GMAT Verbal Help

[vigneshn89]

Hi Stacey,

I recently took the GMAT a second time and scored a 610 (Q44, V29). I know I can definitely improve my Quant score by doing more practice in my weak areas. In my practice tests I was consistently scoring between 47-49 in Quant. For the verbal section, SC is my strength. Based on the ESR from my first exam, I scored a 41 in the SC portion of the test. RC is my weakness more so than CR due to timing. I've religiously followed all the concepts taught in Ron Purewal's videos for CR and RC. I've basically exhausted the GMAT Prep CATs, Exam Pack 1 and 2, and the Manhattan CATs. I was thinking of taking a step back and maybe going through all the RC passages in the OG and OG Verbal Review again. On test day, I think I got 2 long RC passages and that kind of caught me by surprise. I think I was running out of time and as a result I ended up guessing more after question 26, perhaps leading to a string of wrong answers. If I get more time in RC, I generally do pretty well. Do you have any suggestions on how I can improve my CR and RC before my next re-take and my overall time management on the verbal section. I'm ok with dumping 2-3 questions to maintain a decent pace. I want to shoot for a verbaI score of 35+ and try to retake the exam in the next 3-4 weeks. Thank you!

Regards,
Vignesh

[StaceyKoprince]

It's great that you are already okay with the idea of dumping 2-3 questions to maintain pace...because I'm actually going to tell you to dump 4-6 questions. You have the right idea—you just want to be (and can be!) more aggressive with it. The test is structured for you to be able to do this and still earn a very good score. (I dumped 8 quant questions on my last real exam—and still scored a 48 in that section. I wanted to see what would happen if I went extra far down the dumping path...and it still worked!)

So, okay, 4-6 questions. These aren't going to be SC, since that's your strength—it'll be CR and RC. You'll need to learn what kinds of CR and RC are the worst for you: either more likely to get it wrong or more likely to spend way too much time or both.

That alone might give you enough "time in the bank" to fix your timing problem on verbal. You might also have to do more. You mention following a certain set of methods (Ron's) religiously, but if your performance isn't kicking up to the next level, then maybe those particular methods aren't working for you. CR and RC, especially, are so very "wishy-washy"—it's all process and logic, no real facts, etc. There are multiple approaches to these, so you might need to try a different approach.

I know that there are similarities between Ron's approach and what we have in our books. There are also differences. Have you looked through our books? Can you identify some differences that you might then try to see whether they work better for you?

I'll also leave you with a few resources. This one is on decision-making (which is ultimately all about time management):
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -the-gmat/

This is on a way of learning to lay out the different CR sub-type questions that you might find helpful:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2015/12/ ... stion-type

This is about improving your underlying reading skills (this will help with b-school too!), if that's part of the problem on RC:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... on-skills/

And this is just a series I did on RC, with links to lots of other articles. If you like what you see here, you can look on our blog for other articles tagged RC that I've written.
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... rehension/

Think about / take a look through all of that and let me know what you think!

[vigneshn89]

Hey Stacey,

These articles were very helpful! Based on some additional analysis of my score report (ESR), I found that I actually did relatively well on the first half of the verbal section. It was the timing issue that caused me to rush towards the second half of the test, leading to many incorrect answers. This was the pattern on my first and second attempt. I still ended up with scores of 28 and 29 respectively on the section. I imagine that I would have scored a lot higher if I just skipped 5-7 "Hard" questions. I'm definitely going to try this approach on my next attempt. As far as my overall approach for CR and RC, I think you're absolutely right. There isn't a universal approach that works for everyone. I'm ok with my approach for these questions at this point since I don't have a lot of time to try something brand new. My main strategy for CR is to focus on the conclusion and really know what I'm looking for before diving into the answer choices. For RC, I anticipate the answers more often than not and try to match them to an answer choice. This is slightly easier because there tend to be many out of scope/irrelevant choices that can't be proved by the passage.

I'm planning on taking the exam in the next 2.5 weeks, and I want to go back to practicing the OG/GMATPREP SC, CR, and RC questions in a timed setting everyday. I will probably also attempt the Manhattan CATs again to make sure that my pacing strategy is feasible. I think my nerves also got the best of me on both my attempts, so I think I'm going to try real hard to keep that in check. Since I plan on guessing more consistently, that should free up some extra time for RC. I think that's important for me, in particular, because I find that reading the passage a bit thoroughly (with main idea and structure in mind) gives me more confidence in answering the questions. I've noticed that the RC passages on the GMAT, particularly the 3rd and 4th passages, are sometimes longer (perhaps 75 lines) and so reading them carefully would probably better equip me in answering the questions.

Do you think this is a good approach to go with? I'm really hoping to break 35+ on this Verbal section this time around.

- Vignesh

[StaceyKoprince]

It sounds like you've got a good plan! Yes, from the data that you've cited, it does sound like you will be able to lift your score if you fix this timing / decision-making problem. And there's a bonus: bailing on some questions will relieve some of that constant time pressure, and that pressure was part of what made you extra nervous. (You'll still be nervous. Everyone is. But it's seriously exacerbated when you spend the majority of the section thinking, "I'm behind, I'm behind, I have to speed up, I'm behind...")

One—very important—thing. Do not wait until you are already behind to guess / bail. The guess / bail decision is based on what you think your chances are with the question itself—if you get a really hard question in a weaker area for you as your very first question...still bail! A lot of people will mess up the bail strategy because they'll wait until they're 5+ minutes behind and only then start to bail...but now you're just playing catch-up for the rest of the section, plus you have fewer questions left, so you're going to have to bail on some questions that you could have gotten. You still have all of the stress levels.

Give yourself the luxury of bailing on all of the questions that are terrible for you, regardless of where they show up in the section or whether you're already on time. If you get a little bit ahead, so what? You know you'll find a place to use it later.