Desperate for some good advice on Verbal

[Nauman]

I have taken GMAT 3 times over the past one-and-a-half-year. And my verbal scores are: 21, 18 and 20. I have done OG-10 3 times and OG-11 twice. My correction rate on these books has improved from avg. 70% to avg. 90% during the course of my preparation. But unfortunately i am unable to improve my actual GMAT score.

I gave my last attempt (3rd) in the first week of March 2008, and since then i'm doing practice questions, off and on, mostly from LSAT and GRE. Now i would like to go for my 4th attempt and will repeat OG-11 again as part of my preparation. I wonder whether i'll be able to improve my verbal score this time? My verbal GMATPrep scores are all around 35. Never get under 28 on it (and that was on my first attempt with far less practice than today's level).

Please advise. I'm desperate for my 4th attempt.

Nauman
Karachi, Pakistan

[StaceyKoprince]

Can you identify any differences - anything at all - between your experiences / feelings while taking a practice test vs. the real thing? Energy level, nerves, stamina, ability to recognize types of problems, ability to recognize wrong answers, etc?

You mention your work in OG. Are you also timing yourself? Are you achieving those percentages within the requisite amount of time? Are you doing random mixes of questions (across all three major question types, and across all SC content areas, and CR question types)?

How much time do you spend reviewing / analyzing the problems? What do you analyze? How do you systematize your analysis and make sure you are internalizing the lessons?

During official tests, what gives you trouble? Do you struggle to classify types and know what strategy to use based on those types? Do multiple choices look right and you don't know how to distinguish between right answers and tempting wrong answers? Are you weak on some of the grammar rules? Etc.

[Guest]

My feeling and nerves are more or less the same in both situations. In fact my practice sessions were bit distracting at home. As far as my ability is concerned i guess it’s also the same. I never felt that I was underperforming in both practice and real exams.

Initially i did OG without timings. But i did the last run (3rd) with timings and my correction rate with avg. GMAT time was more than 80% in all types of questions.

I have analyzed the questions giving lots of time and have made notes. I have no serious problem with grammar rules etc. I have gone through 3 times both Manhattan SC guide and SC bible by Powerscore. Other than these books I have studied grammar a lot. However, overall I feel RC disturbs my time management i.e. I tend to spend more time on it instead of making educated guess and moving on.

During the actual and practice exams, timing has been an issue for me. I always had to guess either in the middle to maintain pace or in the end to finish the test.

Nauman

[StaceyKoprince]

Okay, so RC is slowing you down and that impacts you on other questions. Generally speaking, our bad habits / weaknesses get magnified during the stress of the real test, so this could be hurting you even more than you realize on the real thing.

You need to deal with the timing issues you have on RC and there are two related things that will help: learning how to make educated guesses and analyzing why wrong answers are wrong.

"Educated guessing" is just a fancy way of saying "find some wrong answers and cross them off." If you study WHY RC answers are tempting and also WHY they are wrong anyway, that will help you to find (and cross off) wrong answers - and that will help you to make educated guesses.

This thread might help you with this task; scroll down to my 2nd post (4th post overall): http://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/post13046.html

The other thing in general with educated guessing is to make sure that you are aware of your general timing so that you move on when you have to, instead of letting yourself get sucked in and costing you precious time. Take a look at the discussion of how to train yourself with respect to timing in this thread (my last post): http://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/not ... t3744.html

When you feel you've made some progress on the issue, take a practice test that gives you the timing data (the way ours does - so you could just take one of ours) and check to see whether you really have made good progress in this area.

[Guest]

Thanks Stacey. Will let you know my progress and Mahattan test results.

Nauman

[StaceyKoprince]

good luck!