The GMAT journey - Part II

Where do I stand?

Without any prep, I took a practice test and scored 650 (Q44, V34). I felt confident about the Quant section as I could score much more after refreshing key concepts. It was obvious that I had to improve in the verbal section.

I describe my apporach for each section:

VERBAL:

SC: In the beginning my hit rate was around 50-60 percent in the sentence correction. I spent most of the first 3-4 weeks preparing for the sentence correction section. I spent most of the last 3-4 weeks reading and understanding the reasoning from OG 11. I really loved the OG11 explanations. The explanations on testmagic forum are quite good. Just before the exam, I was able to answers more than 80% questions correctly. Manhattan SC guide was another valuable resource.

CR: I was able to get most of the questions from OG and PR correct, but not all from Kaplan. I was not too concerned about this section. I went through all the questions and explanation carefully from OG11 and OG - verbal. I didn't have enough time for the 1000 CR.

RC: This section was my weakest in the beginning. I had problems concentrating on the long and boring passages. I had to improve my reading speed and comprehension. I tried out a few strategies, which didn't help much. In parallel, I worked on improving my reading speed by not vocalizing. Here is what worked for me: I skimmed the passage in 15-30 secs and then re-read the passage carefully, before anwering the questions. The reason is that as you skim the passage the brain absorbs some data and as you read the passage again, the passage looks familiar to the brain, which results in better comprehension. Furthermore, if your brain thinks that the passage is interesting, then it will absord more information. Improvement in the RC section boosted my confidence.

QUANT: No extensive preparation besides the OG11. Did not solve any MJJs. I used to look at postings on data sufficiency occasionally on the testmagic forum. During my practice exams, I realized that I was able to solve the questions correctly, but fell for the trap occassionally. Sometimes the question, asks for the value of x/2 instead of the x (it must have happened to you, right?). I decided to read the questions (even the easy ones) twice, if possible.

To be continued....