Hi mohaktara,
I’m glad you reached out and I’m happy to help. So, 162Q/152V is a solid starting point. That being said, to increase your quant and verbal scores to higher levels, you have to go through GRE quant and verbal carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to learn all about how to answer types of questions with which you currently aren't very comfortable and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving up your score point by point. When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to at least around 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better.
For example, if you find that you are not strong in answering Number Properties questions, carefully review the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions and practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you didn't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.
Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see and types that you would rather not see, and types of questions that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in one minute and 45 seconds or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.
So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GRE or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GRE is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.
When studying verbal, as your vocabulary improves, your GRE verbal score very likely will improve. With that said, vocabulary on the GRE is a beast, and learning such a vast number of GRE vocab words will take many hours. Thus, you will want to find a large, reputable vocab list and study the heck out of it. Yes, the process of memorizing thousands of words is tedious and boring, but if your competition is memorizing 2,000 to 3,000 vocab words, then you must do the same or more! However, memorizing vocab words is just a part of the battle. After improving your vocab, you need to improve your skills at answering Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence questions.
Accurately answering Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence questions is not as simple as knowing your vocab. When answering a single-sentence Text Completion question, for instance, you need to understand what the sentence is trying to say. In other words, you need to understand the logic of the sentence, the important clues that indicate what word or words are needed to complete the sentence. In problems that involve two or three sentences, you also need to understand the relationships between the sentences. There are always important clues to guide you in the existing sentences. Understanding the context around the blanks is the most important thing you can do. Likewise when answering Sentence Equivalence questions, focus on the BIG PICTURE or context clues that are provided in the sentence. If you can accurately assess the context of what you are reading, you will have a better shot at selecting the appropriate vocab word to complete the sentence.
While learning to effectively answer completion questions, you must also improve your Reading Comprehension skills. In that case, your ability to understand the logic of what you are reading matters even more. All Reading Comprehension passages involve arguments, so you must strive to understand what the point of each argument is. You also should understand that the main parts of the argument in the multi-paragraph passages are the different paragraphs, while the main parts of the argument in the single-paragraph passages are the sentences. Understanding how the different parts fit together, in each instance, is one of your more important tasks. Furthermore, as you practice Reading Comprehension, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. Analyze your incorrect answers, and try to understand why the answer you picked was wrong.
To correctly answer single-paragraph passages, as mentioned above, you will need to be able to analyze the relationship between sentences. Furthermore, you need to ensure that you you fully understand the essence of the various single-paragraph question types. For instance, do you know the importance of an assumption within an argument? Can you easily spot a conclusion? Do you know how to resolve a paradox? Do you know how to properly evaluate cause and effect? Do you know how to properly weaken or strengthen an argument? These are just a few examples; you really need to take a deep dive into the individual topics to develop the necessary skills to properly attack these types of Reading Comprehension questions.
Finally, keep in mind that GRE Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be easy to read, so to better prepare yourself to tackle such passages, read magazines with similar content and style that challenge you, such as the Economist, Scientific American, and Smithsonian.
To follow the approach outlined above, you may consider using an online self-study course. So check out some reviews
here on GRE Prep Club.
Lastly, you may find it helpful to read this article about
how to score a 330+ on your GRE.
Please reach out with any further questions.
Good luck!
12 Aug 2018, 09:12
