Verbal Help V25 to V41

Hi Marty,

Thanks for your post, I did complete the verbal section on TTP but still that did not help. What would you advise since now i am planning to dedicate a year to improve.

Kshitij

Hi ashish,

My time management was bit off in verbal. My percentile in RC was 40% and CR was 30% in my mocks.

Kshitij

Hi Marty,

Thanks for your post, I did complete the verbal section on TTP but still that did not help. What would you advise since now i am planning to dedicate a year to improve.

Kshitij

If you give me the email address that you used for the TTP course, I can check your TTP analytics and see what insights I can get.

At the same time, I think the analytics are going to indicate that you learned the basic strategies and concepts but didn't spend enough time on the practice questions and therefore didn't develop the execution skills you need to get CR and RC questions correct consistently.

You've been doing a lot of work, but you may have prioritized quantity over quality. I think the main thing you're going to need to do is slow way down in practicing to give yourself time to develop stronger execution skills.

Do read the posts I mentioned. They cover these ideas in more detail.

Hi Kshitij,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. When these types of score drops occur, the two likely "causes" involve either something that was unrealistic during practice or something that was surprising (or not accounted for) on Test Day. Before we discuss any of those potential issues though - and the data in your ESR - it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

1) Over the last 8 months, were you following a consistent study routine or did you take significant 'time off' at various points during that time? Over the last 3 months, how many hours did you typically study each week?
2) Can you go into a bit more detail about the various study materials that you used (for example, it appears that you primarily used the EMPOWERgmat Course for just 1 month - back in July, 2021 - so how were you studying for the 6 months AFTER that point?)? What “brands” of CATs/mocks have you used?
3) Even though you studied for 8 months, did you really only take CATs/mocks during the last 2 months? On what dates (or approximate dates) did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?
4) Can you clarify your Score Goal? I ask because 3 weeks ago, you stated that your Score Goal was a 650, but now you're implying that it's closer to 750.
5) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Contact Rich at: Rich.C@empowergmat.com

Hi rich,

I had an internal company promotion exam where the cutoff was 650, which was my goal for my first attempt. It was not for MBA. Please find my revert below against your comments.

1. I was consistently dedicating 10 hours per week.
2. I have mentioned brand of mocks above OG and MGMAT, after empower I used TTP for 2-3 months.
3. I consistently scored 148-49 on OG and Q45-46 on MGMAT. I took mocks every sunday in last 2 months.
4. Well my goal is 760-780, considering a year horizon.
5. I plan to apply to HBS, Stanford, Wharton, LBS and Rotman.

Could any MGMAT expert please help with 10 point variance score in Verbal against OG. This is very important for my next prep.

My goal is V 41 and I can dedicate 1 year to achieve this.

How to get a V40 or higher on the GMAT? What about a V51?

Hope this helps.

Hi kshitijmiler,

Sorry about how things went with your GMAT. The key to scoring well on GMAT is to focusing on the right aspects. If your score doesn't improve even after months of prep, then that means that there's something wrong with the preparation strategy.

Your verbal score clearly indicates there are many conceptual gaps and you may need to start from scratch, revisit the concepts and get a clear understanding of them before you solve the questions. Verbal questions on GMAT are very tricky. Let me help you with the right way to approach your Verbal Prep.

How to Ace your Verbal Prep?

For GMAT Verbal, it is very important that you follow the right methodology and the logical approach. Your focus has to be on eliminating four incorrect choices rather than choosing the right one. The key is to develop a solid understanding of the concepts that are typically tested on the GMAT and master the process skills that are required to solve GMAT questions. Only then, you will be able to smartly avoid the traps set by the test makers.

Before you start learning, it's important to understand what is actually tested using the questions. Each module in Verbal (SC, CR and RC) has to be approached in a different way. For example, before you start learning the concepts of SC, you need to understand that SC questions on GMAT test your ability to convey the right meaning without any ambiguity. So, it's important to approach them from a meaning stand-point. You might have often come across answer choices which are both grammatically correct and convey a logical meaning but are indeed incorrect because they do not convey the intended meaning. So, the process to approach SC questions is to:
• Comprehend the original meaning of the sentence
• Identify errors if any (both grammatical and meaning wise)
• Eliminate answer choices which either are grammatically incorrect or do not convey the intended meaning

You can go through the link below to understand the process in a better way:


Also, improving in SC alone won’t fetch you the desired score. You need to prepare for RC and CR as well in a structured and efficient manner. You have to follow a methodical and systematic approach while solving the questions in order to work on your accuracy and increase your score. For example,
• In CR, you have to understand the argument, identify the premise and the conclusion and then pre-think the answer before looking at the solutions.
• In RC, you need to have the right reading strategies to understand the inferences which are not directly stated in the passage.

I’d recommend you to follow this order for the verbal part - SC->CR->RC. The reason for this is very specific. Each question type on the GMAT is testing a specific skill. SC tests your comprehension skills. CR tests comprehension & analytical skills. Finally, RC builds on the previous two skills and also tests your ability to be able to grasp the central point of the passage i.e. Your inferential skills. Thus, when you learn in this order, it's much more effective.

The importance of using a standard resource:

A lot of students spend a lot of time studying from various resources but see little to no improvement. One of the major reasons is that they fail to identify the gaps in the preparation. The courses that you have mentioned above are all great ones. However, the biggest problem with them is that they are all static courses which means you need to start studying from scratch and complete everything and while doing so you may not get an additional input on where you need to improve.

The only method to make sure that you invest your time, money and effort in an effective way is to use a standard resource which teaches you the concepts, strategies and also helps you work on your weaker areas. Studying using OG or a few random resources might help you to solve GMAT like questions but I’m afraid that they won’t be able to help you much from a strategy perspective.

I would suggest you to go for some standard course for your preparation which can help you prepare in a structured and efficient manner thereby increasing your productivity. It’s always better to spare some more time on your preparation until you are ready instead of missing out on your dream colleges/ b-schools in hurry.

Watch this interview to know how Lovish devised a plan to improve his GMAT Verbal ability going from V29 to V41 and leveraging the same to reach a 730 (Q48, V41).


GMATWhiz helps you with all these things as we follow a structured and methodical way of teaching things, which makes the learning process simpler and efficient. It also helps you to develop an understanding of the test maker’s intention behind asking the question. It uses an AI powered learning platform to provide you with real time improvement modules after every practice quiz. It provides you with additional concept videos and practise quizzes which helps you overcome your weaker areas in a specific topic right away without having to put in additional effort to identify your weaker areas.

You can check out GMATWhiz and go for it.

Here’s a link to our free trial – https://learn.gmatwhiz.com/?page=signup

Hope this helped and feel free to contact if you have any further queries.

You can always write back to me here or the better way would be to connect over a call and have a discussion. You can schedule a free consultation call using the below link.

When I see a drop this big between practice CATs and an official test, there are typically two things to check first: timing, and nerves (or, likely, a combination of both). Looking at your ESR, it's abundantly clear timing was an issue on your GMAT. You averaged 2:25 for the first 8 questions, 2:42 for the next 7... That means halfway through the section, you were about six minutes behind...and that doesn't account for any experimental questions in the first half of the test. If you went long on those, which seems likely, you were more than six minutes behind. Then in section three of the test, you averaged 1:20 a question, and for the final 8 questions averaged **48 seconds!**

This is a textbook timing nosedive. You need to make sure you're focusing on:

A). Developing good timing habits and discipline to guess and move on when needed.

B). Looking for strategies to get questions right, faster.

You SC time, in particular, averages 1:46---and that likely got dragged downward by extremely fast guesses in the back half of the test. That time needs to average 1:20 (and about 1:05 if you're going for a 40+, truth be told). Now, SC was the strongest performance on the test, but it was also over-indexed on time. You need to work on strategies to cut this down.

The CR and the RC time look okay *overall*, but those are also likely 'lumpy'--slower up front, and the average pulled down by rushing in the back half. The % correct on these question types was far lower than SC, though no doubt part of this is due to rushing in the back half.

Practice your timing, and build proper strategies so that you can get through questions quickly... without rushing! That's the trick of it. To go fast doesn't mean you're going fast... You've developed good strategies and pick up GMAT patterns and 'games' quick.

If you click the link in my signature, "The studying for verbal starter kit," it has a list of Free Prep Hour videos that go through some of the biggest, most important verbal strategies every GMAT student should work to master.

Thanks Reed for the insights, My timing got messed up in verbal, true. I am trying to understand even in mocks in both OG1-6 and MGMAT 1-6 i never had any time management issues. Still my verbal scores were inflated in MGMAT against OG. Could you explain why would that be the case. If you want i can give my registered access to MGMAT mocks. V35 To V25 even in mocks and final GMAT.

Well, once you got into the 'real test,' it seems like your mindset shifted. You started spending longer on questions than usual, due to nerves and/or a desire to 'get every question right.'

What order did you take the practice tests in? I just assumed you took them in the order you presented--official ones, then MPrep--so it looks like just improvement over time with practice. Granted, some variance is always expected. No test is perfect, nor is any test-taker. 10 points is a big drop--but again, that usually tells me either nerves or time or both took over during the official test.

Ultimately, the reason the score on one test was lower than the score on another test is that you were missing easier-level questions. Why that happened is for you to figure out. Either nerves/timing caused some issues, or you made more silly mistakes for whatever reasons, or your skills just aren't that consistent yet, and sometimes you perform peak level, and sometimes you don't. There was a time I was practicing a lot of golf, and there were a few days one summer I shot an 85, and one day an 82. And then some days I shot a 98. But I was good enough to never shoot a 110--which is what I was shooting when I started golfing.

I took Og's 3-6 after MGMAT all mocks. I have noted your point and appreciate your feedback. Since i want to dedicate a year for my verbal, what would be your recommendation for the same, apart from above mentioned points.