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facereut
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Thanks!
pintukr
Congratulations on a competitive score. All the Best for the application journey..
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Thanks! I am planning to give back in a month - will that be enough? - I have other commitments as well. Can give 2-3 hours weekdays and 10-11 isg weekends.
APram
Congratulations for the great score!

I would suggest powerscore and Manhattan verbal has some very good structure mentioned. You may find that helpful. But it will require some more of time as it's a bit demanding in time. If you have time then ofc these books will be more than enough!



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Quote:
scored a 645 (Quant - 88, DI- 84, Verbal - 74).

Consider checking out Manhattan-Prep's 6th Edition for Critical Reasoning. For RC, becoming familiar with how inference questions work on the GMAT may also be helpful. Nice Quant performance. Including working with a study buddy who needs help with Quant and is really strong on Verbal could be a good fit. There's a study buddy thread you can check out.

5 Verbal tips
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Appreciate you taking time to advice. This seems like a very good option - Ill definitely try this out! Thanks
GmatKnightTutor


Consider checking out Manhattan-Prep's 6th Edition for Critical Reasoning. For RC, becoming familiar with how inference questions work on the GMAT may also be helpful. Nice Quant performance. Including working with a study buddy who needs help with Quant and is really strong on Verbal could be a good fit. There's a study buddy thread you can check out.

5 Verbal tips
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Congratulations for the great score! You can achieve your target score in 3-4 weeks. Scoring 645 shows your basics are clear. Plan your verbal strategies, mark your weaknesses and practice not to repeat those. As you missed the last question, you are spending additional time on a few questions. So please practice using timer.

All the best!
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Always great to see self-prep experience sharing like this. There is definitely sufficient good-quality resources at zero or low costs.

Make sure you practice the Verbal strategies you learned from the books mentioned above, or the GMAT Ninja videos. OG questions are a must.

For DI, also questions from OG and DI review guide are the best available resources. Practice by question type and drill on any lingering Quant/Verbal weakness using GMAT Club question bank or GMAT Club Tests sectionals.

All the best.

facereut
Hi everyone - I attempted GMAT (first attempt) on September 1 and scored a 645 (Quant - 88, DI- 84, Verbal - 74). I had been preparing for over a month and got the score. My target score is 715+. Jotting down what I did and could've done better.

So, during my prep I took the course from TOP 1 percent and I only took the mock portal. I gave a lot of tough tests there and I feel one of the greatest mistakes (for me) was that. The difficulty of Top one percent quant questions feels totally unnecessary; it does prepare us for the worst though. I would suggest that DI in TOP one percent was good, but the GMAT club forum was a game changer for me. I was hoping to get Q90 but did 1 question wrong. I would suggest to NOT TAKE TOP 1 Percent QUANT AND DI scores to heart and prepare. That where I spent most of my time and my quant and DI scores reflect that.

Now about the wrong part - I did not plan verbal at all. I just gave mocks and analyzed but did not structure my thought process. I left last question on verbal which had a huge effect on my score. Again - it is visible in my score. I am currently using GMAT Ninja's video tutorials for learning and would put that knowledge to the test. My plan is to structure my thoughts around verbal and have a plan. And get quant fully correct and a couple more questions in DI.

Also, I feel that for people like me (Indian, Engineer) taking classes makes no sense. Rather some videos for structure and a good place to practice (GMAT club forum is a winner) can take us all the way. It might work out for others as well but Im not the correct person to speak about that.

Any good advice would be really appreciated.
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Congrats and all the best going forward!
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Hi facereut,

Since verbal seems to be an issue for you, here is some advice on how to improve your GMAT verbal skills.

To increase your verbal score, you must identify your exact weaknesses, fill in any knowledge gaps, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to find weaker areas, learn all about how to answer questions of types that you aren't that comfortable with now, and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving your score up point by point.

For example, assume you begin studying Critical Reasoning. Your first goal is to master the individual Critical Reasoning topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken question, ask yourself why you didn't get it right. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what you would have had to know in order to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.

Regarding RC, when students get those questions wrong, it’s partly because they don't truly understand what they have just read. To understand what you are reading, you may have to slow down even more (for now) in order to eventually speed up. You have to learn to comprehend what you read, keep it all straight, and use what you are reading to arrive at correct answers.

At this point, your best bet is to focus on getting the correct answers to questions, taking **as much time as you need** to see key details and understand the logic of what you are reading. If you don't understand something, go back and read it one sentence at a time, even one word at a time, not moving on until you understand what you have just read. There is no way around this work. Your goal should be to take all the time you need to understand exactly what is being said and arrive at the correct answer. If you can learn to get answers taking your time, you can learn to speed up. Answering questions is like any task: The more times you do it carefully and successfully, the faster you become at doing it carefully and successfully.

Another component to understanding what you are reading is being “present” when reading. Don’t worry about how things are going at work, or what you will eat for dinner, or even how long you’re taking to read through the passage. Just focus on what is in front of you, word by word, line by line. Furthermore, try to make reading fun. For example, even if you are reading about a topic that bores you, pretend that you are the person making the argument. By doing so, you will make the passage more relatable to YOU, and ultimately you should be able to read with greater focus.

One final component of Reading Comprehension that may be tripping you up is that RC questions contain one or more trap answers that seem to answer the question but don't really. So, a key part of training to correctly answer RC questions is learning to notice the differences between trap answers and correct answers. You have to learn to see how trap answers seem to follow from what the passages say, but don't really, while correct answers fit what the passages say exactly. Of course, the better you become at noticing the differences between trap answer choices and correct answers, the faster you will answer RC questions.

Here is also a great article that you can check out:

How to Score High on GMAT Verbal on the Focus Edition
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