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07 Jul 2018, 03:59
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Hi,
I am a 25 year old Business Analyst at a well-renowned MNC and have always aspired to do my graduation in MBA from a top B-school. I have what I would like to believe a strong profile so far, with good academic scores, diverse and business-intensive experience across industries, and strong LORs of alumni from Booth, Wharton and Ross all of whom I work closely with on a daily basis. At the start of 2018 I had planned to finish my GMAT within the 1st half of the year and then apply to B-schools for fall 2019. Unfortunately, I was immensely burdened with work till April-18 end, and started preparing for GMAT only in May 1st week.
My plan of preparation was to replicate what 1 of my friends did who had scored a 720 a couple of years back. He had used GMATclub tests for quants; He gave mocks, made notes, and eventually improved his score on quants to a consistent 47-49. For SC, he used Manhattan Prep for SC, and said that he was fully prepared for SC, but he did nothing for CR and RC till his exam date. For RC and CR, he used to practice 1 passage and 10 questions respectively, everyday for the 2 months of his prep, but still wasn't confident even on test day.
Always in the top 10 %ile in math since school, I knew I would be able to handle quant, so I started with SC from Manhattan GMAT prep on May 1st, and I must admit, I prepared for SC very slowly by lazying out taking the entire month of May. During the SC prep, I never touched CR and RC. May 25th, I started off with CR and found the OG questions relatively easy. And with that over-confidence, I booked my GMAT date of June 30th. After 4-5 days of CR practice, I started solving RC questions from OG. I knew I was doing it miserably, but thought if my friend could do it, I could too. Mind you, all this while, I had not given a single mock, neither verbal nor quant. On 4th June, I decided to shift my focus to quant. I bought GMATclub tests and my first test I scored a miserable 37 in quant. I knew I had to work on it, and then for the next 10 days, I gave multiple quant tests and made notes alongside, and was eventually hitting the 47-49 mark by 17th of June. Throughout the quant prep, for verbal I was just solving 10 questions on SC everyday from the GMAC.wiley site. By now, I was confident of Quant, but I had no idea how I would deal with verbal. I had read an article of someone who scored a 740 who too said that CR and RC are topics that no amount of prep can help, and it's all about how quickly you read and comprehend. I thought SC I might still be able to tackle, but CR and RC is something I will improve through mocks. Always a top-tier achiever at school, undergrad and now at work, I thought I would do well with GMAT too. On 18th June, I gave my first MGMAT mock and scored a miserable 500. I was shattered. But somehow, I gathered hope because I had heard quant is way tougher on MGMAT than actual GMAT. I practiced 3 to 4 more quant GMATclub tests and started scoring 48-49 consistently, and then again gave my MGMAT mock 6 days before my GMAT. This time I got a 580 (Q43, V28). I gave another mock the next day and scored a 590 (Q44, V29). I knew then that I would not do more than a 670 in my final GMAT, so kept that as my target score for this attempt, with the vision that I would narrow down on my verbal score for my next GMAT attempt. 3 days before the GMAT I gave my GMATprep mock and got a 630. And finally, I randomly ended up giving a GMATclub verbal test just 2 days before the final exam in which I scored a 20! My confidence on verbal was completely gone! From V28 I came down to V20 that too 2 days before my GMAT exam. My attitude on exam day and 2 days before that was such that, I had lost hope of scoring even a V28 or V29. I was already in a mindset where I told myself that I will definitely have to take another test, but in this 1, I will at least make sure I do well in other sections.
During the GMAT exam, I chose the order: Quant, Verbal, IR, AWA; And ended up scoring a Q49 and IR5, which I was satisfied with, but I scored a V20. I was really disappointed with this score, because I wanted to hit at least the V28 or V29 mark.
I introspected about my preparation and realized the following mistakes in my prep -
1 - Lack of time - I started my dedicated preparation only after registering for the exam date; And ended up giving only 1 month of prep
2 - Slow reading skill - Though from a well off English speaking school and society, I was never an ardent reader and always knew my Verbal score would be a challenge that I would have to overcome, so I should have dedicated more time to Verbal preparation; What worked for my friend may not work for me
3 - Lack of structure in approaching verbal questions - I had no structure of solving problems at all in verbal; Every question I answered in verbal on the GMAT I wasn't of any of them
4 - Not giving mocks early enough - Giving too many mocks in the last week of the test; This was a result of starting my preparation late, and this completely demoralized me
5 - Lack of dealing with time pressure in verbal - No practice of giving verbal test in a timed manner; Solving verbal questions individually might still be easy, but attempting them with accuracy in 65 minutes is a challenge that needs practice
With a not so bad quant score it is now clear where I need to narrow down on, that is, the whole of verbal. Now, I am going to give my GMAT after 2 months and want to score nothing below a 740. That is, at least, a Q49 V41. Yes, it might seem ambitious given the scores I have previously got but I am quite confident of my capability and about dedicating my time to achieve my dream. I just need the right guidance, strategy and techniques.
The bottom line is, now while I continue with my quant mocks (weekly 2 to 3) to not lose out on my quant score and start reading articles/books out of my areas of interest for at least 1 hour everyday, I need help with boosting my verbal score from 20s to AT LEAST 41. For this purpose, I am looking for the best (irrespective of paid or free) tutoring options / online material / online tests / reading strategies, for VERBAL only, to grasp and stick to an efficient structure, to pickup techniques for increasing my speed and to improve my accuracy in solving Verbal questions to get to this score of 41.
Your help and suggestion will be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Harghun
I am a 25 year old Business Analyst at a well-renowned MNC and have always aspired to do my graduation in MBA from a top B-school. I have what I would like to believe a strong profile so far, with good academic scores, diverse and business-intensive experience across industries, and strong LORs of alumni from Booth, Wharton and Ross all of whom I work closely with on a daily basis. At the start of 2018 I had planned to finish my GMAT within the 1st half of the year and then apply to B-schools for fall 2019. Unfortunately, I was immensely burdened with work till April-18 end, and started preparing for GMAT only in May 1st week.
My plan of preparation was to replicate what 1 of my friends did who had scored a 720 a couple of years back. He had used GMATclub tests for quants; He gave mocks, made notes, and eventually improved his score on quants to a consistent 47-49. For SC, he used Manhattan Prep for SC, and said that he was fully prepared for SC, but he did nothing for CR and RC till his exam date. For RC and CR, he used to practice 1 passage and 10 questions respectively, everyday for the 2 months of his prep, but still wasn't confident even on test day.
Always in the top 10 %ile in math since school, I knew I would be able to handle quant, so I started with SC from Manhattan GMAT prep on May 1st, and I must admit, I prepared for SC very slowly by lazying out taking the entire month of May. During the SC prep, I never touched CR and RC. May 25th, I started off with CR and found the OG questions relatively easy. And with that over-confidence, I booked my GMAT date of June 30th. After 4-5 days of CR practice, I started solving RC questions from OG. I knew I was doing it miserably, but thought if my friend could do it, I could too. Mind you, all this while, I had not given a single mock, neither verbal nor quant. On 4th June, I decided to shift my focus to quant. I bought GMATclub tests and my first test I scored a miserable 37 in quant. I knew I had to work on it, and then for the next 10 days, I gave multiple quant tests and made notes alongside, and was eventually hitting the 47-49 mark by 17th of June. Throughout the quant prep, for verbal I was just solving 10 questions on SC everyday from the GMAC.wiley site. By now, I was confident of Quant, but I had no idea how I would deal with verbal. I had read an article of someone who scored a 740 who too said that CR and RC are topics that no amount of prep can help, and it's all about how quickly you read and comprehend. I thought SC I might still be able to tackle, but CR and RC is something I will improve through mocks. Always a top-tier achiever at school, undergrad and now at work, I thought I would do well with GMAT too. On 18th June, I gave my first MGMAT mock and scored a miserable 500. I was shattered. But somehow, I gathered hope because I had heard quant is way tougher on MGMAT than actual GMAT. I practiced 3 to 4 more quant GMATclub tests and started scoring 48-49 consistently, and then again gave my MGMAT mock 6 days before my GMAT. This time I got a 580 (Q43, V28). I gave another mock the next day and scored a 590 (Q44, V29). I knew then that I would not do more than a 670 in my final GMAT, so kept that as my target score for this attempt, with the vision that I would narrow down on my verbal score for my next GMAT attempt. 3 days before the GMAT I gave my GMATprep mock and got a 630. And finally, I randomly ended up giving a GMATclub verbal test just 2 days before the final exam in which I scored a 20! My confidence on verbal was completely gone! From V28 I came down to V20 that too 2 days before my GMAT exam. My attitude on exam day and 2 days before that was such that, I had lost hope of scoring even a V28 or V29. I was already in a mindset where I told myself that I will definitely have to take another test, but in this 1, I will at least make sure I do well in other sections.
During the GMAT exam, I chose the order: Quant, Verbal, IR, AWA; And ended up scoring a Q49 and IR5, which I was satisfied with, but I scored a V20. I was really disappointed with this score, because I wanted to hit at least the V28 or V29 mark.
I introspected about my preparation and realized the following mistakes in my prep -
1 - Lack of time - I started my dedicated preparation only after registering for the exam date; And ended up giving only 1 month of prep
2 - Slow reading skill - Though from a well off English speaking school and society, I was never an ardent reader and always knew my Verbal score would be a challenge that I would have to overcome, so I should have dedicated more time to Verbal preparation; What worked for my friend may not work for me
3 - Lack of structure in approaching verbal questions - I had no structure of solving problems at all in verbal; Every question I answered in verbal on the GMAT I wasn't of any of them
4 - Not giving mocks early enough - Giving too many mocks in the last week of the test; This was a result of starting my preparation late, and this completely demoralized me
5 - Lack of dealing with time pressure in verbal - No practice of giving verbal test in a timed manner; Solving verbal questions individually might still be easy, but attempting them with accuracy in 65 minutes is a challenge that needs practice
With a not so bad quant score it is now clear where I need to narrow down on, that is, the whole of verbal. Now, I am going to give my GMAT after 2 months and want to score nothing below a 740. That is, at least, a Q49 V41. Yes, it might seem ambitious given the scores I have previously got but I am quite confident of my capability and about dedicating my time to achieve my dream. I just need the right guidance, strategy and techniques.
The bottom line is, now while I continue with my quant mocks (weekly 2 to 3) to not lose out on my quant score and start reading articles/books out of my areas of interest for at least 1 hour everyday, I need help with boosting my verbal score from 20s to AT LEAST 41. For this purpose, I am looking for the best (irrespective of paid or free) tutoring options / online material / online tests / reading strategies, for VERBAL only, to grasp and stick to an efficient structure, to pickup techniques for increasing my speed and to improve my accuracy in solving Verbal questions to get to this score of 41.
Your help and suggestion will be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Harghun
Arro44
Joined: 04 Jun 2018
Last visit: 14 Aug 2022
Posts: 658
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Given Kudos: 362
Location: United States
Concentration: General Management, Finance
Schools: Sloan '22 (M) Cambridge "21 (A$)
GMAT 1: 730 Q47 V44
GPA: 3.4
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07 Jul 2018, 04:18
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Hello my friend,
I would recommend to read the following topics:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/how-to-impro ... l#p1643215
https://gmatclub.com/forum/experts-topi ... l#p1863647
https://gmatclub.com/forum/verbal-strat ... l#p2082192
All the best for your prep,
Chris
I would recommend to read the following topics:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/how-to-impro ... l#p1643215
https://gmatclub.com/forum/experts-topi ... l#p1863647
https://gmatclub.com/forum/verbal-strat ... l#p2082192
All the best for your prep,
Chris
09 Jul 2018, 08:07
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Bookmarks
To improve your verbal score from the 20s to 41+, you'll need to really focus on specific areas and religiously re-quiz yourself.
Stop taking so many quant mocks! Focus on the problems first.
You need to demonstrate incremental improvements.
During your SC studies, we encourage you to follow along expert video explanations to guide you in your thought process.
Here's a shared Google doc of video links you may find helpful:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1f_ckd ... H1HmTgctJI
RC is a critical component:
For RC - the best way to improve is to practice.
I highly recommend Harvard Magazine articles? Why? Because they have a lot of short articles - that are very similar to what you might see on the GMAT exam -- usually 4-6 paragraphs citing some kind of social or science research.
Favorite this:
https://harvardmagazine.com/topic/Research
Look for where it says: "Select a topic:" - Humanities, Social Science, Science, International
Go to the above link and read some of the articles.You'll see these are almost the exact topics you will see on the actual GMAT exam.
Here's one example:
https://harvardmagazine.com/2018/02/how ... lationship
Are you able to quickly read through it - ideally without reading every word - and identify WHO is writing it and WHY they are writing it - WHAT's the whole point to the author spending time to write these passages?
These are great for RC comprehension - with practice, time management becomes a non-issue.
This is what we recommend for our students!
See if this video helps: https://www.gmatpill.com/readingcomprehension/intro.mp4
You can also get more RC Practice with our online question bank:
https://www.gmatpill.com/gmat-practice-t ... questions/
---and the best material for RC is saved for our RC Pill course where we actually walk through dozens of RC passages showing you where to read and where not to read.
Just look for "Vishal" under the "Verbal Improvement" tab of
https://www.gmatpill.com/testimonials
-- read his story (and video) about RC improvement.
You can learn more about GMAT Pill at:
https://www.gmatpill.com
Stop taking so many quant mocks! Focus on the problems first.
You need to demonstrate incremental improvements.
During your SC studies, we encourage you to follow along expert video explanations to guide you in your thought process.
Here's a shared Google doc of video links you may find helpful:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1f_ckd ... H1HmTgctJI
RC is a critical component:
For RC - the best way to improve is to practice.
I highly recommend Harvard Magazine articles? Why? Because they have a lot of short articles - that are very similar to what you might see on the GMAT exam -- usually 4-6 paragraphs citing some kind of social or science research.
Favorite this:
https://harvardmagazine.com/topic/Research
Look for where it says: "Select a topic:" - Humanities, Social Science, Science, International
Go to the above link and read some of the articles.You'll see these are almost the exact topics you will see on the actual GMAT exam.
Here's one example:
https://harvardmagazine.com/2018/02/how ... lationship
Are you able to quickly read through it - ideally without reading every word - and identify WHO is writing it and WHY they are writing it - WHAT's the whole point to the author spending time to write these passages?
These are great for RC comprehension - with practice, time management becomes a non-issue.
This is what we recommend for our students!
See if this video helps: https://www.gmatpill.com/readingcomprehension/intro.mp4
You can also get more RC Practice with our online question bank:
https://www.gmatpill.com/gmat-practice-t ... questions/
---and the best material for RC is saved for our RC Pill course where we actually walk through dozens of RC passages showing you where to read and where not to read.
Just look for "Vishal" under the "Verbal Improvement" tab of
https://www.gmatpill.com/testimonials
-- read his story (and video) about RC improvement.
You can learn more about GMAT Pill at:
https://www.gmatpill.com
