Score has plateaued. Need help.

Question

Dear GMAT experts. Is it possible to optimize my strategy?

I am taking the test on the 10th of December. 20 days later.
I just don't know how to improve my timing.
RC destroyed me.

This is the pivot table from Official mock test 3. Score - 650 (V30 Q49) 
I have posted about my Official mock test 2. Score - 650 (V30 Q49) in my previous post on GMAT club.

WHAT CHANGED THIS TIME? 
What changed this time? 
I read CR from TTP - wrong questions went down from 6 to 3. But I got fewer hard questions this time. (as opposed to 6 hard questions in the previous test)
Didn’t study RC even a bit. Got 2 hard passages. I hadR to guess the entire last passage. I don’t know if its normal to get so many hard questions. 
SC is okayish.
I am running out of time in the verbal section. I think for the next test I will have to leave 4-5 hard CR ques. To get Almost all SC and RC ques correct. 
Please suggest a way to optimize my strategy to get a V37 - V39.

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Afn24.

I think a good next move for you would be to go through the RC portion of TTP. It's only three chapters long, and the ideas and strategies it presents could help you to speed up in RC, giving yourself time to answer more questions and get more correct.

Meanwhile, generally, the way to speed up in verbal is to keep developing your skills by learning more concepts and strategies and practicing untimed and focusing on achieving high accuracy.

For some other ideas you could use to speed up in GMAT verbal, see this post.

How to Get Faster at GMAT Verbal

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

3 Quick Reading Comprehension Tips

Consider using time markers for time management. Working with a study buddy with strong Verbal skills to see how they approach certain questions may also be helpful. There's a dedicated thread on gmatclub to find a study buddy by the way.

This is the pivot table from Official mock test 3. Score - 650 (V30 Q49)
I have posted about my Official mock test 2. Score - 650 (V30 Q49) in my previous post on GMAT club.
Please suggest a way to optimize my strategy to get a V37 - V39

Here's someone who went from a V30 to a V40 (retake) in about 30 days. They took a bit of tutoring (6 hours) but mention a variety of resources and tips you may be able to quickly leverage.

https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-online- ... 68599.html

egmat · Answer

Hi  Afn24 ,

I’m sorry that you could not improve your score. This suggests that you haven't yet addressed the gaps in your prep (concept gaps and skill gaps. Here are my recommendations:

Improvement in skills

You clearly need to improve your speed. However, you need to fix your accuracy first, especially when it comes to medium-hard and hard questions. Here is how you can improve:

1.In SC,  you’ve got medium-level Modifiers and Parallelism questions incorrect. This indicates you haven’t yet fully developed the skill to derive the intended meaning of the original sentence. This also suggests you struggle with parallelism, possibly because you narrowly focus on grammatical parallelism while ignoring meaning-based parallelism. You have to work on these. GMAT SC tests Grammar and Communication. So, if you lack communication and reasoning skills and have conceptual gaps, your accuracy and timing will both be affected. If you are looking for a quick fix for this, this article can help –  meaning based approach in SC .

2.For RC,  I had recommended, in my previous response, that you check your performance in medium-hard and hard questions, because you only managed to get medium questions right. This time, you have faltered on medium and hard RC questions, especially Purpose based questions. This suggests you haven’t mastered the right way to read an RC Passage. Purpose based questions are relatively easier to answer, provided you’ve learnt the right way to read a passage. Here is an article that can help you with this –  4 core skills to ace GMAT RC .

You must build Mastery over the skills

The fact that your performance is inconsistent across sections implies that you haven’t cemented whatever skills you’ve learnt in the time that you’ve been preparing for the GMAT. The beauty of cementing - mastering the approach to solving questions through timed practice and with strategic review of your mistakes, until the method becomes second nature to you - is that once you cement a core skill, particularly Hard Cementing, you never forget that skill. In other words, it’s like learning how to ride a bike. Once you know how to do it, you never forget, even if you take a long break. There can be a dip of 1 to 2% when you resume after a long break, but nothing drastic. So, you need to not only learn the right core skills but also cement them. The  Cementing Quizzes  in our Scholaranium are designed specifically for this purpose.

Resolving timing issues

Ideally, timing would have been taken care of automatically had you successfully cemented the methods. Mastery over methods means executing them in limited time to get the questions correct.

Nevertheless, here are some tips to improve your overall speed once you’re done cementing the right core skills:

Maximize concentration to reduce Regression (re-reading) to the bare minimum. Read slower to read faster. In other words, read slower so that you only read each sentence once. This way your overall reading time is reduced. This applies to SC and CR as well. 
 
 Read with Visualization. Visualization ensures maximum comprehension. The more vivid the image you create in your mind while reading, the less the need to go back to the passage when answering questions. That’s how we gain precious seconds. 
 
 Internalize concepts. Concepts need to be at your fingertips. If you’re going to take time to recall concepts, you’re going to miss the bus. So, clarity and familiarity of concepts is paramount. 
 
 Keep your eye on the clock. Divide your section into quarters, and make sure you track your progress from quarter to quarter. Having a good testing platform could make all the difference here. GMAT’s Enhanced Score Report shows your performance quarter wise. You should also track your test attempt in the same way. Our  SIGma-X mock test  will help you understand this a lot better.

This is a no go. If your strategy rests on leaving questions, you’re never going to reach your target score. You don’t leave/skip questions on the GMAT. The right approach is to build your skills and speed to the degree that you can complete the section in time, with sufficient time to read and solve every question. This also means knowing how much is too much time to devote to a question. You should know when to make an educated guess and move to the next question to maintain your pace or momentum. The objective is to complete the test in the given time. You have an accuracy of roughly 65% in the first 29 questions. And then you ran out of time. That fetched you a V30. If you had completed the section with that same accuracy, you’d probably have scored a V32 or 33. This is why we say you need both accuracy and speed to reach a V39 or higher.

Note:

All of the above is based on the data in the excel you’ve shared. As I explained in my earlier post, this mock test data is not sufficient for a thorough diagnosis. We need more data, say about 60 questions of medium and hard difficulty levels in each subsection. This will highlight topic-wise weaknesses, if any.

Also, I see that you marked a couple of questions as ‘seen before” and you got them correct. This inflates scores and gives us a wrong picture of your current skill level.

Recommended next steps

1. Get a precise diagnosis  - Solve about 40-50 new questions (medium and hard level questions) in each sub-section – SC, CR, RC. Identify your weaknesses (for example – maybe your accuracy is lower in Modifiers of SC, Assumptions in CR, or Business passages in RC).

2.Once you identify your weaknesses, determine the reason(s) for them - concept gaps and/or skill gaps. Accordingly, bridge those gaps.

3.While you work this way, track your improvement. Let’s say your accuracy is 40% in hard CR questions. Once you work on building the skill, make sure this accuracy increases with every new timed quiz. If not, do a thorough Strategic Review of your attempts.

You have to be very precise and surgical about this. That way, you will see improvement one step at a time.

Hope this gives some clarity.
-Sundeep

Score has plateaued. Need help.

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