The higher end questions on the Verbal section

Question

Hello all, This is my first post here though I have been browsing for a long time. I finally took my first real Gmat today. Well, that is not technically true. My first GMAT was about two weeks ago, but the computer froze when I clicked 'next' to submit my AWA portion, and luckily I was able to reschedule for free. I pulled off a decently good score (660) considering the following: Verbal has always been stronger for me than Quant. It has never once, on any practice test, been lower than 20 percentile points higher than my Quant score. Typically it ranges from the 75th percentile to the 90th. Today I scored a V33 - 68th percentile. This is lower than even my pre-prep Verbal GMATPrep scores (V38, V40) but I believe the reason to be this: Timing! More specifically the issues that I created for myself when faced with overly hard questions. I must have been on a roll because by the middle of the Verbal sections, the questions became intensely hard and very abstract. Even CR, which has been my strongest of the three question types, become a nightmare for me. I don't know how to describe the questions I saw earlier in terms of how wrong they looked to me, but there was a large disparity between what I typically saw on every type of practice test ( I have taken three GMATPrep and two Economist Prep practice tests). Usually with Sentence Correction problems, I can identify zero to two errors in the sentence, and look through all the sentences in a timely work order, and eliminate the answers within a minute, minute and a half at most. The issue here was that these sentences became so abstract, convoluted and complex that not only did answer A look wrong, but B,C,D, and E all looked equally wrong. Usually they look 'right' and thus it is easy to start knocking them out. What ended up happening is something I've never had before: timing issues. I worked through these problems diligently and I must of been getting them right because they just got harder and harder, but all of a sudden I realized I was on question 22 and I had...21 MINUTES LEFT. I said to myself, ok take 2 minutes for the next five and then speed guess. Which is exactly what I did... and I know it didn't go well. By the last question it looked like: Tom went to school and he drop his book .

I was so flustered that I went to hit submit on quite literally the last question, the screen went white, and said 'your time has expired' or something to that extent. THE HORROR. I simply was not ready for these level of questions I faced in the middle, and while I can blame the prep or the manhattan books or whatever may be, that will never get me anywhere. So I come here, as this is the best place for information. I have looked through many posts in the verbal section, but I am hoping to get some guidance to rectify this for the next test I take. Scores and material I have available (taken within the last month) GMAT 1 - 660 Q46 V33...

GMAT PREP 2 - 630 Q43 V38 GMAT PREP 1 - 590 Q33 V39 Economist: 620 Q39 V38 (the same scores twice) and previously on a GMAT prep I got a V40 but that was on an older computer that fried out, I just happen to remember seeing the V40 score. I scheduled my next exam. It is in 18 days. I have most of my applications done for Fall 2016, so this is the last piece of the puzzle. I am in the military and have done back to back deployments, and am 'deployed' right now, though I am lucky enough to have a testing center on base here. Otherwise I would of taken this test months ago, but I simply could not until now. I have in my arsenal: Every manhattan book on the GMAT known to man Two of the OG series (the two most recent ones) the giant Orange GMAC GMAT review book a subscription to the Economist I have more than this but my roommate is sleeping so I cannot turn the light on to rampage through the 30 pounds of books I have. In case this gets asked: my mental state was fine, I slept the night before, I was in generally top working order and I had my normal amount of caffeine in me (enough to kill several smallish bears). Thanks in advance, and I apologize about the short novel I have written, Best, Dan

AjiteshArun · Answer

Your post was... nice (though I'm sure your experience was anything but). What I'm really impressed by is that you ended up with a 33 even after coming under a lot of time pressure

Get the timing under control, and don't hesitate to guess your way through questions to get back on track if that becomes necessary. But what I really feel you should know is this: even at its highest difficulty levels, GMAT verbal still goes on testing the same things . The structures might change a bit, but the core concepts don't . It's hard to see this when you're left with only (just a random number) 21 minutes , but it's true. I don't think you need to do anything drastically different (maybe you'd like to solve any remaining official material under timed conditions). 660 is a good score, but I wish you all the best for an even better score when you take the exam again.

Danhkman · Answer

Thanks you for your response!

I believe you are right about how I lost sight of the core concepts once the high level abstraction and timing pressure started to rear their heads. I am happy to of gotten the score I received. It takes a lot of the pressure off the next test, because although I did not report the scores to schools specifically, I did not cancel the score. I feel I can break the 700 barrier if I can improve my math slightly and not have a catastrophic failure of higher reasoning during the second half of the verbal section.

I will absolutely try to keep your words of wisdom in mind. I will continue through the economist prep for general review and preparation, but do you think it would be wise to start focusing on practice tests and timing from this point on? Like a 30 percent general prep 70 percent timing and test practice type ratio?

AjiteshArun · Answer

Honing your time management skills is super important at this stage, so that does sound like a good plan. At a minimum, you want to avoid that situation you found yourself in last time. We're just more likely to mark a number of questions wrong in a row when under time pressure, and I'm sure that you already know that the GMAT really doesn't like a sequence of errors.

Danhkman · Answer

That is undeniably true. I am well on my way to fixing the issue (I hope? I mean I cannot tell for sure until the second score is on my screen) but I have come to realize what destroyed my momentum was the high end reading comprehension. I realized that I was reading the entire passage two times, at a minimum, over the course of the questions. Through some guidance I have managed to cut the time I spend on RC questions down by 2/3rds. I think that alone, will be clutch next time.

I thank you for your willingness to help me. I just got my official score report in today, and I got a 6/6 on the AWA. Does this send a sort of mixed message to schools? V33 but AWA 6? Same with my Quant and IR - Q48 and IR 7.

Thank you again.

AjiteshArun · Answer

I don't think schools pay too much attention to AWA and IR. But the situation now is that many test takers don't try too hard anyway, and that makes using AWA and IR scores even tougher. It's just going in a circle. In fact (when it comes to AWA), the GMAC itself advises schools to " not make distinctions among applicants on the basis of a small scoring distinction—one point or less apart ". Focus on improving the total score. And you're in a better position to do that because you've been working on your timing. Again, you already have a good score. There is no downside here.

hellscream · Answer

Hi Dan,

I am in the same boat with you. I personally think that gmat prep test & gmat extra test's verbal is too much easier than that of real one.
My verbal in the gmat prep test : 44&47. Everything was easy for me.
In real test I got 32 for verbal. I think that level of difficulty in RC is similar, but that of SC and CR is much higher.
I will retake again in the beginning of October, a little bit later than you. Good luck.

Danhkman · Answer

Hi Dan, I am in the same boat with you. I personally think that gmat prep test & gmat extra test's verbal is too much easier than that of real one. My verbal in the gmat prep test : 44&47. Everything was easy for me. In real test I got 32 for verbal. I think that level of difficulty in RC is similar, but that of SC and CR is much higher. I will retake again in the beginning of October, a little bit later than you. Good luck. I wish you luck! Like it was said to me, a 660 is a pretty good score. I've had very mixed feelings about it, as it is so close to the higher end scores (and by all rights is a higher end score) but it remains out of the 80 percent range of top schools. However, the one thing I would say is: the pressure is off. This fact has turned a lot of almost sleepless nights into restful ones. Everyone wants to score a 750 and get into the best school they can, however I think it is easy to lose sight of what damn near all MBA programs offer: A chance at a better life (in many cases),a higher salary than you'd mostly likely make otherwise, and a marketable skill that won't diminish. A 660 does not disqualify you from anything, because at the lower end you're way above the averages, and on the higher end, you're not so far outside the range that you are not a truly unviable candidate. Great schools like Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Georgetown and many more have higher than 660 average GMAT scores, but a 660 is well within their ranges, meaning that they don't accept 1 or 2 outliers I take my next and final test tomorrow, wish me luck and I wish it to you, and all future GMAT takers the best of luck. May your Critical Reasoning be clear, and your function questions be few! (I hate functions) I will post what happens tomorrow afterwards, and if Odin in his warrior mercy grants me a better score, I will happily answer any questions about what I did to improve (and if Loki and his infinite d-baggery decides to plague me with 5 stylistically flawed sentence correction answers, and an endless number of hidden quadratics, I will also tell you the pitfalls I fell into). For now what i will say I have done from the first test until now is: 4 practice tests in the last week or so, almost all scoring around the same scores as before Practiced with some verbal questions out of the OG books, while using a stop watch. Burned through 45 percent (more quant than verbal but only by 7 percent or so) of the Economist online, which I think has really helped me grasp timing better due to the frequency of timed practice questions. When I took the test initially I was at 6 percent completion and my score prediction was a range of 540-620, ( I scored a 660 :roll:

) and it is now 620-690. I do not know if this actually correlates to a higher score on the test, or if simply the program was slowly adjusting itself to my level as scoring a 660 - a range of 620-690 seems reasonable. I am rambling at this point. Great luck to you.

Danhkman · Answer

Well thank you very much, there is something very comforting about you saying 'There is no downside here'.

This is truly a great community, and I sort of kick myself for being a lurker and not an active participant. I apologize for the late reply, I don't even know what took me so long.

The second, and final test is tomorrow. Here's to hoping for something better, but knowing that things aren't bad in the first place.

The higher end questions on the Verbal section

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