Verbal from 28 to 35

Question

Dear Members,

How much time does it take to improve in Verbal from 28 to 35? My weakest point used to be SC, but now I realized that I loose most of the points during RC. Nowadays I started to read the Economist magazine to improve my RC skills. How could I boost my Verbal in one month, because my exam is in Jun.

Thanks,
Zoltan

nbooky · Answer

Verbal from 28 to 35 is definitely possible through practice.

To improve RC, my recommendation would be to do the actual practices in OG or any other guides (if you have not done so). Many recommended Economist articles but those are too well written. I have read somewhere that GMAT essays were pulled from various sources and tweaked to be difficult (e.g., make it more boring, information overload, use unfamiliar terms without properly defining it...etc).

In addition, doing actual practices would allow you to practice GMAT RC techniques like properly identifying scope, gist, important details, logic...etc.

1 month is pretty enough for most people to improve verbal score. What is your hit rate for each type of question (RC, SC and CR)? To have a target score of 35, you possibly need hit percentage of 75% for each category (of course, the higher the better). Since questions come in different order you need to have balanced performance for each type (i.e., not good if 80% SC hit rate and 40% CR hit rate).

Good luck on the preparation.

zoltan · Answer

Thanks for your answer

Actually, I have been preparing for GMAT for 3 months. After one month practice I scored 500 in the Official test, but right now I am able to score around 600 with a 45-50 quantitative score and 28 verbal score. I went through OG 11th, OG 9th , OG review so I am very familiar with those questions. My score is good at CR (failure rate 22% in OG review), and I could improve my SC failure rate from 40% to 20-30%. RC is another story, I try to learn from my mistakes but I cannot notice any improvement, and I feel I need to boost my English comprehensive level with lot of reading. I think my failure rate in RC is 50% or even worse.

Now, I am going through the Kaplan full tests and I score around 550, and Kaplan shows that my weak point is RC. I have ARCO as well, and I am planning to go through in the following weeks.
Yes, OG is the best but I already very familiar with the passages, therefore I need to read something else.

May be, I am not a typical MBA applicant because I started to learn English at the age of 25 from zero, and now I am 30. So, I think that I need to read a lot in English to improve in the last month before the exam. I studied everything in my native language, in Hungarian, and I use English mainly to speak with other engineers who cannot speak Hungarian.
My target score is between 650 and 700. I am confident that I can score high in Quantitative but Verbal…….


Thanks,
Zoltan

nbooky · Answer

From the description of your preparation (months spent and official test) and the way you attack the weakest area, I think you are on the right track to achieve the target score.

From the statistics, yes RC is the area you need to work on.

You wrote:
 

It is not a bad idea to read a lot in English like Economist  in your spare time . However, I consider that as supplements to get comfortable with English and pick up more vocabularies but that is  not likely a direct factor to boost your RC percentages . Here is why:

1. GMAT has many types of passages: History, Social Science, Arts, Biology, Technology, Astronomy, Business…etc. Many came from research materials and unless a person came from the same background, the passages will be hard to digest.
2. The passages were tweaked by GMAT test writers to make them more boring and hard to understand. On the other hand, magazines are written to be pleasure to read. 

My suggestion is to learn the techniques to read passages “the GMAT way”. There are a set of general techniques and strategies on RC-type questions. Are you familiar with such techniques? The general technique is to read to develop a basic understanding (scope, gist, main idea and purpose) of the passage. Usually passages have lots of details to overwhelm the reader, the technique is to know “what” such details are (know what these details are about, and remember where to find them when a “detail” question comes up). The only way to learn such GMAT techniques is to practice (e.g., OG). It is not easy to get these skills simply by reading magazines…etc.

In addition to reading techniques, there are several types of RC questions. You can find those in most prep books like Kaplan. For example, most question types are: about the main point or tone of the passage, a specific piece of detail (supporting idea), or draw conclusions (inference) from the statements in the passage. Sometimes there are advanced questions which ask readers to draw similarities with a scenario described in the passage. In general you need to know all these question types.

Don’t feel too intimidated on GMAT essays. I think your hit rate is low is because you are not familiar with the techniques, but not start learning English at 25. The GMAT passages were designed to be “dry” – the topics are usually boring with lots of technical/unfamiliar terms and full of details (names, year, numbers…etc) to overwhelm the test taker.

Finally, I have one question about the computation of the statistics: How many questions do you use to come up with the hit rate? For me, I normally compute statistics with the most recent ~20 questions (same category). Usually the hit rate will go up as more exercises were done. The most recent hit rate is more likely to represent actual performance as well.

Good luck!

zoltan · Answer

Thanks for you advices. I went through Kaplan RC approach, and I think it helps me to be more focused during reading. I realized I can score higher in RC with Kaplan steps. I did the first ARCO verbal test and scored 27, but after reading the Kaplan steps I was able to score 34-37. I am not sure that ARCO gives an exact score, but I do not want to check my score with OG now, because I like to save the two tests for the last weeks. 

Regarding my hit rate, I calculated only CR and SC. I solved the questions from OG11 review, under time pressure, and after finishing the whole book I calculated my total hit rate in CR and in SC. May be, it was 3 weeks ago.

I keep studying until my G date (26th of July) every day 3-4hrs, and I will come to know whether I can hit 650, which is my target score.

LM · Answer

Keep your Target Score Higher! Keep it 800, you will definitely score above 650.

All the Best.

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