about strengtheners & weakeners; assumptions; inferences; and what kind of additional information you might need to evaluate a conclusion 3) SC skills: Especially in the NYT and the Econ omist , when you are done reading, go back and analyze particular complex sentences --- what are the subjects and verbs? What are the main clauses and subordinate clauses? What modifies what? How is parallelism used? Most importantly, how does the structure of the sentence effectively convey a meaning that is important for the overall piece? In fact, I would recommend, as you read thorough, take notes on a separate piece of paper --- force yourself to summarize briefly paragraph after paragraph as you read, so that by the time you are done with the article, you have a detailed map of the entire piece. When you force yourself to articulate this and physical write it down, you are building important connections in your brain. Practice creating these maps even on gigantic complex three-page articles, so that when you have to do a mere 350-word passage on the GMAT, it will seem like a piece of cake. Does all this make sense? Mike :-)

CaptainWeiner · Answer

Thanks Mike. This article definitely helped and accounted my score dropped. https://magoosh.com/gmat/2014/lower-on-t ... ice-tests/

Question: What happens if you enter the GMAT and say to yourself, this isn't the real thing and I am just going to take it and see how I do-- it's just another GMAT practice test, sort of fake your brain out?

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear CaptainWeiner , I'm happy to respond. :-)

I'm glad you found that article helpful. As for your question, hmmm. It depends on how well you can fake yourself out. Some people, with very disciplined mindsets, can lock onto one thought and have that be, for a short time, the whole story for them. Some people perform under high pressure in various scenarios such as this. I think those largely are, say, athletic venues or other feats of physical prowess. If your heart is pumping and you have a lot of excitement/energy/stress/adrenaline in your body, that may well help you do something physically demanding. For something like the GMAT, though, I think it would be nearly impossible just to "fake" one's self out, thinking that it doesn't really matter, and have that stick for a grueling four-hour test that taxes your brain. I could imagine getting exciting, thinking "OK, this is for real," and feeding off the excitement. I could imagine using stress techniques to calm one's self. I find it particularly hard that one could just "think" one's way to lower stress. The cerebral cortex is very clever, and it likes to pretend that it really runs the show. Largely, it doesn't. The energies of the body, governed by lower regions of the brain, always trump the cerebral cortex. We can't really "think" our way into happiness (though, at times, we can "think" our way into misery!!) We certainly can't "think" our way out of hunger or fatigue. And I would argue, we can really "think" our way out of stress, which is similarly physiological. In fact, the way out of stress often involves quieting the activity of thinking as such. Does all this make sense? Mike :-)

CaptainWeiner · Answer

Interesting information. Thanks!

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Re-take and not satisfied: 630 to 680

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