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02 Nov 2009, 12:27
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I started my preparation, 9 months ago unfortunately with the wrong study material. When I had decided to attempt for the GMAT, I had never known even the reference books and associated study material and never ever bothered to gather any relevant information, ever earlier. Two of my friends, excellent and brilliant gentlmen from the same college I graduated from and then pursuing MBA from ISB, Hyderabad, India suggested me the same thing, which indeed was something that wouldn't suit me at all. They told me that OG was the Holy Bible for GMAT, that the test question style and language and the sentence framing structures are all very much in-tune with the OG and so, I started out with the OG 11 and that was my very first mistake.
I exhausted all verbal questions twice, moving from a pathetic strike-rate at about 40% of any number of attempted questions getting correct to just below 50% of them getting correct. I never got to realize what logic could help me get to the official answer and was dreading the verbal section badly. Nevertheless, I went out for OG Verbal review to practise more questions hoping to find that pattern/framework that can help me develop a logic of attempting verbal questions. This was my second mistake.
I had exhausted half of OG Verbal already when I came across this forum, excited and surfed during a break of 2 weeks when I noticed big-shots and top scorers suggesting Kaplan and Manhattan study materials to novices. My world was shattered. I had wasted more than 6 months already, without knowing the strategies and blindly exhausting the best of questions available. I never gave up though, learnt the strategies and practised some amount of Kaplan CR and MGMAT SC and observed that OG was far richer and sensible with questions as compared to both Kaplan and Manhattan materials. My friends seemed right and wrong at the same time.
However, I came back to OG verbal with the strategies, finished it twice again within a month and half and noticed that my strike rate had improved something closer to 75%. That's when I took my first mock test with GMATPrep and eversince, my verbal has been in the range of 30 to 35 (best ever in four GMATPrep tests). I had also posted a topic discussing strike rate and relative scores.
Now, I need advice to get from early 30's range to late 40's range, almost a 10 to 15 points improvement. Materials I have exhausted, OG 11 and OG Verbal. Never tried kaplan and Manhattan stuff because they didn't seem as good and as rich as OG. So practically I have only worked on OG and am at 30's range, however, I have studied and always use the strategies provided by Kaplan for CR and Manhattan for SC. Anybody who has improved significantly on verbal can help me by suggesting a proper preparation strategy.
I exhausted all verbal questions twice, moving from a pathetic strike-rate at about 40% of any number of attempted questions getting correct to just below 50% of them getting correct. I never got to realize what logic could help me get to the official answer and was dreading the verbal section badly. Nevertheless, I went out for OG Verbal review to practise more questions hoping to find that pattern/framework that can help me develop a logic of attempting verbal questions. This was my second mistake.
I had exhausted half of OG Verbal already when I came across this forum, excited and surfed during a break of 2 weeks when I noticed big-shots and top scorers suggesting Kaplan and Manhattan study materials to novices. My world was shattered. I had wasted more than 6 months already, without knowing the strategies and blindly exhausting the best of questions available. I never gave up though, learnt the strategies and practised some amount of Kaplan CR and MGMAT SC and observed that OG was far richer and sensible with questions as compared to both Kaplan and Manhattan materials. My friends seemed right and wrong at the same time.
However, I came back to OG verbal with the strategies, finished it twice again within a month and half and noticed that my strike rate had improved something closer to 75%. That's when I took my first mock test with GMATPrep and eversince, my verbal has been in the range of 30 to 35 (best ever in four GMATPrep tests). I had also posted a topic discussing strike rate and relative scores.
Now, I need advice to get from early 30's range to late 40's range, almost a 10 to 15 points improvement. Materials I have exhausted, OG 11 and OG Verbal. Never tried kaplan and Manhattan stuff because they didn't seem as good and as rich as OG. So practically I have only worked on OG and am at 30's range, however, I have studied and always use the strategies provided by Kaplan for CR and Manhattan for SC. Anybody who has improved significantly on verbal can help me by suggesting a proper preparation strategy.
02 Nov 2009, 23:00
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Somebody in this forum suggested that you start reading solutions to OG verbal questions, even the wrong ones. That way you get used to common mistakes GMAT uses for its tests. It is a great help to boost your verbal score, i believe.
03 Nov 2009, 08:57
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mirzohidjon
Been there and done that as well!! My problem is I have practically exhausted all of OG 11 and OG Verbal. Yet, I have been lacking at one thing.
Whenever I see a new SC or CR question, one that I haven't solved earlier and I don't seem to remember the answer, I immediately apply the strategies I have learnt from MGMAT SC or Kaplan CR. For SC, I try to identify what is being tested in the question based on the categories MGMAT SC postulates such as modifier problem, subject-verb agreement, idiom, pronoun referencing error, parallelism or compare-contrast etc. Once I figure out what is wrong, my ear tells me what sounds better, I look for that among the answer options and more often than not, find it. Most cases however, I don't and then I use the POE method, eliminating options that look horrible grammatically, boiling down to the best two.
Same goes with CR as well. When I read the stimulus, I make a mental picture of the context and try to figure out what kind of an argument could it possibly be based on the Kaplan CR categories such as scope-shift, alternate explanations, explain paradox, cause-and-effect etc. This helps me figure out very easily what is wrong with the argument, what is inferred from the facts, possible assumptions, what could strengthen or weaken it, and the like. However, bold-face questions and some conversation type questions get me into a jinx since I haven't been able to practise many of them.
RC I have no problem at all, it all depends on how interesting the passage would be. If it's social sciences like women empowerment movements or migration of african-americans from south to the north in the US in early 19th century and boring stuff like that, I just manage by going back to the passage, otherwise if it is an interesting science passage such as a scientific phenomenon or experiment or a research study and procedure used and the like, I love them. My strike rate has substantially improved on it's own without much effort since the beginning, of course, it's not a 100% though.
So as you see, there's nothing wrong with my approach and yet I stay at the early 30's levels. Any suggestions what can get me to late 40's???
