Hi,
I need some help from the instructors. I have been taking MGCATs (710, 700, 730, 730, 740)mainly with the aim of improving my verbal scores, I am pretty strong in Maths, and got 48/49s before I got a 51 in my 5th CAT. The problem though is that my verbal scores just dont seem to increase. I have been getting a 40 in the past 3 tests which is only a little better than the 38 that I have scored in the actual GMAT (720, Q 50, V38, 6/6). To provide more information, I am pointing out three major problems/doubts that I think I have -
1- I seem to do worse in tests than in the preperation material. For example in OG in SC I got 80% answers correct, in CR 97 % correct and in RC 93 % correct. But in the practice tests (and obviously in the actual test) this percentage goes down considerably. To give you an idea of the drop - CR goes down to 60-70 % (while critical reasoning happens to be something I am naturally good at, or so I think :P) Could you suggest something ? Assuming that the problem is that I get nervous or loose concentration in the tests I have taken a lot of practice tests, but it still does not seem to help.
2 - SC -I have studied the M SC Guide along with OG11 and OG 11 Verbal guides, and have worked with OG 10 SCs and difficult RCs. SC initially was my problem area and after the MG SC Guide and OG10 it has improved though not to a satisfactory level. Can you suggest some material for reading (not instructional, mainly because I think I have tried a lot of it already) that is similar to the way GMAT expects english usage to be like?
3 - Recently, after SC improved, in an almost silly manner, my RC accuracy dropped and became erratic, so I generally have a higher accuracy of 700-800 level questions than 600-700 level questions. And this is true for the last few tests. Plus, surprisingly I am doing better on SCs than on RCs sometimes! Can you spot something that I am obviously missing out on. (I have studied the MG RC guide)
I have, in additiona to OGs and MGs, studied PR, Barrons, Wren&Martin (relevant stuff) etc. I understand that all this information is a little vague and perhaps more descriptive than necessary AND that I should be finding my own answers, but it would be great if I can get some advice from you guys, especially because it seems that my performance is just not improving, infact it seems to have has become worse than what it was in the beginning.
Thanks and have a great day ! :)
GMAT Forum
2 postsPage 1 of 1
- abhishek
- StaceyKoprince
- ManhattanGMAT Staff
- Posts: 9360
- Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:05 am
- Location: Montreal
Why are you taking the test again with a 720 already? I'm just curious - I don't see that a lot.
Percentage correct tells you almost nothing - OG gives you questions across all difficulty levels but your test will not be all difficulty levels. Your test will have questions clustered around your ability level, and you'll get about half right (maybe more like 60%). Only when you get up to very high scores would you get a higher percentage right (as you're presumably doing in math).
The best source from which to study GMAT stuff is the OG questions themselves. The way they use language is not necessarily exactly the same as regular sources - media, literary or otherwise. If you haven't yet gotten to the levels you want, then you haven't yet learned everything you could be learning from the OG questions (this goes for all of verbal, not just SC).
Start studying how they construct tempting but wrong answers across all 3 question types. How do they get people to pick the wrong SC. or the wrong CR, or RC? Why is a certain wrong answer so tempting (especially as questions get harder)? Why is it wrong anyway, even though it's so tempting? Why is the right answer not as tempting - what is it that makes people discount it or overlook it, even though it's actually right? That sort of stuff. Most of what you learn comes from this analysis that you do after you've tried the question for the first time - so don't just go looking for sources of new questions without really learning what you need to learn from the problems you've already done!
When you consistently have higher accuracy at the 700+ level than you do at lower levels, usually one of two things is going on (or both). Either you are going too quickly or you are "lowering your guard" on easier questions because you think they're easy - and then you make careless mistakes. You might also be going too quickly because you're spending more time than you should on the 700+ questions. That's not a good trade-off because it hurts your score more to get the lower-level questions wrong than it helps your score to get the higher-level questions right!
Finally, one thing you may need to consider is whether you need to work with someone a bit on verbal - either in a class or via tutoring. I have an obvious conflict of interesting in suggesting this, so take my words with a grain of salt! But if you have hit a wall on this, you may need some specific direction from an instructor in order to get on track.
Percentage correct tells you almost nothing - OG gives you questions across all difficulty levels but your test will not be all difficulty levels. Your test will have questions clustered around your ability level, and you'll get about half right (maybe more like 60%). Only when you get up to very high scores would you get a higher percentage right (as you're presumably doing in math).
The best source from which to study GMAT stuff is the OG questions themselves. The way they use language is not necessarily exactly the same as regular sources - media, literary or otherwise. If you haven't yet gotten to the levels you want, then you haven't yet learned everything you could be learning from the OG questions (this goes for all of verbal, not just SC).
Start studying how they construct tempting but wrong answers across all 3 question types. How do they get people to pick the wrong SC. or the wrong CR, or RC? Why is a certain wrong answer so tempting (especially as questions get harder)? Why is it wrong anyway, even though it's so tempting? Why is the right answer not as tempting - what is it that makes people discount it or overlook it, even though it's actually right? That sort of stuff. Most of what you learn comes from this analysis that you do after you've tried the question for the first time - so don't just go looking for sources of new questions without really learning what you need to learn from the problems you've already done!
When you consistently have higher accuracy at the 700+ level than you do at lower levels, usually one of two things is going on (or both). Either you are going too quickly or you are "lowering your guard" on easier questions because you think they're easy - and then you make careless mistakes. You might also be going too quickly because you're spending more time than you should on the 700+ questions. That's not a good trade-off because it hurts your score more to get the lower-level questions wrong than it helps your score to get the higher-level questions right!
Finally, one thing you may need to consider is whether you need to work with someone a bit on verbal - either in a class or via tutoring. I have an obvious conflict of interesting in suggesting this, so take my words with a grain of salt! But if you have hit a wall on this, you may need some specific direction from an instructor in order to get on track.
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
2 posts Page 1 of 1