GMAT on 19th.Require tips on Verbal

[NishantB347]

First of all thanks to the tough quant questions that I faced in Manhattan CATs, my quant score has improved substantially.Started with a 44 score in CAT 1 that increased to 49 in CAT 5. After giving manhattan tests when I transitioned to Gmat prep, Kaplan and gmat club tests, I found them to be much easier and have consistently been scoring 50 or 51.

The problem is Verbal.My scores are wildly fluctuating.The last Gmat prep test I gave, my scores were Q51, V44 770.However the next test I gave (Kaplan this time) my scores were Q50, V35 .I think I am having trouble following the "2 min or quit strategy" that you people ask us to follow.I get many RC and CR questions wrong when I try to do them in under 2 mins.However If I spend more time (Approx 3 mins) on these questions I am able to get majority of them right.But the problem is that I dont have enough time left for the last 10 ques or so. My Gmat is on the 19th.Any last mins tips to stop this inconsistency??

[StaceyKoprince]

The GMAT does not "average" your performance across the section. Instead, it calculates your score after every problem - and the score it calculates right after your last question is what you get. We call this a "where you end is what you get" test.

So think about what happens to your score trajectory if you get the last 10 wrong... Not good, right?

So that's why you're seeing a huge inconsistency in scores. If you don't have a massive timing problem leading to a big drop in performance at the end, then you're fine. But when you do... ugh.

Your task is to find a way to have a steady performance across the section - which means you have to make sure that you're not letting yourself get so sucked into, "I must get this one right!" that you lose track of the bigger picture. It's not just about getting a problem right; a question is only worth your time if you can get it right in a reasonable amount of time.

Think about it this way: every new question is a colleague knocking on your door, asking you to do something for him/her. Are you going to say yes to every request?

No way! You'll be here all night. You're going to be selective. The GMAT is like that, too; you need to figure out the best way to spend your limited resources: your brain / mental energy and your time!

If you need a little more time on average for reading tasks (RC and CR), that's fine. Select a few questions on which you will guess *immediately* - save all that time and you'll be fine on the other questions. Also, know how long is too long - what clues will tell you, "hey this isn't happening, I need to let go"?

It isn't the case that, if you just spend more time, you'll get any question right. Some of them really are too hard or tricky. So how will you know, during the test, to let go? You need to study / analyze / practice that just like any other skill.

This might help:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -the-gmat/

And this (this is a series that starts with quant, but follow the links to the later installments on verbal):
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2015/09/ ... gmat-quant

So what are your biggest weaknesses / time sucks on verbal? Where should you guess immediately? What other clues should you be watching for that will tell you to move on after spending some time on the problem?

[NishantB347]

Thanks Stacey for the reply.
I will outline the problem here.In verbal I can easily get around 9-10 questions correct in the first 10 questions.However in the 11-20 questions the difficulty really increases from what I have noticed.The second RC passage is almost always horribly convoluted plus CR questions are mostly the difficult assumption based ones.if i don't spend time here i get almost all questions wrong(last time I tried to quickly finish the RC passage and ended up with 4 incorrect).If I work this way quickly I get around V33-V38. However If I spend a lot of time on the 11th-20th questions I end up getting around 18 correct.This really puts me in a good position. However I just have 30 mins or so left for the last 21 questions so luck starts playing a big role.Working this way my score has varied from as low as 30 to as high as 44.

Another question.English is not my native language.So should I try to convert the RC passages into my own language to better understand them or should I stick to working in English only?Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[StaceyKoprince]

The focus of your questions betrays too great an emphasis on trying to get stuff right. Re-read that business mindset article again. And again. Read it every day from now on, if needed.

Your goal is NOT to get everything right! Your goal is to identify when something is too hard and let it go. You've got to change that mindset if you're going to stabilize your score at the top levels. Even at 40+ on verbal (90th percentile +), you are NOT getting every (or almost every) question right.

If you get many / most of the first 10 right, then you will have kicked your score very high. That's exactly how the test works. So you should expect to see some very difficult questions coming up next. The question is then: which ones are too difficult to be worth your time / mental energy / business investment? The test writers actually want to know that you can evaluate this and have the discipline and presence of mind to cut yourself off when appropriate. They are NOT trying to see whether you are a super-verbal-guru who can get even crazy hard stuff right.

If the entire passage is truly 100% incomprehensible, then maybe you do want / need to get them all wrong.
But maybe it's not 100% horrible. Maybe you can get the main idea question and you guess on the rest.
Or maybe you can do one of the detail questions, but it takes some time, and you gain that time by bailing immediately on one of the other detail questions.
Which part of the passage was the worst? If paragraph 2 was the worst, but paragraphs 1 and 3 aren't so bad, guess immediately when you get a question about paragraph 2 and try to answer questions from paragraphs 1 or 3.

See what I mean? You're making a series of business decisions based on the circumstances facing you in that moment. It's not necessarily all or nothing. And you have to stop prioritizing winning over time. They are testing you on how well you manage your scarce resources - and trusting to luck is not the optimal management style. You have limited time. Just like you have limited money, right? You can't invest in every possible investment that comes along; you have to make hard choices - and sometimes you let one opportunity go because another one is better. (Even when you haven't yet seen that better opportunity! You just trust that there will be other opportunities in future.)

On the language question, your English is excellent - I would not have guessed that you are not a native speaker! I really don't think that's the problem. I think the problem is that you are trying to get stuff right that you should not be trying to get right - even a native speaker shouldn't be. Don't attribute it to some lack in language skills on your part. Rather, it's a lack in strategy / business mindset. Stop trying to do more than you should.