Scored a 700 in my first attempt planning for a retake.

[Santhosh]

Hi Stacey,
First I would like to brief you about my preparation for my first attempt and ofcourse my strengths and weakness .

Quant is my strength , my worst performance would fetch me 48 and I am confident that I can score 50 plus in my next attempt .

Verbal has been a nightmare for me always. To be candid ,I was a big zero when I started off my verbal preparation . I exhausted all books available in the market and did a very arduous preparation.I used MGMAT verbal (RC/SC/CR) ,KAPLAN 800,OG 10/11 ,1000RC/SC/CR etc... I just dint do it for the sake that if completed I would score a 99 in verbal but to improve my overall verbal performance. I scored a 4.5 in AWA (though low) I was happy I dint end in a < 4 point. I scored a 35 in verbal . I am aiming at a score above 41 in verbal, 43/44 would me my best hit . I took kaplan/GMATPrep 1 &2 test only.

Now , I need materials to practice if not for quant but for verbal is a must. This time around I wanna really improve my verbal and hit that 90 plus in verbal whatever be the degree of difficulty.Please suggests me the right book/question resources . I am planning to retake my GMAT by feb/march 09.
Studying Barrons wordlists/ magazines/ newspapers will be of any use ? Will it improve my verbal performance?

Thanks
Santhosh

[santhosh]

Any suggestions would be of grt help

[RonPurewal]

you said:

I exhausted all books available in the market

whenever anyone says anything like this, my red warning light goes off, because these words almost guarantee that you're not studying correctly.
if you've "exhausted all books available", then there's a 99% probability that you've just gone through the books, solving problem after problem after problem, but giving little to no thought to the connections between the problems.

the following is taken from another of my posts:

you also have to dedicate yourself to deriving LESSONS from every single problem.
do not leave a problem until you have gotten some sort of TAKEAWAY from that problem - a takeaway that you can APPLY TO OTHER PROBLEMS.
such takeaways could take many forms. for instance, they could have to do with the particular strategy you should employ on a given type of problem. they could have to do with charts/tables/devices you could have used to organize your thoughts better. they could even be silly mistakes / traps that you should learn to watch out for. in any case, though, you should be able to derive some sort of takeaway from EVERY problem; that is in fact the only really good reason to do practice problems in the first place.
in other words:
for EVERY problem, you should fill in the following sentence in at least one way:
"if i see ______ on another problem, i should ______"
on some problems you may be able to fill this sentence in in 3-4 different ways, but be sure to derive at least one such lesson from every problem. if you don't get any takeaways from a problem, then you've essentially wasted your time doing that problem.

and that leads into the next topic, which is not only studying, but studying correctly.
here is what you should be doing:
when you study problems, don't concentrate on the individual problems. instead, focus on the COMMON THREADS and CONNECTIONS between the problems.
remember that you're never going to see the actual problems you're studying, ever again, but you will see problems that look a lot like them. so, more than emphasizing the particulars of the problem in front of you, you should be emphasizing considerations such as:
* what are the signals in this problem that tell me what problem type it is?
* what sort of strategies have worked on similar problems?
* what factors have caused me to miss similar problems in the past?

if you start studying problems in this way - with an eye to their connections to other problems, rather than considering them as individual disconnected problems - you'll find that you'll feel less lost, and that, after a while, almost every new problem will be reminiscent of at least one problem that you've already studied.

there's a saying about improvisational acting that says, roughly, that good improv requires years of preparation. it's a funny and ironic comment, but it reveals a truth about improv: namely, the best improv isn't improvisational at all. instead, the actor has been in hundreds of similar situations before, and so has developed instincts that will guide him/her through the current situation smoothly.
your goal is to create a similar situation on the gmat: you should study enough connections and takeaways that you eventually get to the point at which most, if not all, of the problems look like things that you've already seen.
when you get to that point of "constant deja vu", you'll be ready to roll.

so here's the advice:
go back through as many OFFICIAL problems as you can get your hands on - whether o.g. or gmatprep - and work through them again, but with an eye to the connections between the problems.
especially on sentence correction, do not leave any problem until (a) you've drawn some sort of general lesson from it, and (b) you've tried your best to relate it to other problems.

--

as far as vocabulary sources, such as word lists: i wouldn't bother if i were you. although the gmat may occasionally use random difficult words here and there, it is not in any way a vocabulary test.
personally i'm a fan of words, and i get excited about learning new ones, but learning words should be just that - a pastime that you pursue for your own reasons. it won't really help much at all on the gmat.

[Santhosh]

Hi Ron ,

Thanks a lot for your patient and diligent response.I will work out the way you have suggested.

Thanks again
Santhosh

[JonathanSchneider]

: )