Do the strategies work anymore SC GMAT ??

Question

Hi Guys, I started preparing for GMAT a couple of months back. I prepared from OG, GMATClub Grammer guide Verbal Review, Manhattan Guides and Kaplan 800. I gave my GMAT last month and got a 28 in Eng

and 49 in Maths. During my prep as well, I was focusing my weak areas(verbal) more. I didn't find even one question close to OG. OG questions are easy

I learnt a lot of strategies, types of questions and how to work them out. But when I was there taking the actual test, to my surprise I was not able to apply any of the strategies learnt and was simply trying to find out which one is correct instead of eliminating which options are wrong. May be it was the test day anxiety but all I remember is all questions were tricky and were playing with me and I realized there is no way I can finish each SC question in a min which I was doing at practice time. Anyways, I am not gonna give up. I am gonna prepare again may be more strategically(not sure yet how), and hit my Target 700+ score. Just wanted to understand if GMAC is changing strategies. I will be preparing for 3 months, and then taking my second shot. It will be of so much help if you guys can share any 3 month Planner? Things I should do different this time? Strategies ? Thanks for your help. Abhishek

egmat · Answer

Dear Abhishek,

I am sorry to hear that you did not do as well on the real GMAT. May I ask, what was your strategy for SC.

Rajat Sadana

x114536T · Answer

Hi Rajat,

Strategies were to look for a mistake in the underlined portion in the first read. If find something, eliminate option choices which have that. 
After that start a vertical scan of the options. find splits and move on and eliminate the 4 incorrect options.

Thanks,
Abhishek

nkimidi7y · Answer

Sorry about your score.
If i may, let me point out a few things I realized during my preparation.

1) How much practice have you done using the strategies? Learning is one thing and practicing 100-150 tough SC questions is another thing. Pratice makes you exam ready.
2) Have you practiced under strict timing constraints? I felt that if someone spend 2-3 minutes on SC, he will get most of the questions right. But solving them in 90 seconds is what is required on the exam. So you have to get used to it.
3) If you have not followed step 2, you might have very well not managed your time well on the exam. Generally, if one doesnt manage his time, he will race through the last one-third of his exam, and with a situation like this there is a high probability that you will provide a wrong answer for 2 or more consecutive problems. GMAT penalizes heavily for this.

And a short answer to your question. If you are talking about the 8-10 mistake identifying strategies on SC---- yes they do work. If you are more clear about your question and strategy you have followed, others can provide specific answers. Since you are talking about a retake, i would suggest you to go through some previous posts and do some research work on the kind of materials , methods of preparation etc.

GMATBaumgartner · Answer

dear nkimidi7y /Rajat,

I too gave my GMAT a few days back and found my score horribly skewed from my preparation leading to the exam.
I am in the process of conducting a postmortem study of what went wrong and the one thing I have figured out is that I did not have enough 'exam readiness' or practice in 'real conditions' especially in verbal which you say comes from practicing your strategy's on 150 -200 hard qns - I think i wasn't doing that enough(though i did take a few mocks)
Well, I am thoroughly disappointed by my attempt( i got a meager 28 in verbal even though i had a very good preparation and strategy cut out for the test day). I would like to know what is the best way to practice and tune your mind to attack the verbal portion of the GMAT 
I know Rajat mentions Grockit for extensive practice, nkimidi7y : can you give me your inputs too.

nkimidi7y · Answer

Hi GMATBaumgartner,

Let us talk about SC first. There are two types of sources for practice. 1-> GMAT OG,questions from GMAT Prep. 2-> Other sources that are not mentioned in 1.
Since there are limited number of sources fron OG and GMATPrep we need to do some practice from other sources.
My practice was like this:
Stage1: Study all the chapters of manhattan SC. Then practiced 50 questions from OG.
Stage2: Practiced 100-200 questions from 1000SC series.

After stage1 and stage 2: i was constantly scoring 75% on every 20 questions. (But i was unable to spot where my errors, since they were very random).

then came GROCKIT into picture. The advantage with it is that it allows you to choose 1) the type of questions you want 2) the difficulty.
I followed this particular strategy, which has definitely improved my skills,understanding and confidence:
Choose a particular type of error/topic: example subject verb agreement and practice 10-15 questions. Review why a particular answer choice is right or wrong. then go back to the respective chapter in ManhattanSC and read it from the first word to the last word carefully. This is a very good strategy. This makes you a skillful at that particular error. ( So its like, become skillful with subject-verb agreement first, then skillful with tense, then with parallelism and so on. When you become skilled with each of them, you will be better prepared to answer questions which include more than one error.).

A tip while following grockit or 1000 sc: Some questions would seem very unconventional. If you find some answer not satisfying, research on the internet forums extensively.

Then go back to OG before the exam and solve all the SC questions.

Critical Reasoning:
Critical reasoning bible is a good book for reading and understanding.
Follow some online lessons or private tutoring to learn the strategies to attack different kinds of problems.
With CR, you should be adept at attacking the question type.
Practice grockit and OG.

Reading Comprehension
Time management is the most important thing. Long passages in GMAT are structured. Give a quick glance through the paragraphs. Dont try to remember details. While practicing tune yourself to make a mental map of the following 1) Why has author written this passage? 2) Did he agree or disagree , praise or criticize the main idea? 3) What is the connection of each passage to the previous passage, what is the connection of each line to the previous line?

If you find a passage very difficult to understand, dont waste your time in understanding completely. Starting answering the questions.

Generally the large passages in GMAT has the following structure.
Para 1-> Introduction
Para 2,3-> is mostly about examples or explanations or counter example.( you can skim through these two paras. just understand why this para is present and what it contains. if it talks about the population of USA in the 1940 before the blah blah blah.................. your job is to remember that the keyword population of USA exists in para 2.)
last para -> author states his stand using examples.

Short passages: No short cuts

read it completely.

"Thursdays with RON" by manhattan forum has 60-70 free classes. Go through them.

read it completely. "Thursdays with RON" by manhattan forum has 60-70 free classes. Go through them.

nkimidi7y · Answer

Please note that I am not an expert.These are my experiences while taking the GMAT. Professional tutors may give better advise.

x114536T · Answer

Thank you nkimidi7y.
Your strategies look correct and helping. 
What I had done is, read Manhattan SC guide with solving the questions which were coming after each chapter only. and after completing the book didn't practice well for individual types. Actually didn't track my mistakes and I guess I messed up here. That is why I was not able to understand the type the question effectively.

Thanks once again for your response.

Thanks,
Abhishek

GMATBaumgartner · Answer

Thank you nkimidi7y. 
I plan to make a thorough plan keeping your strategy's in mind. thanks once again

Do the strategies work anymore SC GMAT ??

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