Keep your head up!!! (710, Q: 49, V: 37)

[angels]

Hi daraverla,

Congratulations on your success. Your hard work and patience has paid in the end.

I'm taking the test on 3rd may and doing the Official Guide for the 2nd time now.
Till now I was quite nervous, butafter reading your mail feeling a bit motivted and relaxed.

Please suggest if Official Guide is sufficient practice for the real GMAT or not?
are there questions from Official Guide or like Official Guide,specially verbal.If yes then appx what percent?

All the bst for your future endeavours

rgds
Angel

[thaiva]

Congradt'z on your score daraverla awesome job!!!!

Best of luck with the app proccess and the future...

[daraverla]

Originally posted by angels

Hi daraverla,

Congratulations on your success. Your hard work and patience has paid in the end.

I'm taking the test on 3rd may and doing the Official Guide for the 2nd time now.
Till now I was quite nervous, butafter reading your mail feeling a bit motivted and relaxed.

Please suggest if Official Guide is sufficient practice for the real GMAT or not?
are there questions from Official Guide or like Official Guide,specially verbal.If yes then appx what percent?

All the bst for your future endeavours

rgds
Angel

Thanks for the kinds words. To answer your question, yes, it is more than sufficient to prepare for GMAT only with the Official Guide. Particularly the verbal section, that is. I did not use any other books to prepare for the verbal section, and I am not even a native speaker. So right there, you should feel some sort of security knowing that Official Guide itself provides enough preparation. One thing I would like to tell you is that while I highly applaud your efforts and dedication in going over the Official Guide for the 2nd time, I must warn you that "reading through the solutions" will not help you. You have to get down and get nasty with each and every math problems as if you are taking a mini test. Even if you know some of the answers to easy questions, go ahead and solve them. To save some time, you should start from the back, since the difficulty tends to be high near the end of the book.

On verbal section, analyst the solution. For SC, I think there are only a dozen major rules applied. I will try to post these rules by the end of this week. TAKE MY WORDS, I RAISED MY SC SCORE FROM 70% TO 90~95% WITHIN A MONTH. IF I CAN DO IT, I DONT SEE A DARN REASON WHY SOMEONE LIKE YOUR CALIBER CAN'T DO IT. MARK MY WORDS, AND THINK VERY HARD WHY I AM SAYING THIS TO YOU.

On reading comprehension, try my paraphrasing approach, it really helps you to analyst the passage from the different light. Granted, this is a very time consuming, but at the end, you will feel that approaching a single passage with the paraphasing method will outweigh the benefits of doing 3~4 passages in a normal fashion. Again, dedicate yourself at least 1~2 weeks using this method, studying for about 1~2 hours a day. You will notice significant improvement in your reading speed.

Good luck to you, and if you have succeeded in breaking the 650 mark, 700 mark is really, really within your reach. After all, there are only 4~6 correct answers apart from these scores IMO.

[angels]

your advice is truely appreciated.
thanks a lot.
I'm already working on your reading comprehension mantra and surprisingly...the answers are not looking mysterious anymore.......though it took me more time than usual. but I guess with practice that will be fine.
waiting to hear from you about the SC rules.

have a nice day
Regds
Angel

[sibs]

I an confused on an issue . My target is too score 640-660(45q,35v). I am practising but not getting the idea that how many questions(number of questions in each section ) need to be correct to score 45 in Q and 35 in V(for example out of 37 in quant 30 should be the correct answer ? ).

[erkki]

Sibs,

I don't think you should really approach it that way, thinking that you need to get a certain number right. As you know, the GMAT is a computer adaptive test, so missing the first two will affect your score differently than missing the last two. And because a few of the questions don't count, this further complicates things. Just do your best, make a good effort on each question, and work on your timing. If you do all of this (and look up ursula's study methods), your target score will take care of itself.

Good luck!

[sibs]

Thanks Erkki

[daraverla]

Originally posted by sibs

Thanks Erkki

Fellas, I am currently working on SC strategies, and I will try to post it within a couple of days. So just hang on!

I am with you, as I have promised before.

[BAJA]

Hi ...

I have scheduled the test in May -end . My prev score was 600 (Q 43 and V 29) (in Jan) ...Feeling terrible about Verbal ... Some-how I can't focus on the Verbal it seems to keep getting more complicated... any books you recommend ? You have made a remarkable improvement in your verbal from 28 - 37 . Please advise.

[rkny02]

Baja,

Even I have my exam scheduled for May end.This is my first attempt.I work full-time and try to to devote rest of the time for preparation.
Even for me Verbal is like climbing mount everest.Although I have been reading the Economist for reading comprehension practise and then I have the Princeton Review.

Daraverla,congrats, the improvement u have made is remarkable.Please share your thoughts and experience.

Raj