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Hi everyone. Hope you liked the tip we posted last week. This week we have come up with another useful tip which not only helps the beginners but also students who are half-way through their preparation.
In my journey, I’ve interacted with many students who are stuck in the 550-650 score range even after months of preparation. I found something common among these students, and hence today I’m going to share one of the most important tips for GMAT Preparation. So, make sure you pay proper attention and read this post till the end.
Most people feel that there are only two steps for preparation:
However, there is a very important step in between which is “To master the right strategies to solve Questions”. Most people don’t know how to do so or simply choose to ignore it and follow shortcuts.
By right strategy I mean, following a step-by-step methodical process for solving questions. For example, if asked to solve 2 linear equations in 2 variables, you will probably Equate the co-efficient of 1 variable in Step 1, then eliminate that variable in Step 2 and then substitute the value of the obtained variable to get the other one in Step 3. You follow these 3 steps in any linear equations Question and you get the right answer.
Now when it comes to Quant, generally people understand the right methodologies mostly because that’s how it is taught at School, but what about Verbal. Most non-native speakers find it challenging not because they don’t understand the concepts. Concepts are easy to learn. The main reason is they don’t understand how to apply the concepts methodically. Similarly, if you don’t follow a methodical approach in Quant, you will struggle there as well.
To give you an example about using the right methodology to solve Verbal questions, let me explain it using CR module. What is the general strategy that beginners or students who don’t use a methodical approach follow to solve questions?
I’m sure many people might have done that during their initial stages and a few people do this even now. If you follow this approach, you are most likely to get stuck between two or more answer choices .Now let me tell you how a student who uses methodical approach will solve the same CR question. The student
Now you might have understood the difference between the normal approach and the methodical approach and the advantage of using the right methodology. When you follow a step-by-step process to solve questions, you are more likely to eliminate four wrong choices and select the best one. And GMAT Verbal is all about eliminating four incorrect choices rather than just choosing one correct choice.
Now I’m sure most of you must be wondering whether following the methodical approach is feasible in the actual test. It looks like it takes a lot of time to solve a particular question. But trust me, these are just the initial fears. You might take a little more time to solve the questions in initial stages but once you master the skill, it comes to you naturally. In fact, the previous tip I shared was about the same thing “Not to time yourself while learning”
The worst thing is very few experts detail out a methodical approach to solve questions (including the Official Guide solutions – I’m sure many of you are unable to understand OG solutions), so students even after looking at the solutions don’t realize the importance of learning the Right Strategy. Now without applying the right strategy you can get the easy and to an extent medium questions correct, but you will struggle with the tough ones. The tough questions require you to have a strong understanding of the Strategy.
When students don’t get hard questions right and get a decent accuracy in easy & medium questions, they start believing that they are not getting the question right because the question is tough. They believe that they can get hard questions by practising more and hence start practising tons of questions instead of working on the core problem.
What they fail to realize is why do they get hard ones incorrect? It is not because 2 choices are close in hard questions but more importantly because the hard questions require you to apply the concepts properly using the right strategy.
Now if you don’t master the right strategy, you don’t get hard questions right consistently and what happens when you don’t get hard questions right consistently, your score is stuck in the range of 600-650 at best. It is really painful to find yourself stuck at 600-650 range after months of preparation, so if you want to avoid being stuck there, I would recommend learning the right strategy from Day 1, so that you don’t have to redo your prep in the end.
From the start of your GMAT Preparation, make sure you do the following:
Again, there are 2 things to be done here. Firstly, you need to learn the right strategy. We have started a series of Round-1 webinars on teaching the right strategy. This week we have a couple of exciting webinars coming up on Number Line and Inference and Understand scope and main point of the passage in 3 min, so, if you haven’t registered yet, register using this link:
Click here to register for the webinars
Once you have learned the right strategy, you need to master it as well. By mastering I mean you need to apply it on around 50 questions consistently and fine tune your understanding. Now this is another tricky part. At this stage it is important to refer to solutions that apply the same approach, so that you can note down the variances and improve your understanding of the strategy. This is why, we have ensured that we not only teach the right strategy in GMATWhiz course but also ensure that every solution uses the same Strategy in a very detailed way, so learning is much easier.
I hope this post was helpful. Feel free to reach out if you have any queries regarding your prep. Happy to help!
In my journey, I’ve interacted with many students who are stuck in the 550-650 score range even after months of preparation. I found something common among these students, and hence today I’m going to share one of the most important tips for GMAT Preparation. So, make sure you pay proper attention and read this post till the end.
The 3 Skill Levels
Most people feel that there are only two steps for preparation:
- learning concepts
- Solving questions on that particular topic
However, there is a very important step in between which is “To master the right strategies to solve Questions”. Most people don’t know how to do so or simply choose to ignore it and follow shortcuts.
What do I mean by the Right Strategy?
By right strategy I mean, following a step-by-step methodical process for solving questions. For example, if asked to solve 2 linear equations in 2 variables, you will probably Equate the co-efficient of 1 variable in Step 1, then eliminate that variable in Step 2 and then substitute the value of the obtained variable to get the other one in Step 3. You follow these 3 steps in any linear equations Question and you get the right answer.
Now when it comes to Quant, generally people understand the right methodologies mostly because that’s how it is taught at School, but what about Verbal. Most non-native speakers find it challenging not because they don’t understand the concepts. Concepts are easy to learn. The main reason is they don’t understand how to apply the concepts methodically. Similarly, if you don’t follow a methodical approach in Quant, you will struggle there as well.
To give you an example about using the right methodology to solve Verbal questions, let me explain it using CR module. What is the general strategy that beginners or students who don’t use a methodical approach follow to solve questions?
- They read the argument or the stimulus
- They read the question stem
- They jump into the answer choices and check each of them if it answers the question stem.
I’m sure many people might have done that during their initial stages and a few people do this even now. If you follow this approach, you are most likely to get stuck between two or more answer choices .Now let me tell you how a student who uses methodical approach will solve the same CR question. The student
- reads the argument or the stimulus
- identifies the premises, conclusion, intermediate conclusion if any
- reads the question stem
- starts pre-thinking the missing link or the assumption (the most important step)
- starts eliminating the answer choices which do not match the pre-thought assumption
Now you might have understood the difference between the normal approach and the methodical approach and the advantage of using the right methodology. When you follow a step-by-step process to solve questions, you are more likely to eliminate four wrong choices and select the best one. And GMAT Verbal is all about eliminating four incorrect choices rather than just choosing one correct choice.
Now I’m sure most of you must be wondering whether following the methodical approach is feasible in the actual test. It looks like it takes a lot of time to solve a particular question. But trust me, these are just the initial fears. You might take a little more time to solve the questions in initial stages but once you master the skill, it comes to you naturally. In fact, the previous tip I shared was about the same thing “Not to time yourself while learning”
The worst thing is very few experts detail out a methodical approach to solve questions (including the Official Guide solutions – I’m sure many of you are unable to understand OG solutions), so students even after looking at the solutions don’t realize the importance of learning the Right Strategy. Now without applying the right strategy you can get the easy and to an extent medium questions correct, but you will struggle with the tough ones. The tough questions require you to have a strong understanding of the Strategy.
What is the Inference drawn by Students?
When students don’t get hard questions right and get a decent accuracy in easy & medium questions, they start believing that they are not getting the question right because the question is tough. They believe that they can get hard questions by practising more and hence start practising tons of questions instead of working on the core problem.
What they fail to realize is why do they get hard ones incorrect? It is not because 2 choices are close in hard questions but more importantly because the hard questions require you to apply the concepts properly using the right strategy.
What’s the impact of not mastering the Right Strategy?
Now if you don’t master the right strategy, you don’t get hard questions right consistently and what happens when you don’t get hard questions right consistently, your score is stuck in the range of 600-650 at best. It is really painful to find yourself stuck at 600-650 range after months of preparation, so if you want to avoid being stuck there, I would recommend learning the right strategy from Day 1, so that you don’t have to redo your prep in the end.
So, what should be your action plan while learning?
From the start of your GMAT Preparation, make sure you do the following:
- Arrange the topics in a section in the right order – Start with basics, then move to intermediate topics and finally advanced topics, and more importantly
- Learn each topic in 3 steps
- Step 1 – Learn the concepts related to each topic.
- Step 2 – Learn how to apply these concepts using the right Strategy. This is the most important part of learning
- Step 3 – Practice questions to identify gaps in your understanding and work on covering them.
How to master the right Strategy?
Again, there are 2 things to be done here. Firstly, you need to learn the right strategy. We have started a series of Round-1 webinars on teaching the right strategy. This week we have a couple of exciting webinars coming up on Number Line and Inference and Understand scope and main point of the passage in 3 min, so, if you haven’t registered yet, register using this link:
Click here to register for the webinars
Once you have learned the right strategy, you need to master it as well. By mastering I mean you need to apply it on around 50 questions consistently and fine tune your understanding. Now this is another tricky part. At this stage it is important to refer to solutions that apply the same approach, so that you can note down the variances and improve your understanding of the strategy. This is why, we have ensured that we not only teach the right strategy in GMATWhiz course but also ensure that every solution uses the same Strategy in a very detailed way, so learning is much easier.
I hope this post was helpful. Feel free to reach out if you have any queries regarding your prep. Happy to help!
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