Verbal scores dropped in the real test, what should I do? UPD: 730!

Thank you for your reply and sorry for my late response jabhatta2 ! (heavy workloads during the application season)

I think that I'm not in the best position to advise you how to improve RC, since there are so many outstanding and helpful experts at this forum, but I could share some of my personal experience.

About how to improve RC, I am actually quite confident about my reading skills in the Chinese language--I love reading books and have read a lot of my books in my life. But reading GMAT passages in the English language is another story. Basically, I think that in order to do well in the RC section, I need to have the capacity to get the structure and main point and the capacity to understand details, and they are both essential.

Vocabulary and grammar analysis are two components I have been working hard to polish during this journey. By improving these two components, I can do a better job in understanding the details. By preparing for TOEFL, which generally has much longer passages than GMAT, I've developed a better feeling about how to get the passage structure and main idea efficiently. When I deal with TOEFL and GMAT long passages, I keep thinking "What do you (author) want to say exactly?"

Q1. Did you perhaps practice 1 RC passage a day (700 level RC passages perhaps only) ? Very complex passages perhaps or just 600 -700 level passages ?

A: Over the past two months, I tried to practice one hard RC passage every day but I could not manage to do so given heavy workloads. But I managed to keep practicing RC every two or three days. More importantly, I analyzed them very carefully--reviewing one passage took me at least 3 hours on average. I tried to understand how the test makers design the complex sentence structures so next time when I see similar structure, I would not fear.

Q2. Did you practice doing them -- untimed or timed ?

A: When I practiced a new passage, I timed myself and only gave myself about three or four mins at most. But I analyzed the passages without any time limits.

Q3. In the world of RC - did you practice more Detailed Oriented questions or Inference type questions ? Based on my ESR - i am weaker in "Detail Oriented" questions.

A: I don't have any particularly weak areas in RC--I think I was weak in both of them. I just practiced all types of questions. If you do think you have more difficulty in getting the details, maybe it's a good idea to review all the mistakes you've made to see whether there is a "pattern," or a systematic blind spot, in your thinking and reasoning.

Q4. Given I don't need to take the TOEFL - Any suggestions on RC improvement would be great.

A: How about checking some TOEFL RC questions available online? Once you've practiced them, you would know how amazing it is that GMAT passages are actually much shorter! Preparing for TOEFL made me less fearful of long passages.




Timing control is really a difficult task, jabhatta2. I am not sure whether I can give you satisfying answers, as I still had some difficulty in my last attempt. I also hope to improve my timing control next time.

How did I narrow the eight-min gap? Well, I just told myself "I really need to move on." I remember for some questions for which I had two final options, I kind of stopped struggling between the two and just selected one with intuition. Usually we never want to take GMAT with intuition, but I guess that is my best strategy when I get only two candidates under huge time pressure.

I remember that I had a bold-faced CR question in my latest attempt. Because usually I am pretty good with these bold-faced questions, I just skimmed the content, "had a feeling what the two sentences should be," and selected an option. Again, I want to stress that it should not be the correct method or mindset, just a strategy I NEEDED to take since I was seriously behind my timetable.

For about two CR questions with so heavy content that I felt I would need to spend two mins just in understanding the stems, I guessed immediately since I was behind my timetable. I think I also guessed one SC question immediately because it is almost as long as a CR question and has many words I don't know. Yet, I didn't skip any RC passages.



Yes, I took the real test for six times, and this journey is not easy at all.

I almost wanted to give up after my third attempt, for which I got an even lower score than in my second attempt because I was too stressed that I even felt dizzy during the test. (Not in the figurative sense.)

Some people got their target scores at their first attempt, second attempt, or third attempt, and that is good for them.

I just did not want to give up and I decided to keep trying.

It is a cool test after all, you know, the kind of test I've pushed myself to be sharper and clearer along the way. Not some test I just need to memorize a bunch of things to pass.

As for the ideal length of gaps between two attempts, I think the answer is really subjective. There are some parts in the test we cannot control, such as the test center environment, the noise, the traffic, the guys sitting next to you, and so on. Sometimes we are inevitably affected by these factors, with our scores suffering or failing to meet our expectations. If a test taker retakes GMAT in a short break and is so lucky to avoid all these negative factors, he or she might get a better score and reaches his or her targets.

However, if a test taker aims for a great improvement, my personal and subjective opinion is that a short break (such as 15 days) is not enough, at least not enough for non-native speakers. After all, it is a reasoning test and it is all about our reasoning ability. In order to reason, we must at least understand the questions themselves and be able to detect the problems in their thinking lines. Great improvement in these abilities do take time.

That is all I can share for now. Thank you for your questions.

All the best and good luck to your studies!