Verbal ESR Analysis

Question

Hey, this is my ESR, can someone please guide how to improve my performance and what materials to refer.

Edskore · Answer

Okay, I can actually see your ESR now, that helps a lot. Your Reading Comprehension is at 53rd percentile against Critical Reasoning at 70th, so there's already a split there. But the number that jumps out at me is Identify Stated Idea at 38th percentile, easily the lowest on the page. That one's actually good news, because it's usually not a reasoning gap, it's a reading habit problem.

Stated Idea questions ask what the passage literally says. If you're missing those, you're probably skimming for the general idea instead of tracking individual claims. I did the exact same thing early in my prep, read RC passages like a magazine and got tripped up on detail questions referencing lines I'd basically skipped over.

Try slowing down for a week: read each passage once without a timer, and after every paragraph ask yourself what it's actually claiming, not just what it's about. Your Plan/Construct and Inferred Idea scores (73rd and 69th) are already strong, so this is narrow and fixable, not a fundamental verbal problem.

AllisonBell · Answer

Hi there!

First, I’d recommend comparing these score results with any stats you have from your practice or practice exams. It’s hard to know exactly what happened to cause you to get problems wrong on an Official Exam — were you rushing on certain questions, for example, or fatigued? Or does a process need improvement?

If other data confirms that “Identify Stated Idea” questions are an area that needs work, I wanted to offer a strategy that’s worked well for my students.

First,  every aspect of RC will benefit from developing the habit of building a passage map as you go.

A good passage map should be short, breaking the passage into chunks and based on big ideas, pivots in viewpoint, and the function of different parts of the text. Here’s an example from a made-up passage:

P1: Trad. view: donuts = delic. 
 How to measure? 
 Study: ratings
P2: AO (Author Opinion) - no ratings
 Subj. concept

The idea is to use abbreviations, put things in your own words rather than copying the text, and don’t worry too much about how readable the notes will be. The point of them is to help you build a mental map while you read, no so much a physical map to refer to afterward.

Having a passage map will help you quickly find details that are referenced by these questions. I recommend the following question process:

Identify the question type.  You can ID Specific Detail questions based on language like “According to the passage” or “the passage states...” 
  Look for support.  Use your passage map and any cues from the question to find relevant text. Then, re-read for understanding. It’s often helpful to read a line before and after the text in question. Hint:  One of the most common mistakes I see here is giving up the text search too soon  with text that doesn’t quite respond to the question. You may as well guess! Keep searching until you find a very good match for the question. 
  Predict an answer.  Quickly use the text to mentally anticipate or even write down how the question should be answered. It’s better to do this before looking at the answers because it can save you a lot of time evaluating traps. 
  Eliminate and find a match.  If you’ve done the work of steps 2 and 3, an answer will often pop out at you. No need to thoroughly disprove every other answer, but do read them all to see if anything else is worth investigating.

This process takes time to turn into a habit. If needed, at first, you can write it down on a notecard and keep it next to you while you work through an RC passage. Eventually, you’ll internalize it.

You can find RC passages and questions to practice, with explanations written using the above strategy, in our  Free GMAT Qbank and Starter Kit .

Best,
Ally

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Thanks for sharing your ESR.

Your Critical Reasoning sits at the 70th percentile and your Reading Comprehension at the 53rd, so RC is where the larger opportunity is and should get the bulk of your attention.

The more useful signal is in the fundamental-skills breakdown. Almost everything there lands between the 58th and 73rd percentile, with one clear outlier: Identify Stated Idea at the 38th, against Identify Inferred Idea at the 69th. You are doing better at drawing inferences than at pinning down what the passage explicitly says. That usually means you are reading for general impression and reasoning outward from it, rather than anchoring your answers to the precise wording of the text. Detail questions punish exactly that, because the right answer hinges on what the passage actually said. One caveat: these sub-scores come from a limited number of questions, so treat them as a starting hypothesis and confirm the pattern against the RC questions you have actually missed.

Here is how I would rebuild RC. Read the whole passage first, before any question, for understanding and structure rather than detail: the main point, why each paragraph is there, and how the ideas relate. Then, on every question, go back to the passage and confirm your answer against the text instead of answering from memory. Identify the question type before you evaluate choices, since detail and inference questions are answered differently. And do not match words, because trap answers often repeat the passage's exact phrasing while distorting its meaning.

Given your weak spot, add one habit: on any question asking what the passage states, relocate the supporting line before committing. That targets the 38th-percentile skill directly.

For practice, work one question type at a time, untimed, until accuracy is consistently high. For every miss, categorize the cause: a question type you did not recognize, a misread, a careless error, or a trap. Redo missed questions from scratch a few days later to confirm the fix held. Only then layer in timing, and only after that mix RC and CR into full sets.

CR at the 70th is your stronger area, but depending on your target Verbal score it may still have room, so keep it in your rotation while RC gets the larger share.

On materials, work from one clear, comprehensive, structured resource that teaches each question type in isolation, in sequence, and lets you track accuracy by type. Piling up separate sources tends to reinforce the same habits. For practice questions, official GMAC questions from the Official Guide and mba.com are the most realistic. Active reading of publications like The Economist and Scientific American also helps, though it does not replace real RC questions.

Make RC your priority, rebuild the process above, and drill by type untimed with honest error analysis. Add timing once accuracy is there, then move to mixed sets.

This article walks through the RC approach in detail:  GMAT Reading Comprehension Tips: Top 8 DOs and DON'Ts

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