Debrief for people weak in Verbal
This is a debrief for people weak in Verbal, I have taken it from one of the forums, hardwork always pays.
People who are weak in Verbal this might help.For those who are weak in quant this may not be helpful. I took my GMAT exam finally after my 3 months preperation.Aimed at 700 but fell short of it by 20. So decided to take the test again sometime in august.Reconcileing my past preparation i am writing down my debrief 2 months after my exam is completed. Got nothing to blame on.Everything went perfect as planned from starting of the preperation to end of Test. Here goes my story.
November 2007- a sample quant and verbal test (800 tests) Got 3 questions wrong in quant and solid 28 questions wrong in Verbal and hardly any right questions in verbal-SC. From the day one i know that i dont need much preperation in quant and so never did I prepare.I was totally depressed at my verbal performance not just becasue of the score but becasue of lacking confidence while answering the questions that I am not sure that even a single question i answered is right.I gave up my Prep as i know I would need somemore time to pull my confidence up.
December 2007 Pulling up my socks,I started my GMAT preperation a month later.Attempted a princeton review test and scored 470.Depressed again,but i clearly know where i need to start my preperation.SC. I started my SC preperation with manhatten SC guide. (Believe me for any one week in SC ,just reading this book ,understanding and applying it right will get you to a place where you can get 50-60% questions right .).
January 2008 After 20 days of preperation (SC mainly) I attempted another Princeton review test and scored 520.The best part of second test is I was really confident that some of the questions(20%-30%) in verbal were right for sure.This confidence is something that i lacked when i was taking the previous exams.This clearly is the impact of SC preperation using OG and Manhatten SC. And second thing that i noticed is that both the times I took the test i only got 3 questions wrong and none of the wrong ones in first 10 in quant and engine reported raw score in quant as 43.
Dubious on the difficulty level and scoring pattern of PR tests i decided to take one GMAT800 test.Scored 620.Claps from audiance .
Tests take aways:-
Test strategy 1:-After two exams I decided to break verbal into 2 parts.0-33 questions in first 60 mins and the rest in remaining 15 mins,as i read in some forum that there will always be a RC passage in last 7-8 questions.I have done this to reduce the time pressure on initial questions.
1)Endurance I relalized that when i was taking tests before i found it tough to take 150 mins long test.This impacted directly Verbal section,as i was trying to finish the section with out much patience . This contributed a lot to reduced accuracy levels.For example,while practicing OG-10 CR , most of the questions were right(50 right of 60).However in exam the percentage of questions i got right is low ,generally 4-6 right of 12-14.This was clearly because of low endurance level and impatience to finish the exam fast ,especially when i feel that i am getting few questions wrong.
2)RC :I thought i was strong in RC.But i realized that I need more pratice becasue GMAT is altogether a different type of exam.The strategy was using in past in paper based tests is to look at the questions before reading the passage ,which would allow you to figure out the answers while reading the passage itself.This trick saves lot of time ,but when this is not allowed in GMAT exam i gotta find out other ways and the only way is to read passage faster.
Mid-jan to Mid-Feb :- Gone for a toss.Release time and loads of work in office.
Mid Feb-End of Feb:- Worked on Endurance and RC .Took PR3 and scored 660(30V 50Q).I know i am getting closer but I am still not close enough.Just one week befor the scheduled exam date I decided to take GMAT Prep 1 and scored bad GMAT Prep Test 1 :- 640(27V 50Q). So i rescheduled my exam for april 11th.
March:- Spent more time on RC (1000RC) and longer streches(2-3 hours) of study for about a month.Completed OG10 and OG 11.However i dont think last month preperation with out much strategy did help me reach my target.Took another couple of tests.
GMATPrep2-660 PowerPrep1-700 Since i didnt want to postpone the test again.I prepared myself for the disaster and took my GMAT in 11th april.Scored 680(50Q and 31V).
How to best use Manhatten SC :- Read and understand 9 error categories.I would even suggest to try and remember each common error explained under each category. Be true to your self while doing the exercise below. Pick up OG 10 ,look at each question of SC and try to list down the possible error categories the question would fit into.Your aim here should not be finding the right answer to the question,instead your aim should be finding the right error category of all the errors in the question.Do the similar task on all the answers. Now cross check with the problem matrix if you have correctly figured out the errors in each question. IMO if this task is done properly with both OG's you would get atleast 50-60% questions right there after.
Resources I used for my preperation:- 1)800 tests. 2)PR Tests 3)OG 10 and 11 4)Manhatten SC Guide
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So Far:- PR-1 -470 PR-4 -510 800Test -610 PR-5 -670 GMATPrep1-640 GMATPrep2-660 PowerPrep1-700
