Need urgent Help(Stuck at 650)

Question

Hi there,

I have been preparing for gmat for close to 3 months now. I specifically chose the period so that I could learn things well.
Although, there has been a progress but not so much as I expected.
I fared pretty badly in my first(Q-45,V-26,580). 
This time i registered to Magoosh and E-gmat for Quants and verbal lessons respectively. I have been through all the notes.
But still, I am stuck at 640-670(q-49,V-29 to32).
Quants -mostly around 13 incorrect, out of these 3-4 are silly mistakes.
Verbal-13-18 incorrect, mostly I'm able to eliminate 3 out of 5 and then fail while pressing the answer.
1) I find Rc to be very boring and hence just skim through it. Usually i have a 50% accuracy in RC. Does this pull down my verbal score?
2) Also, I can't find solutions of Gmat PrepTest 1 & 2. Where can i find them?
I have another 3 weeks to go. 
My aim is to get 720,and I believe it's just around corner but somehow out of reach.
Can someone answer the querries?

Thanks in advance.

JimGMATAnswers · Answer

Honestly, you just have to keep at it. While it is difficult to give specific strategies without reviewing your work, if you are making 'silly' mistakes you have to understand why. Should you be spending more time reviewing questions so that you understand the different nuances? Or should you add checks into your work to catch errors.

As for the verbal, you have to do something to get yourself geared up for RC. 50% means you are getting 6 wrong because you are bored...

If you do a google search for the problems you are likely to find your answers.

Let me know if you need anything else.

VeritasPrepDennis · Answer

Eliminating the "silly" mistakes will have a positive affect on your Quant score. These careless errors cost you by forcing you to answer two more questions to get back to the same difficulty and, thus, you've lost the opportunity to boost your Quant score in the process. So, analyze the reasons that you make these silly errors and work hard to eliminate them. For me, the careles errors were going to fast (and making a silly math error), answering the wrong question and forgetting about how 0 might impact the equation or situation. Sometimes people assume the number must be positive or an integer. To combat these issues, I suggest that you write the top 3 - 5 causes for your careless mistakes at the top of your scratch paper when working practice problems or practice tests and consciously slow yourself down so that you can counter-act the causes.

On the RC issue, as Jim mentioned above, the boredom is having a downward impact on your Verbal score. One of the tough things test takers have to contend with on the Reading Comprehension portion of the exam is "how" to read the passages. While in school or at our jobs, we typically read for detail, in the RC section of the exam, we need to read completely differently. SInce, we are not expected to know the subject matter of the reading passages, all of the information to answer the questions is included. But, since we do not know the subject matter, we really cannot read to pick out the details to answer the specific questions on the first read - especially because we do not know what the questions are! Therefore, it is important to read the passages at a 30,000 foot level so that you can understand the general parameters of them rather than specific details. For example, if the passage is about how the human brain synthesizes amino acids, understanding the 
big picture" of the passage (what the passage is about, what the author is saying about the topic and how the passage is organized) is much simpler than digesting the process involved and becoming an expert on the detailed subject matter. Getting the big picture then gives you the tools with which to then answer the questions. Nailing down precisely what the passage is about (the scope). allows you to answer many universal type questions such as, "The best title for this passage is..". Figuring out what the author is saying about the subject matter helps you to answer questions such as "the primary purpose of this passage is" or "which of the following best describe the author's view...". Finally, determining how the passage is organized, (i.e., chronologically; point/counter-point; one theory, a better theory, the best theory) helps you to quicky find where to get the answers to detailed questions. RC questions that begin, "according to the passage.." invariably require you to delve into the passage to find the answer. Knowing the layout of the author's passage helps to get to the appropriate portion of the passage to begin searching.

Hope these tips help, and feel free to ask additional questions.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi souvilibra,

Beyond the missing points from silly mistakes, the bulk of the missing points you're looking for are going to be found in the Verbal section, so the bulk of your time should be spent working on that section.

1) Under normal circumstance, do you have to rush to finish the Verbal section (and how many questions do you have to guess on to finish)?
2) What steps do you go through when dealing with a typical SC, RC or CR prompt?

If you're looking for explanations for the GMATPrep CATs, you can google the individual questions.

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

Buckeye2304 · Answer

Thanks Jim/Dennis/Rich,
I know I lag behind in verbal. As far as i have no timing issues(atleast never had to rush through the end of the test).
During my initial prep days, I used to pre think for my CR questions(although, itdidn't help me) and write down notes for the passages. There was small improvement in accuracy of RC but not as I expected.Hence, lately I feel that it would waste my time and have done away with it. Should i go back to maintaining notes strategy? With 3 weeks to go, should take this course of action?
For Sc, I do a 3-step process, identifying the meaning and look for splits(for faster ellimination) and as a last check, O re read it so that it sounds ok.
I would keep in mind to double check to avoid silly mistakes/reading errors.
I finished my second round of OG13 Sc, and the scores didn't show any signs of improvement(close to 100 out of 140).
Most of the incorrect questions were from later part of the question bank.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi souvilibra,

From what you've described, it sounds like you're taking a 'brute force' approach with the Verbal section (and just doing lots of practice questions) without really focusing on tactics.

What is your exact Test Date? Do you have the flexibility to push your Test back (even if it's just for a couple of weeks)?

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

Buckeye2304 · Answer

Hi Rich.
I have my Gmat exam on 8th Aug. I really dont wish to stretch it anymore because I see no point in it.
I've already spent close to 4 months and dont see another couple of weeks doing the trick for me.
You are correct in stating that I've practising without getting futile results.
But still I am not sure how another 2 weeks will add to my situation?
What do you propose?

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi souvilibra,

I can recommend some additional study resources to you, but I want to make sure that you have the necessary time to properly use them. Even a couple of weeks of extra time (on top of the time that you have remaining) could make a difference.

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

VeritasPrepDennis · Answer

souvilibra -

With just a few weeks to your exam date, focusing on "tactics" to improve your Verbal score is definitely the way to go. As I mentioned in my earlier post, re-orienting yourself in how you read the RC passages will provide the biggest bang for your buck here. Instead of reading the passage for details (like we do in school or at work), we need to read the RC passage at more of an overview level since the test makers do not expect us to be subjet matter experts. What reading at the overview level really means is to get from your initial reading what the topic of the passage is about, what the author is saying about the topic and how the passage is organized. If it helps you to take notes while reading (and does not disrupt your concentration or slow you down significantly) feel free to do so. But, understand that you will be delving back into the passage on the detail questions and this is where understanding how the organization of the passage truly helps.

Your tactic of pre-thinking on the CR questions is good. But for this to be of siginificant benefit, you must really understand the structure of the argument being presented. By this, I mean you need to determine whether the CR question is requiring you to strenghten, weaken, make an inference, decide which assumption is correct, etc. The GMAT uses a very mechanical approach to logic and, for me, it helps to visualize the structure in some fashion. FOr example, if you think of a strengthen type question as two roads connected by a bridge with the one road being a premise (or several premises) and the other road being the conclusion, the correct answer will be the answer that connects the two roads with no gaps. The primary skill you will need to hone using this tactic will be to be able to idenitify the premises and conclusions in the stimuli. If the stimulus has a conclusion, then you are looking at a strengthen, weake or assumption type question. If the stimulus does not have a conclusion, then you have an inference question (and with these questions, the correct answer is the one that is true 100% - not 99.9% or 98%, but 100% of the time).

With the SC questions, your best bet is tio use reasoning as extensively as possible. While you need to have a good grammar ans sentence construction base, you really do not need to be a grammarian to do well on these questions. People are generally good at determining if a sentence just does not seem "right". Since the answer choices are part of the question, you can weigh and measure the differences in the answer choices to eliminate wrong answers. For example, by reading the initial sentence you realize that it is incorrect because the verb have should be has. You can now go through the answer choices and eliminate any of the choices using "have". For the remaining choices, you can then read to determine the differences in those and eliminate choices that have other errors.

Finally, you mentioned that your lack of improvement on the SC questions, but noted that these were mostly at the back end of the question bank. I would suggest that you review those you missed and figure out why you missed the questions. If there are re-curring themes, you can focus on several and lock those down. If you would like clarification on any of the items I mention above, let me know.

Buckeye2304 · Answer

Hi Rich,
Thanks for the suggestion, but I have enough study/practise material at my disposal.
Dennis,
Yes, You sound more reasonable. My only concern is if taking notes breaks down momentum,and that happens to me.But Not taking notes comes with a price of lower accuracy. What do you suggest for that?
Also, I have 2 additional prep test available to me.
I want to use them to best effect.
can you please suggest me the better approach?

VeritasPrepDennis · Answer

souvilibra -

With regard to the note taking, rather than disrupting your momentum while reading, you can jot down your notes immediately after finishing the passage. I would suggest limiting your notes to the overview types of things such as: 1) the scope of the passage; 2) is the author giving information, analyzing something or just providing opinions on a subject; 3) the organization of the passage; and, 4) why did the author write the passage (i.e, to tell us about.....). If you want to note a technical term, definition, etc. this is good as well. But, you only want spend 20 -30 seconds on these notes.

SInce your test date is only 3 weeks away, I would suggest that you take one of the Practice Tests (take all sections if you can, AWA and IR) within the next week. Try to take the Practice Test at the same time you have your actual exam set for - in order to best simulate the real environmemt. After getting the results, it is important to analyze them to determine your weak areas, identify careless mistakes, etc. Take your final Practice Test around the 1st of August. This will give you some time to work on any challenges you still encounter.

Buckeye2304 · Answer

Thanks Dennis,
I reviewd my practise test and found that:
1) In quants, for both the tests I got 13 incorrect, out of which 2-3 were really tough and the rest were wrong because I didn't apply myself. The 2 main reasons for same are firstly that exam pressure and the clock got better of me and most of the times I didn't take a pause after reading the question which led me to a wrong approach and hence wrong answer. I hope to make a significant difference in this section.
2) In verbal, as discussed, CR and RC are the culprits, with close to 50 percentile in both practise tests.A more closer look indicates that, I am weak in Weaken questions in Cr(4 out of 10 incorrect) and detailed questions in RC(5 out of 9 incorrect).
So planning to spend more time to fine tune my skills.

Thank you again. Feeling more confident now.

VeritasPrepDennis · Answer

souvilibra.

It sounds like you are on the right track. For virtually all of the CR questions, if you look for the flaw in the argument (using a "weaken" mindset), this will help you - especially on the Weaken questions. As to the detail RC questions, focus a bit more on the organization of the passage on your initial reading, and that can assist you in quickly finding the text that will help you answer the detail questions. Good luck and keep the questions coming.

Dennis

Buckeye2304 · Answer

Hi guys, 
I was practising Rc and had a strange pattern. 
I got 20 wrong in first 70 questions(is that bad ? ):
1)3-4 were difficult, 
2)skipping the details(almost 7). 
3) whenever i guessed a question after narrowing down to 2, i got all of them(6) incorrect.

Any suggestions on last one?

Buckeye2304 · Answer

Hello guys,
I keep coming back to you. I gave my Gmat, and as expected, scored a 680(Q-49,V-32). I then ordered detailed score report and this is what it had to say about verbal: 
Cr -74th percentile - 36
Rc- 47th percentile - 27
SC- 66th percentile - 33
A probable reason that i thought affected my Verbal was last 30 minutes. I got laid back after seeing an Evaluate and Boldface question. And with 10 minutes left, I had 10 questions left(3 from RC :D ) . I believe i faltered in strategy here, as I should have aswered only those which I could have.
Will it be a good on my part to go back to gmat without any delay or should I give myself another month or so?
Although GMAT2 was a significant leap, but still short of my expectations.
Thanks,
Souvilibra

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Souvilibra,

Can you post the entire ESR? There is additional information in it that can help to diagnose your particular situation.

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

Buckeye2304 · Answer

Hello guys,

Here's the attachment for the verbal section.

Thanks

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi souvilibra,

I've sent you a PM with some notes on your ESR.

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

	Target Test Prep - Save up to $599 $400 Discount + $99 Bonus GMAT Club Tests
	e-GMAT: 60% Off on GMAT Focus Get to 735+ from any starting point
	Magoosh increases your score, guaranteed - 15% off ALL Magoosh GMAT plans with code GMATCLUB15 + Free GMAT Club Tests.
	Manhattan Prep: $99 Bonus Score Higher on Your GMAT Exam. Guaranteed.
	Experts' Global - ~~$1720~~ $960 End-to-End GMAT Prep + App Support: 150+ Videos, 2000+ Questions, 15 FLTs +
	GMATWhiz - $299 ~~$499~~ Experience the course through a free trial.
	GMAT Club Tests - Free Included with every course purchase of $149+ View all deals

Need urgent Help(Stuck at 650)

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards