Increasing Your GMAT: Best Of Andrew Geller

Test 2

TEST-TAKING ADVICE

How To Increase Your Sentence Correction Score

  1. Find the easiest mistake first. Be patient.
  2. When you find a mistake in one answer choice, look for that mistake in the others.
  3. Read a challenging article everyday to build up your warehouse of solid grammar.

Find a simple approach to SC that focuses on the major mistakes (Agreement (verb/pronoun), Parallelism (lists/comparisons), Modifiers). Most SC can be solved by thinking about these three categories.

How  To Improve Reading Comprehension

1. Read a challenging article every day (New York Post isn’t tough enough. Go for a weekly (The Economist) or even a quarterly journal). Focus on active reading for 100% understanding.

  1. Tackle reading comprehension from the GRE and/or the LSAT. This work will be very challenging, but there is a ton of excellent practice available. I wouldn’t expect to see improvement until you’ve done three weeks of consistent work on this.How To Approach Bold-Faced Questions

    1. Read the full passage and identify the main conclusion regardless of whether it is part of the boldfaced sections.2. For the boldfaced sections, ask yourself: Is it a premise (fact, support, evidence) or a conclusion (opinion, claim, point, position)? If it is a premise, does it support the author or someone else? If it is a conclusion is it the author’s conclusion or someone else’s conclusion?

After figuring out the above go through the answers one statement at a time (this is critical!). Start with the statement that you feel most confident about.

How do I improve my answer timing?

I would focus on doing the questions the “right way.” If you are doing the questions in an organized way, then the timing should fall into place naturally. Remember: the GMAT is NOT a sprint. It is a jog. Never rush to save time. Skip questions to save time.

For quant: Look up solutions on the forums. There are usually a few different ways to solve a question. Explore different solutions so that you really understand the questions. This will help you find the “best” way to solve. You can also explore the GMAT question of the day on the Atlantic GMAT site. There are many GMAT shortcuts/tips/tricks in those explanations. Remember that the GMAT is a critical thinking test not a math test. Trying to rely on traditional math strategies for every question will be ineffective. You have to combine math fundamentals and practical thinking.

Consider skipping questions. It is much better to skip difficult questions in the middle of the test then to be forced to skip questions at the end of the test that you might have been able to solve. Invest your time on things that are possible rather than wasting time on things that you will most likely get wrong.

How do I improve my verbal score?

An easy way to boost your score is to solidify you timing on the Quant. Skip questions that are difficult for you. Invest in things that you know. It is likely that you could have solved those questions in the end – especially because they were most likely right at your level.

I don’t know of a book that provides really thorough critical reasoning explanations that you can learn from…As a pure teaching book, the Powerscore book has some good information but it is very dense.

My general advice for verbal is to improve reading. If you’re not doing so already, I would read an Economist article every day. I have some instructions on how to approach this reading on the Atlantic GMAT site. I would also avoid third party verbal questions. If you need extra verbal practice I would use LSAT questions. But – beware – LSAT questions are tough. So this isn’t work what I would do a week before the exam. It might be demoralizing.

Remember that GMAT verbal improvement can take some time so be realistic about your goals and deadlines (measure twice, cut once). Scheduling each day of GMAT HW can make the process much easier. Good luck!

Should I skip questions?

You would be better off taking a more balanced approach of skipping questions throughout the exam. If you don’t have a good plan for solving something, then you should consider moving on so that you can save the time. This way, you’ll have a better chance of skipping questions that you would ultimately get wrong anyways and will potentially avoid a mad rush at the end of the section. I would also suggest that you put down at least a guess for every question for that 1/5 possibility of a correct guess and to avoid the penalty for unanswered questions.

DON’T MISS: Why You Don’t Deserve a 700 on Your GMAT

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