Timing/Pacing strategy for verbal. Help!

[KiranV554]

Hi Everyone,
After 2 months of classroom training in Feb'17 and 3 weeks of prep in Sep'17, I took my GMAT exam like 2 weeks ago and scored 570 (Q-47 & V-23). I think I need a strategy to handle Verbal section better.

When I took the mocks, I kept scoring around 44-45 in Quant and 27-28 in verbal. I am confident that I can do better in Quant (with more practice) and boost my Quant score to 49-50, but I am having a tough time pacing myself in the verbal section.


Lets just look at verbal prep of mine:

SC- I started from scratch and worked on the fundaments (Parts of speech, phrases, clauses etc). I am now able to remove the fluff from sentences and identify the SC type (All difficulty levels). In practice mode, my accuracy stands at 80%. Avg. time to solve- 4 min for Difficult, 2 min for Medium and 1.5 min for Easy.

Same is the case with CR. (I take the same amount of time to solve CR with 80% accuracy)

RC is still a weakness.

When it comes to Verbal, during the practice tests, I am always left out with 10 questions towards the end (end up guessing 10 questions blindly). This is drastically effecting my verbal score.

My friend suggested me to guess 8-10 questions blindly from 21-30 (saving me 20 minutes) and to use this buffer time in solving the first 15 and last 10 questions correctly. I can build on this stratergy as the time progresses.

Do you guys think this is the right approach? If not, what should I do?

I have heard a lot about the first 15 and the last 10 questions to be really important. Is that true?
My target score is 700-710.

Thanks!

[StaceyKoprince]

You are correct that you're having timing issues on the test but, no, the best approach is not to guess randomly on 10 questions in the middle of the test. You are also correct that having to guess blindly on 10 in a row at the end is bringing your score down—but that will happen anywhere on the exam if you have that many wrong in a row. It is not the case that the earlier or later questions are worth more (or that the middle ones are worth less).

You are going to guess randomly on some questions—but you are going to choose the *hardest* questions (hardest for you) as you seem them throughout the entire test. These are the ones that you are the most likely to get wrong or to take way too much time to get right—so these should be your fast guesses.

For example, you say that certain kinds of SC questions take you 1.5m, 2m, or 4m. The 4m ones are an example of the type that you should get wrong faster. The test is not just asking you whether you can get these questions right—it's asking whether you can get them right in a reasonable amount of time. When you can, great. When you can't, the better decision is to get the question wrong faster—NOT to get it right while taking way too much time.

Read this:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/2013/06/03/what-the-gmat-really-tests/

And then look at this:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/2016/05/26/develop-a-business-mindset-to-maximize-your-roi-on-the-gmat/

Why did I ask you to look at those things? What did you learn? Are you actually taking the test that way? Or are you still using the old school mindset, trying to get everything right?

The good news: If you can learn to make better decisions about what to do and what NOT to do, your score will go up without learning anything new or getting better at any of the actual content. (And then you can also work more on actual content to try to lift even higher!)

If you took our course, then you're eligible for a free Post-Exam Assessment (if you haven't done it already). This is a phone call with an instructor to figure out what happened on test day and come up with a plan to re-take the test. If this applies to you, please send an email to gmat@manhattanprep.com to request the Post-Exam Assessment.

If you did not take our course, we can discuss plans here. In that case, first, read these two articles (re-read in the case of the first one):
http://tinyurl.com/executivereasoning
http://tinyurl.com/2ndlevelofgmat
Think about how what you've been doing does and doesn't match up with that and how you may need to change your approach accordingly.

Then, use the below to analyze your most recent MPrep CATs (this should take you a minimum of 1 hour):
http://tinyurl.com/analyzeyourcats

Based on all of that, figure out your strengths and weaknesses as well as any ideas you have for what you think you should do. Then come back here and tell us; we'll tell you whether we agree and advise you further. (Note: do share an analysis with us, not just the raw data. Your analysis should include a discussion of your buckets—you'll understand what that means when you read the last article. Part of getting better is developing your ability to analyze your result—figure out what they mean and what you think you should do about them!)

[KiranV554]

Thank You Stacey for the detailed reply! The links you've posted have helped me understand the larger picture better.

I will start implementing the above suggestions and will definitely keep you posted on how my prep is progressing.

Thanks again!

Kiran

[StaceyKoprince]

You are very welcome! Good luck!