GMAT Q&As from the ZekeLee: 3#Tests for Verbal?

zekelee

Q:
So I have 16 days until my exam, and while my V (40-45) is quite strong my math scores (44-47) tends to fluctuate. I'm aiming for a 47-48, but would love a 49. I've had completed all of the problems in the OG guide 13, and most in the Quant review guide. Currently, I am completing and reviewing Magooshproblems (currently redoing all the "hard" problems and completing OG GMAT prep 1 Question pack. I've heard fantastic things about the GMAT Club testsand am considering buying it, but am wondering if it is too late to see improvements? Any tips/recommendations? Has anyone purchased the GMAT Club tests late in the game and seen results? Thanks!


A:
Two more weeks is an okay time to solidify your final scores. You seem to be within range and both your V and Q scores are in the 40s which is a good sign. At this stage, you've finished all the OG questions -- you've run out of the official guide questions so the next best step is to pick questions at random and solve them. It's important to mix the questions up and solve them each as fast as possible. These are sprints you should do (1-2 min each) which should help train your brain to build stamina for test day.

For quant, make sure you go over some 'hard' questions -- see if the approach you have withstands these harder questions. Remember, at this point, speed is important. You want to increase speed which will increase your confidence on test day. If you're stuck on some of the OG quant questions.

Good luck -- and remember, speed is important on test day. Control that adrenaline ahead of time.

Zeke Lee

zekelee

Q：
I am from India
After spending 3 months on online courses with Books I took the GMAT exam today and I want score near about 650 to 700 but ended over disaster score of 370. :cry:

Also after analyzing my score, I found that Time management and proper strategy couldn't help me in a way i want.
1) For IR, I was not able to complete the section on time.
2) For Verbal, I couldn't find, in which way I was going in exam.

Its really Disheartening for me :cry: , I want to give exam as early as possible with full confidence.

Please guide and help me on books selection for better preparation and proper strategy to achieve the score I want

A:vyas65,

That is a result far from target. I really hope you can find the improvement you're looking for, if indeed business school and GMAT are definitely your career goals. In terms of not knowing what to do for IR and Verbal, you really need to understand the structure of arguments and the structure of communication. These are things not taught well in school. I'd encourage you to pick one section -- for example, reading comprehension -- and try some resources. See if they even have the slightest chance of changing your future score.

http://www.gmatpill.com/gmatpill-releas ... -guide-rc/

Reading comprehension is one of those universal areas. It's the basic building blocks for reading which you have to do all the time in business. You read articles, you research, you read trends of competitors and the future. You need to read. So if you don't have a good reading strategy, you should check the above link regardless of whether you take the GMAT again.

That said, if you start seeing signs of improvement, try some of the other resources on GMAT Pill. There are few free resources and PDFs for you to get started - browse around and do your research. But the above link is a good starting point.

Hope that helps.       

Zeke Lee

zekelee

Q:
Hi all,

I am new to this forum so maybe i am not getting responses for my questions.but i want to ask that which test should i consider for practicing only verbal section.
I have completed the verbal course from manhattan books and i have also completed og 13 edn. and verbal reveiw . 2nd edn. I have several pdf tests from scoretop.com and i got in the range of 28-35 ques. right of the total 41 ques.but i dont know the difficulty level of those tests also i dont know whether i should reconsider reading sc and cr section again as i am getting few ques. of these section wrong.
Please help.  :?

A:
If you want practice on verbal, just try the verbal questions on the free practice pill platform: http://www.gmatpill.com/gmat-practice-test/

If you click on the section for SC, CR or RC, you'll have plenty to practice with there -- plus a few of free video explanations.

You should be careful about those score-top questions -- they are actually illegal to use. Their site was shut down and server confiscated by authorities.

Remember, when it comes to practice, you have to try to develop a framework overtime. Otherwise, you might go through 1000s of questions and still have no strategy...and you'll be just as good when you first started when you answer the next batch of questions. The goal of practice is to get better - not stay in place.       

ZekeLee

zekelee

Q:Hi Zeke,

I have been working, for the past Two months, on your Study Material and to be honest it is good to have this material while preparing for Exam. I still have 15 Days for my First GMAT exam. Just curious, what number of Correct answers one should do in each of : SC, CR, RC to get around Early 40's score in Verbal Section?

A:Hi Rishabh,

Great to hear you find our material very useful for the exam.

To get a V40 and above -- you have to do pretty well. Of course it depends on the difficulty level of each question (based on stats of students around the world who were given that question) -- but in general, you'll want to get 90% correct to be in that range.

zekelee

Q：
Hi,
My GMAT is scheduled on 30th october. I took the Veritas free practice test today scoring 640. I am not sure how close enough it is to actual GMAT score. Kindly share your opinion.

Also, i tried the CR and SC practice questions and got 60-80% correct. Are these qizzes and this exam a good practice material to go for. I doubt it a lot coz my accyracy in CR was better with OG questions compared to veritas. Also, the answer choices are close enough and i got caught in the trap. Till some point it was helpful but now i am finding it demoralizing. Any suggestions?? Kindly share

A：GMATPrep exams are still the gold standard - but you can learn from other sources as well. Focus more on learning from your mistakes.

Students from our online CAT test generally score within +- 20 or 30 points of what they get on the actual exam. You can test yourself here: http://www.gmatpill.com/gmat-practice-t ... ctice-test

But the real value comes afterwards when you have the ability to review your mistakes and see video explanations for each one.       

Gook luck out there!

Zeke Lee

zekelee

Q：
Hi all,
Based on your experience, what is the average level of problems of IR on GMAT. I struggle to get the hard ones right but can manage the Easy and Medium ones (from the OG material + Extra pack purchased).
I am afraid that if IR comprises only of hard that it would be difficult. I also read that IR is not adaptive. How to cope with all difficult IR problems in a row.
Please help.

A：
That's correct that IR is not adaptive. IR questions are generally difficult -- even more so because you have to go all parts of that question in order to get credit. However, the scoring is such that you can get a few questions wrong and still get a "perfect" score of 8/8. So when you are presented with lots of difficult IR problems in a row -- focus more on time management. If you are almost absolutely sure that you you will be guessing on all 2 or 3 parts of a question -- then just cut your loss in terms of timing and move onto the next.

Of course, during practice, you want to build your confidence to a point that that does not happen. But if that's what you are presented with during the exam -- then the important thing is to move on and don't let it affect your psychology for the remaining portions of the test.

Hope this helps guys and feel free to reach out if there is anything we could help with!

Zeke Lee

zekelee

Q:
I took GMAT Yesterday and scored 600 (Q 45 V 27). . I have invested so much time but still somehow did not achieve my target score.I am just confused whether I should take GMAT again. Moreover, I am not sure whether putting effort for another 2-3 months and taking GMAT again will result in any improvement because in past 6 months I did not see much improvement in my score.

I started my preparation in July 2013. (Yes that's right 14 months back) In Oct 2013 after reviewing all concepts through Kaplan and MGMAT books I took my first GMAT Prep test and scored 530 ( Q 45 and V 19). At that time I knew it is long way to go so I did not schedule my exam for another 3 months. In first week of Jan 2014 I scored 580 (Q47 and V 23). When I saw 50 points improvement I got excited and thought may be in another 3-4 months I can reach around 650 so I scheduled exam for Apr-2014. At that time I thought of trying different approach for learning and purchased magoosh online course. Magoosh did help with Sentence correction strategy but I was still not hitting the score that I wanted. Anyway in Mar -2014 I took another GMAT prep test (repeat test1) and scored 600 (Q 48 and v 25). I guess concepts and strategies from magoosh helped in quant improvement but I was still not satisfied with verbal score. I wanted to score at least 34 in verbal so I rescheduled GMAT.

I started reviewing other online products. Not sure why I thought that trying different course will help me improving the score. After spending a week in reviewing different products I finally purchased e-GMAT. This was the bad decision I made.Not because there is anything wrong with the course but because I was putting in time in learning same concepts from different sources instead of focusing on identifying the issues that I had and improving those. Anyway, I invested 3 more months to improve my verbal score but did not see much improvement so rescheduled exam again. Also upgraded my e-GMAT course and purchased verbal live prep, which also did not help with improving score. I took another GMAT prep in Aug 2014 and scored 590 ( Q 47 and V 25).
After that I got really devastated and I thought I would never achieve the target score but still I reviewed all concept files all over again and then practiced questions using e-GMAT strategies. I saw marginal improvement but it was not good enough to get target score. On Sep 20 -2014 (a week before GMAT) I took GMAT prep test (Test # 3) and scored 620 (Q 48 and V27) . At this point I knew that I will have to live with this score because I already had re-scheduled twice and I had no time left to re-schedule.

I think it was my bad decision to invest my time in multiple online courses. There is nothing wrong in the process or concepts that e-GMAT offers. They are , what they are, but I guess process, concept or strategy was not my issue. Now I think it was poor comprehension and slow reading speed. There is no one for all solution. I think the courses can only help with concepts and strategy but issues such as poor reading habits or slow reading speed cannot be fixed by online course. About 6 months back Magoosh experts advised me to focus more on reading, when I reached out to them for help. I did that for couple of weeks but then thought it may not help improving in 3-4 months so did not take that advice seriously. I guess I should have. Instead I wasted my time in reviewing same concepts over and over again from different sources. First Kaplan then MGMAT, Magoosh and e-GMAT. I did improve but I may have done better if I had done quantitative analysis of my mistakes and had taken steps to improve my weakness - Poor reading habits. Most important, I invested too much time in verbal and did not focus on quant. I regret that now. I am not sure why I did that. Somehow I thought I will be able to score 47 or 48 because I was scoring that in GMAT prep exams.

As of now, I am just confused, Really not sure what to do. I have no time left to prepare and I think 600 is not a good score to apply in any top 30 universities. Can someone improve on reading abilities in 2-3 months ? I am not targeting 700 score. I just want to score between 650-680. Not sure if that is really achievable. I still need to take TOEFL and invest time on applications. Any advice please .....

A:
If you want to improve your reading in a short amount of time, we don't recommend relying on reading random articles. Focus on passages you will likely see on the actual test -- the content of boring content and questions that prep companies can provide.

For example, see if these videos help: http://www.gmatpill.com/practicequestio ... tions.html

Long term improvement can come from reading things like Wall Street Journal and magazines, etc. But for short term, you'll want to improve by practicing with sample passages like the one above. The difference is HOW you read through that passage.

Go ahead and try to read the passage yourself first. Then compare your approach with the video.       

zekelee

Q:
Hi,
My GMAT is scheduled on 30th october. I took the Veritas free practice test today scoring 640. I am not sure how close enough it is to actual GMAT score. Kindly share your opinion.

Also, i tried the CR and SC practice questions and got 60-80% correct. Are these qizzes and this exam a good practice material to go for. I doubt it a lot coz my accyracy in CR was better with OG questions compared to veritas. Also, the answer choices are close enough and i got caught in the trap. Till some point it was helpful but now i am finding it demoralizing. Any suggestions?? Kindly share

A:
GMATPrep exams are still the gold standard - but you can learn from other sources as well. Focus more on learning from your mistakes.

Students from our online CAT test generally score within +- 20 or 30 points of what they get on the actual exam. You can test yourself here:http://www.gmatpill.com/gmat-practice-test/practice-test

But the real value comes afterwards when you have the ability to review your mistakes and see video explanations for each one.       

zekelee

Q:
Hi All

This is my first post on GMAT club . I have already taken 3 attempts of GMAT in last 2 years . First score 590, 2nd 630 and 3rd 650. This is my 4 th attempt next week. My scores at home have been varying between 660 and 700 . I have taken MGMAT and GMAT prep ( 4 tests) tests. I am not looking for 700+ score but 680 to 690 for sure. As a mother of a one year old I rarely get a chance for 100% concentration to sit peacefully thru the exam. My question is that in what circumstances should I cancel my score , eg., if its 660 or 670, should I cancel it. Also how bad is the impact of repeat attempts on the over all application.

I am getting all stressed, hope someone could help .

A:
Hi rr12,

Your story is similar to this person's story: http://www.gmatpill.com/from-570-620-710-congrats-raghu/

Each school treats your score differently. Most schools ask you to self report your score in your application. Then the official one comes in the mail to confirm. The official one contains all previous attempts -- unless you decide to cancel a score on the spot. Generally speaking, you should try to take fewer attempts if possible. Cancelling is a personal decision and it depends on your goals and overall application stats.       

zekelee

Q:
Hello All,

I need some help from the members in this forum.I have taken GMAT 4 times over but have not managed to score more than 660 (Q50,V27).V 27 is my highest score in Verbal.I have absolutely no problems,whatsoever,in Quant. I can take on the GMAT Quant even half-asleep.I have score Q 51 twice on the real GMAT.

But,Verbal remains my Achilles heel.I need some suggestion from esteemed members who have been able to take this in the past.I have exhausted nearly all of GMATPREP questions and OG questions.I dont see any sense in doing the same problems over and over.Kindly suggest.i am based in India.

Thanks

A:
sameer3105,

You may be interested in reading about this similar student's experience with verbal:
http://www.gmatpill.com/from-570-620-710-congrats-raghu/

In general, we recommend improving SC first -- since elements of SC can help you read CR and RC passages faster and comprehend more.

Repeating previous questions is not necessarily a bad thing. But don't do them in the same order -- mix them together--meaning the order. Make it so that it's a little bit harder for your brain to remember what was going on in that question.