GMAT 700 (Q50, V33) - Need Help

Question

Hi All,

Good Day.. !!

I gave my GMAT few days back and got 700 (Q50, V33). I did only self study from GMAT Club. I feel I can increase my score significantly in Verbal, especially in RC. If I remember correctly, I did few silly mistakes in Quant in actual GMAT & after coming back from exam when I solved those questions again I got correct answers. How do I remove such silly mistakes in actual GMAT?

Kindly advise as what strategy/course should I follow for RC. Also, I have practiced almost all the question in SC Section of GC. Practicing again from GC for SC will not be much helpful. Please advise on this also.

Thanks.

Hi Experts,

Please advise on the above. I have 3 Months time with me and can devote around 4-5 hours per day. My Target score is around 740-750.

Manukaran · Answer

Hi Rahul, congrats on your 700 score! How did you prepare for CR and SC, during your preparation?

Which resources did you use?

souvonik2k · Answer

Hi A score of 700 is a good score and is in the 90th percentile. A Quant score of 50 suggests that there is not much room for improvement. But a Verbal score of 33 shows that improvement is possible. I suggest to go through the following posts: https://gmatclub.com/forum/experts-topi ... 41004.html https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-club-rc ... 64834.html For SC, I would suggest to revise whatever you have already studied. It would help if you have maintained an error log. Try the questions that you have got wrong and get the logic behind it. Stick mostly to OG questions. Hope it helps.

rahul16singh28 · Answer

Hi  Manukaran ,

I was very weak in SC but in CR I got most of the questions correct as this was more based on logic and grasping the content. I remember when I gave my first GMAT (Free One), I got 470 - don't remember the Quant but in Verbal I got 17. For me, I got most of the questions wrong in SC in Identifying the Nouns & the Verbs. It took me some time to get grasp on Noun & Verbs, but trust me once I got the hold on Nouns & Verbs I used to get almost 50% of the questions correct. After that I started practicing from GMAT Club. I used to filter all the questions which were from legitimate source like OG, Manhattan, GMAT Prep, Veritas, e-gmat and practice section wise (like Pronouns, Nouns, Adverbs etc. - You can get the link in GC where the questions are categorized based on difficulty level and topic wise).

Following are the books which I followed for SC -

1. Manhattan SC
2. Got hold of free Materials on GC of e-gmat and bookmarked them - Used to Revise once a week.
3. OG (I solved almost all the questions of OG, including the paper ones)

CR:

1. I followed PowerScore CR Bible.
2. Used to practise almost 5 question each from Assumption, Strengthening, Weakning, Bold etc. - Again from GC.
3. Manhattan CR.

Hope this Helps. Let me know if you need any further input.

rahul16singh28 · Answer

Thanks  souvonik2k . 
I made the Mistake of not revising the Error Logs Regularly.

rahul16singh28 · Answer

Hi Experts,

Please advise on the above. I have 3 Months time with me and can devote around 4-5 hours per day. My Target score is around 740-750.

egmat · Answer

Hi  rahul16singh28 ,

Congratulations on scoring 700 on GMAT. It is great to see that you do not want to settle for a good score and are aiming for a great score. I think you will find the below two stories of students who had similar target scores to be helpful in your journey.
 • Learn how Priyansh improved from 710 (V34) to 760 (V42) in just 1 month.   Click here   to read her de-brief.
• Akshay improved from a 700 to 750 with 10 days of dedicated preparation.   Click here   to watch his video interview and learn how he achieved this.

Since you have mentioned RC to be a concern, I would like to invite you to the  Free RC webinar  that we are conducting this weekend. This webinar aims to equip students with Reading Strategies that will help even the non-voracious readers ace GMAT RC.   Register here   to reserve your spot.

For practice questions for SC, you may sign-up to   e-GMAT Free Trial   which has 25+ video lessons and 350+ practice questions.

Hope this helps!

Regards,
Aditee

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi rahul16singh28,

First off, nice work with the 700! A Q50 is fantastic.

Regarding verbal, since you scored a V33, in order to increase your verbal score, you will need to improve in all aspects of verbal: Sentence Correction, Critical Reasoning, and Reading Comprehension. Thus, you will need a study plan that allows you to learn linearly, such that you can slowly build GMAT mastery of one topic prior to moving on to the next. Within each topic, begin with the foundations and progress toward more advanced concepts.

For example, when studying Critical Reasoning, you need to ensure that you fully understand the essence of the various Critical Reasoning question types. For instance, do you know the importance of an assumption within an argument? Can you easily spot a conclusion? Do you know how to resolve a paradox? Do you know how to properly evaluate cause and effect? Do you know how to properly weaken or strengthen an argument? These are just a few examples; you really need to take a deep dive into the individual Critical Reasoning topics such that you develop the necessary skills to properly attack any Critical Reasoning questions that you encounter.

As you learn each Critical Reasoning problem type, do focused practice so that you can track your skill in answering each type of question. If, for example, you incorrectly answered a Weaken the Argument question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific Critical Reasoning question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice Reading Comprehension, focus on the exact types of Reading Comprehension questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. You can perfect your reading strategy with a lot of practice, but keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be stimulating. So, to better prepare yourself to tackle such bland passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the Economist, Scientific American, and Smithsonian.
 
Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, you likely will have to work on all three of those aspects. Furthermore, the reason that your Sentence Correction performance has not improved is likely that you have not been working on all three of those aspects. 
 
Regarding what you know, to be successful in Sentence Correction, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not just a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.
 
This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending under two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns in the sentence clearly refer to nouns in the sentence? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.
 
There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and those reasons are not that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answer were always the one that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.
 
As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey meanings that make sense. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice repeatedly until you start to see the differences between the choices that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices in a Sentence Correction question, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. It may take time for you to see what you have to see. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to be determined to see the differences and to figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.
 
To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. For instance, are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did that resulted in your arriving at that answer and what you could do differently in order to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could have done differently that would have extended your streak.

As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regiments, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your Sentence Correction skills improve, you’ll then want to practice with SC questions that test you on skills from multiple SC topics.
 
Ultimately, if you are unable to learn and practice in the manner described above, you may consider looking for additional verbal prep resources. If you are unsure of which resources to choose, check out some reviews here on GMAT Club.

You also may find my article with more information regarding
 how to score a 700+ on the GMAT  helpful.

Feel free to reach out with any questions.

Good luck!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi rahul16singh28,

First off, a 700/Q50 is an outstanding score (it's right around the 90th percentile overall), so you can comfortably apply to any Business Schools that interest you. As such, a retest might not be necessary. Depending on the Schools that you plan to apply to, you would likely find it beneficial to speak with an Admissions Expert about your overall profile. There's a Forum full of those Experts here:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/ask-admission ... tants-124/

If you do choose to retest, then it would help to know a bit more about how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) How have you scored on EACH of your CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
5) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

	Manhattan Prep: $99 Bonus Score Higher on Your GMAT Exam. Guaranteed.
	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.
	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

GMAT 700 (Q50, V33) - Need Help

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