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TheLostOne
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To take the test in a week or not? 06 Dec 2013, 11:17
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Hello boys and girls.

I have been studying extremely diligently for the past 4 months. That includes all 8 MGMAT books, OG12, a lot of OG13, and the GMAC Quant and Verbal books. I do the GMATclub question of the day everyday, and I have gone though a ton of the truly helpful articles on this great forum.

Here is my dilemma. I am slotted to take the test on the 14th. I want a 700+ (ideally 730). I have taken 5 MGMAT tests, and 1 GMAT Prep test. I have never cracked 700 yet. I am scoring around the low 40s in Q (40-43 depending on the source), and the alarming thing is I am in the 37's to 39's in verbal. I once scored a 43 on verbal in MGMAT, but that seemed to be more of an aberration. What is frustrating is that I have put in a ton of work on my verbal and I feel like I have made great bounds, and yet my score is stagnant. Where as I used to straight guess on SC, I can eliminate it down to 2 options 100% of the time now. Just seems I am picking the wrong option too frequently. My RC is fine, and I usually only miss one or two per test. CR is ok, and I may miss 3 or 4 of those.

Right now I am going through all the GMAT prep SC questions (fantastic download), and I am looking up each question I get wrong. I essentially have today, tomorrow, Sunday, and a few hours each day on the weekday to get ready. I will be taking the final MGMAT with an essay on Sunday.

I am ok with my Q score and will do light review of my error log to ensure that is fine. But in terms of my verbal, if I don't get it up to 43+ I won't get my score.

I don't mind eating the cost of the test, but what is frustrating is that I will be gone from 12/17 until 1/7 and won't be able to study during that time. I feel like I will be losing so much progress.

I will stop rambling, but what would you guys do?

Thanks
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mikemcgarry
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To take the test in a week or not? 06 Dec 2013, 12:51
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TheLostOne
Hello boys and girls.

I have been studying extremely diligently for the past 4 months. That includes all 8 MGMAT books, OG12, a lot of OG13, and the GMAC Quant and Verbal books. I do the GMATclub question of the day everyday, and I have gone though a ton of the truly helpful articles on this great forum.

Here is my dilemma. I am slotted to take the test on the 14th. I want a 700+ (ideally 730). I have taken 5 MGMAT tests, and 1 GMAT Prep test. I have never cracked 700 yet. I am scoring around the low 40s in Q (40-43 depending on the source), and the alarming thing is I am in the 37's to 39's in verbal. I once scored a 43 on verbal in MGMAT, but that seemed to be more of an aberration. What is frustrating is that I have put in a ton of work on my verbal and I feel like I have made great bounds, and yet my score is stagnant. Where as I used to straight guess on SC, I can eliminate it down to 2 options 100% of the time now. Just seems I am picking the wrong option too frequently. My RC is fine, and I usually only miss one or two per test. CR is ok, and I may miss 3 or 4 of those.

Right now I am going through all the GMAT prep SC questions (fantastic download), and I am looking up each question I get wrong. I essentially have today, tomorrow, Sunday, and a few hours each day on the weekday to get ready. I will be taking the final MGMAT with an essay on Sunday.

I am ok with my Q score and will do light review of my error log to ensure that is fine. But in terms of my verbal, if I don't get it up to 43+ I won't get my score.

I don't mind eating the cost of the test, but what is frustrating is that I will be gone from 12/17 until 1/7 and won't be able to study during that time. I feel like I will be losing so much progress.

I will stop rambling, but what would you guys do?

Thanks
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Dear TheLostOne,
I'm happy to respond. :-)

My sense is that if you are still relying on narrowing SC down to two and guessing, this tells me there are two few questions on which you know the answer with certainty. I think that's the standard for which you need to strive to achieve the kind of elite score for which you are aiming. If that's your goal, I think it's best not to leave things to chance. I would recommend postponing the test.

In fact, I would recommend: really plan to do this right. Let's say you will take the next few months to make of yourself a verbal superstar. Part of that has to be reading. Read every day, over and above any GMAT preparations you do. Force yourself to read hard, challenging material. Here's a blog with some recommendations about reading that will get you in shape for the GMAT:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-reading-list/
Here's a free idiom ebook:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/gmat-idiom-ebook/
Here's a three month study plan for people who are already scoring well but who want elite scores:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/3-month-gm ... -students/

In many ways, I think the biggest piece of this will be how devoted you are to daily reading. Analyze texts with sophisticated sentence structure and see if you can figure out all the grammatical structures in the sentence --- for example, look at the sentences in the US Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution: you will find some truly gigantic and conceptually deep sentences there. Read Emerson, Thoreau, T.S. Eliot's essays, and Jowett's translation of Plato. Read the most sophisticated material you can find, and pay attention to the grammar and sentence structure of each sentence you read. The goal here is to become a verbal superstar --- this will be a lot of work, but this is your surest path to the kind of elite score you would like to achieve.

Does all this make sense?
Mike :-)
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TheLostOne
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Joined: 23 Jul 2013
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To take the test in a week or not? 07 Dec 2013, 15:13
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mikemcgarry
TheLostOne
Hello boys and girls.

I have been studying extremely diligently for the past 4 months. That includes all 8 MGMAT books, OG12, a lot of OG13, and the GMAC Quant and Verbal books. I do the GMATclub question of the day everyday, and I have gone though a ton of the truly helpful articles on this great forum.

Here is my dilemma. I am slotted to take the test on the 14th. I want a 700+ (ideally 730). I have taken 5 MGMAT tests, and 1 GMAT Prep test. I have never cracked 700 yet. I am scoring around the low 40s in Q (40-43 depending on the source), and the alarming thing is I am in the 37's to 39's in verbal. I once scored a 43 on verbal in MGMAT, but that seemed to be more of an aberration. What is frustrating is that I have put in a ton of work on my verbal and I feel like I have made great bounds, and yet my score is stagnant. Where as I used to straight guess on SC, I can eliminate it down to 2 options 100% of the time now. Just seems I am picking the wrong option too frequently. My RC is fine, and I usually only miss one or two per test. CR is ok, and I may miss 3 or 4 of those.

Right now I am going through all the GMAT prep SC questions (fantastic download), and I am looking up each question I get wrong. I essentially have today, tomorrow, Sunday, and a few hours each day on the weekday to get ready. I will be taking the final MGMAT with an essay on Sunday.

I am ok with my Q score and will do light review of my error log to ensure that is fine. But in terms of my verbal, if I don't get it up to 43+ I won't get my score.

I don't mind eating the cost of the test, but what is frustrating is that I will be gone from 12/17 until 1/7 and won't be able to study during that time. I feel like I will be losing so much progress.

I will stop rambling, but what would you guys do?

Thanks
Dear TheLostOne,
I'm happy to respond. :-)

My sense is that if you are still relying on narrowing SC down to two and guessing, this tells me there are two few questions on which you know the answer with certainty. I think that's the standard for which you need to strive to achieve the kind of elite score for which you are aiming. If that's your goal, I think it's best not to leave things to chance. I would recommend postponing the test.

In fact, I would recommend: really plan to do this right. Let's say you will take the next few months to make of yourself a verbal superstar. Part of that has to be reading. Read every day, over and above any GMAT preparations you do. Force yourself to read hard, challenging material. Here's a blog with some recommendations about reading that will get you in shape for the GMAT:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-reading-list/
Here's a free idiom ebook:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/gmat-idiom-ebook/
Here's a three month study plan for people who are already scoring well but who want elite scores:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/3-month-gm ... -students/

In many ways, I think the biggest piece of this will be how devoted you are to daily reading. Analyze texts with sophisticated sentence structure and see if you can figure out all the grammatical structures in the sentence --- for example, look at the sentences in the US Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution: you will find some truly gigantic and conceptually deep sentences there. Read Emerson, Thoreau, T.S. Eliot's essays, and Jowett's translation of Plato. Read the most sophisticated material you can find, and pay attention to the grammar and sentence structure of each sentence you read. The goal here is to become a verbal superstar --- this will be a lot of work, but this is your surest path to the kind of elite score you would like to achieve.

Does all this make sense?
Mike :-)
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Thank you, Mike!

It is interesting, I think I may have been in a bad rut or down on confidence. However, I have done well over 120 GMAT prep SC questions since posting this question and I have only incorrectly marked a handful of questions. Modifiers are starting to click more. Still working on it though.
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