Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension

I re-did OG Critical reasoning section. Last 50 questions were tough ones. I decided that doing them will jog the critical reasoning strategy I used to use. It did too. Similar practice I applied to the RC sections from Kaplan CD. I really do not know what I need to do to improve my Quant Score. I, theoretically am capable of getting every math problem correct. However, that is not the reality. May be being more careful with arithmetic, and double checking the Data Sufficiency will yield better results.

My GMAT date is fixed. 28th March. It is a Tuesday, 9:00 AM. So today morning I fixed up my plan for the last 30 days. I will be doing 3 full length tests each weekend. Last weekend, I will do Kaplan 4, Princeton Review 4, and GMATPrep 2.

General status update

Today I finished my 11 day long Sentence Correction practice. Completed the Manhattan GMAT and OG. I am pretty confident that SC is not going to drag my Verbal average down any more. Today's Kaplan CAT1, showed some encouraging results in Quant. Q50, in Kaplan is a mouth watering score. For the first time, I saw more than one question in Math where I did not have any idea how to solve. I think I will take 2 more Kaplan CAT tests at this point to cement down all the possible tough Math Questions. Also I read up some College Maths basics on inequalities. My fundamentals were a little skewed in Inequalities. Also I brushed up statistical deviation, and other concepts in statistics.

I am starting to see some craters in CR and RC strategy. I am slipping from my comfort zone. A little quick tightening will do the trick and get me back in the game. May be I'll do the LSAT questions, Or may be I will do the Kaplan tests. But this requires immediate attention.

Week So far

This is week is going very steady. I have been learning sentence correction and revising other areas of the test. Now I am working through the Kaplan CD Practice questions. Also I have the last few sections from Manhattan GMAT SC to cover. Once done I will be ready for my next two Practice tests this weekend. I am observing a strong performance in PS and a weaker than expected performance in DS. I should be very careful with DS questions. Just to see how tough the questions could go, I re took the same Power Prep test again. This time around in match I got more than 75% of questions, brand new. My Q Score came out to be 48 (86%), with 10 wrong answers. Most of them DS. Sentence correction performance is better, but still poorer than my average. Overall score of this test was 720. That just does not mean much since I was re-taking.

An Interesting Presidents Day

The day started like a normal one. I even made the coffee. Then the phone rang.

Whole morning was all GMAT. Not mine though. My dear friend who was supposed to start his GMAT in 30mnts was on the other side of the phone. He had a downer morning. After, an understandably preparation-ful weekend, and two train rides later, he arrived promptly at Vue Parson in downtown NYC to take the test. He is the type of guy who usually carries 3 spare tires in the trunk. Vue Parson broke the news to him that, his ID was no good. The only ID they deem worthy of their scrutiny is a Passport. Just like so many other things in this country, the imposer hardly ever knows the reason for imposing. And how ever much persuasive the underlying logic and explanations are, still the sufferer ends up the sufferer.

New Jersey, has the toughest, meanest, kick ass rules to deny you a drivers license. There is something called a 6 point check which is performed using a Turbo chraged CT-XRAY-Chromatography-scan machine, installed at every DMV, which once in a blue moon, randomly picks a lotto winner, to hold an NJ license. I have gone with the same person to a far away asylum of a DMV couple of months back, and witnessed live his license application being denied. He is working in the US for the last 6 years. He got his fresh license just last month.

That license, was what, the Vue parson declared unworthy to be considered as a Valid Proof of Identification.

So, he told me of this episode. we did some quick thinking to estimate that there could be a fair possibility of he being able to take the test yesterday itself, if certain stars align and do a jig together. I went to his home, picked up the Passport and drove to the downtown. After a little bit of getting lost he got the Passport in time to take the test.

The burdened he went through clearly reflected on his score.


Morale of the story : Carry your Passport to Vue Parson, If the test is not in your home country.

Tale of Two Tests

Yesterday I took the PowerPrep Test : 700 (Q48, V38), 9 Wrong in Q, 13 wrong in V
Today morning I took Princeton Review Test 1 : 690(Q44,V41), 4 Wrong in Q, 6 Wrong in V

Verry very very surprising. I need to get out of this rut, and push the score well above 700. What I am going to do is a complete revision, for rest of today. It will freshen up the strategy and, I do have certain areas in PS to refresh.

• Statistics, Geometry, Probability.

Sentence Correction Notes : Pronouns

In GMAT There are three types of pronoun errors to watch out for.

1. Pronoun Reference
2. Pronoun Agreement
3. Pronoun Case

Pronoun Reference

The noun that the the pronoun refers to is the antecedent.

When there are two or more possible antecedents, sentence should be corrected to clear all ambiguity.

Eg.

Since hunting was something Dick loved, he was pissed off pissed off when he criticized him on TV.

Here, Who he? Is a valid question not yet answered.

Since hunting was something Dick loved, he was pissed off pissed off when Larry King criticized him on TV.

Pronoun Agreement

• Does the pronoun agree with the antecedent number? [Singular, Plural, Two etc.]

Pronoun Case

Depending on, whether the antecedent is the subject or the Object of the sentence, choice of antecedent differs.

Subject Pronouns will be, I, he, you, she, it, we, they, who etc.

Object Pronouns : me, you, him, her, it, us, them, whom

possessive pronouns: my,mine, your, yours, his, her, hers, its, ours, our,their, theirs, whose

Eg.

Dick and me went hunting together is Wrong, Since pronoun is part of the subject.

The correct form will be, Dick and I went hunting together.

On the other hand,

The hunting was attended by Dick and me, is the correct sentence since 'The hunting' is the subject here.

Who did you shoot, is Wrong.

Whom did you shoot, is correct.

Careful, with possessive Pronouns

When a possessive noun is either the subject or the object in a sentence, and there comes a pronoun to refer back to it, The ONLY correct choice will be possessive Pronoun.

About, Tense (d), Mood(y) and Voice(s)

Today I learnt the art of using correct tenses. I am starting to appreciate Manhattan's technique. Also, I am seeing amazing improvements by using cali_boy's technique which I mentioned in a previous post. The OG practice I did yesterday evening went very well. I am starting to get a good feeling about the all thing. Now, my notes...

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Tense can be used as another great simple pointer in eliminating the wrong answers from answer choices. GMAT, as a convention prefers simple tense where ever possible. Simple Present, Simple past and Simple future. Also the continuous forms of the simple tenses. Present and Past perfect tense is required on specific rules.

If in one sentence there are two actions, both of which happened in the past, one should use past perfect tense for the earlier action, and simple past tense for the more recent action.

For example,

The movie already started before we arrived at the theater, Is grammatically wrong.
The movie had already started before we arrived at the theater, is correct.

According to Manhattan, this sort of errors is a favorite for GMAT question writers.

As far as Present perfect is considered, if an action which started in the past, is continuing to the present one should use Present Perfect tense.

For Example:

The post office has created 10 new jobs till now.

Usage of If...Then Clause:-

Note: The ...'then', is omitted most of the time in this constructed.

If he pays me $100, I will make sure that he gets his ticket.
If [Simple Present]....then [(will/shall/can) + present participle of the verb]

If he paid me $100, I would make sure that he gets his ticket.
If [Simple Past]....then [(would/should/could) + present participle of the verb]

If he had paid me $100, I would have made sure that he gets his ticket.
If [Past Perfect]....then [(would/should/could) + have + past participle of the verb]

Subjunctive Constructs

Subjunctive constructs include sentences where, an Imaginary condition is discusses, or where an urgent, pressing command, request, plea etc. are communicated. I think I can explain them better with a few examples.

Eg.
If I were a millionaire, I would be drinking Champagne every evening.
If the roses were jasmines, this room would be a heaven.

Here, both these examples refer to hypothetical conditions. So, 'were' is the ONLY correct verb to use of the If Clause. Not only that, on the second clause would + infinitive form of the verb ('to' omitted) is the only correct verb form.

A similar nuance is there with the verb 'wish',
I wish she were a chess player, is the correct usage.

Eg.
I request that the bill be passed in this session.
I insist that you give me the job.
She shouted that they not shout at her.

In the above examples, the correct tense form to use is the infinitive with the 'to' omitted for the second clause.

[To be Continued...]

Subject Verb Agreement Notes

The ability to identify Subject verb agreement errors can be an important skill to carry into GMAT. Another way to eliminate is another way to get to the right answer.

• Look for the Obvious disguise using an 'of' construct.

Eg. Houses of that wealthy rich man who made his money by selling dirt are up for auction.

• And Vs. Other Additive Constructs.

And, joins the subjects, making a plural verb required. How ever other additive constructs like,

• as well as
• accompanied by
• together with
• along with
• including

etc. Do not aggregate the subjects. So the required verb form depends on the 'Actual Subject'

Eg. Joe as well as his buddies is going skiing.

• Neither...Nor, Either...Or, or

The number of the noun closest to the verb form determines the number of the verb.

Eg. Neither Joe nor his buddies are going skiing.

• Collective Nouns

Collective nouns are deemed singular. Examples are; administration, army, orchestra, class, crowd, faculty etc.

Eg. Our army is kicking enemy's ass at the Jammu border.

• Indefinite pronouns

They are usually singular. Examples are, Anyone, someone, anybody, anything, no one, nothing. We can generalize it to , ___one, ___thing and ___body are always singular.

Eg. Everybody is eating lunch.

Some, Any, None, All, Many, [SANAM]Could be singular or plural depending on the context.

Eg.

Some money is saved in a CD.

Some of the cars are black.

• Each & Every

Each and Every are deemed singular.

Eg. Each of these pretty red roses, handpicked by the iron maiden, is rotten.

Note: This rule applies only if Each or Every comes before the subject. If it comes after the subject, the number of the subject will determine the number of the verb.

Eg. They each are getting a new car.

• Numerical Words and Phrases

1. 'The number of' is Singular
2. 'A number of' is Plural.

Eg.

The number of cars involved in that crash is 2.

A number of cars were involved in that crash.

Majority, minority, plurality : Could be deemed singular or plural depending on the context.

Eg.

A minority of the opposing factions are ready for peace talks. But the majority is opposing.

• Subject Phrase

Some cases the whole subject may be tangled in a Phrase. Subject phrases are deemed singular.

Eg. Whatever they want to do is fine with the government.

Complexity thou name is SC!!

The direction in which the Earth and the other solid planets-Mercury, Venus, and Mars-spins were determined from collissions with giant celestical bodies in the early solar system.

Here in the tiny section underlined are three major mistakes. Two Subject-Verb agreement problems and one idiom.

The direction is the subject for the verb 'were' , Mistake no 1.

Earth and the other solid planets-Mercury, Venus, and Mars is the subject for verb spins, : Mistake No 2.

determined from collissions : Mistake no 3, Wrong idiom !!!

Back To the Mattress : With Manhattan SC

Prelude:
No Guns blazing. No schemes to scheme. No blood to spill and no one to kill. Just, I myself and my plan. Back to the Mattress.

Yesterday I chalked out my plan to get my SC performance to something acceptable. I saw an approach written by a person nick named cali_boy in www.sentencecorrection.com. He climbed an Everest of 790, in late 2004.
An inspiring series of posts are at, http://www.sentencecorrection.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1425.
He had a simple method of marking why each answer choice is wrong. I am finding this approach very appealing. This straight away gives you something like n x 5 practice questions to perfect your eye. Without any doubt, noticing the mistake is the primary differentiator to score well in SC or not. Also, of course you need to know your stuff.

So, for the stuff part, I am going back to my Manhattan Prep books. I liked their approach very much. The approach is, to be sticking to the basic GMAT grammar. Today I studied the first chaper on 3 C's of SC. Clarity, Concise and Correctness.

A Correct GMAT SC answer choice will be a clear,concise and grammatically correct sentence.

At the end of each chapter, the book gives a list of OG practice Qn numbers. The first chapter had 14 listed. I was happy to get 11 Correct. Way to go.

Kaplan : Paper Test

Saturday late night the snow storm started. We did not know that those tiny, shining, drifting snow flakes were determined to topple a 1947 snow storm record. They were.

I woke up as usual at around 5:00 AM. There was a friend sleeping in the guest bedroom. So I did not have access to my PC. I decided to take the Kaplan paper test. This is a Kaplan-GMAT test at the end of the Kaplan book. I finished it comfortably by 8:30AM. Unlike the software counterpart, here you need to compute your score manually. The computation was fairly simple after the GMAT Quant. Every Correct answer fetches 1 point, Every wrong answer takes away 1/4 th. This score is called the 'Raw score'. Quant and Verbal need to be tabulated separately.

My Raw Scores were : Q:37, V:27, From the raw score you get the scaled scores by using a Kaplan table. And by adding the scaled scores and going back to another tackle you get your GMAT Score. Mine came out to 660.

Quant, I got 37/38 Correct. Verbal I got 30/41 Correct. Yes, my sucking in SC continues. Out of the 11 items I got wrong in Verbal 8 belonged to SC. I WILL GET IT RIGHT.

I am pretty satisfied with these results. I am very confident that SC will click for me some time soon. With the kind if steam running on other sections I should be in a good position in GMAT.

And The Score was...

740 : On Power Prep

Today I am taking the First Full Test

Yes. Finally the day is here. Litmus test of the preparations till date. Before the preparations my score was at 550.

Things to remember when I take the test (This is a set of notes for myself)

• Complete the test.
• Keep track of the time at 1/3 of each section. Every 25 mnts I should complete 14. ie, When clock reads 50mnts I should be at least at Qn 15, Clock 25mnts At least at Qn 28.
• This is just the first test. So the score will improve from here to test number 13. 13 is the total number of tests I am planning to take.
• For Quant, Work out the problem.
• For Verbal use elimination.
• When CR, first read the Qn. Before reading the stem.
• Sentence correction, remember the GMAT grammar.
• Reading comprehension, 2 x Total No. of Qns is the time limit for one passage. Take Notes, Write Summary Paragraph.
• DO NOT QUIT IN THE MIDDLE.

Down with a fever

Is it an annual ritual?.

Last may, I had a horrible week. Could not eat, sleep, keep awake, and not do a lot of other things. To add to it, I was misdiagnosed. So to top it all off I had a doctor offered custom designed drug allergy. If I may, let that May may never never happen ever.

Saturday and Sunday I had a fever and a good quality headache. Not bad enough to stop me from making a Lamb Chops, but definitely good enough to keep me away from my remaining OG Practice questions on DS.

So after my excuses : Yes, I did not practice an ounce of GMAT.

Tonight, Or in the worst case tomorrow morning I will finish remaining DS.

My Experiments with Data Sufficiency

The world of data sufficiency is an interesting maze. Easy to get lost if you stray too far. The correct way is never more than 120 seconds away too!

Like many of the other sections, taking an active interest in the problem at hand is a good strategy in DS also. In verbal sections I would say that attitude will give you a winning edge. However much boring a subject be, if you can fake your mind to like the paragraph for 10 minutes, you can coolly walk away with 5 correct answers from a Reading Comprehension. In my case, I genuinely like, Business, Social, Biology and Physics problems. Critical reasoning will bring out the devils advocate in you. The only section where keeping the meaning a little away from your heart will do any good, is sentence correction. Just remember the GMAT grammar.

Today I sat with OG, DS Set 2. From 51 to 100. They were once again relatively simple. I got 2 of this 50 wrong. Out of the two, one question bowled me clean, since I did not do enough reasoning. The other one was a cleverly disguised word trap.

I am satisfied with the way DS practice is progressing. I could be taking my first full length practice test on Sunday. I am very excited about it. That will be my first pointer of my overall stamina, strategy and alertness. After close to two months preparation that will be the start of the many moments of truths to follow. Am I ready for my 760?

Official Guide Data Sufficiency Practice 1

Today morning, I started with my first 50 questions of Official Guide DS. I chose to do 1-50, since Kaplan practice results were not so comforting. The first 50 was very simple. If you think you are good at DS, you should never waste time practicing these 1st 50 questions. I got 49 out of 50 correct. One I got wrong was a stupid mistake. 2/5, I evaluated to be 0.2 :-(. The average time per question was 56 seconds. That seems to be well within the available time limits. Then again these were easy questions. Not requiring to read the stem again is the key point once again. Just like it is a key, time management pointer when attacking Critical Reasoning. Read through the stem and, reduce the facts to a simple mathematical equation you need answer for. That could be a working technique for taking on DS head on. Also fundamental principles of checking fact 1 and fact 2 totally independent of each other, and knowing the answer choices cold, are given things.

It is extremely busy at work. So no practice going on, on that side of the day. Mostly tomorrow morning I will take on OG 51-100 Set.

Data Sufficiency : Not Satisfactory

Well, I started off with the 50 practice questions on Kaplan. 3 Questions out smarted me. Of the 50, I got 45 correct. That was not the correct answer rate I was looking for. Also, Kapan practice tests has been way more easier than the OG Questions in the past. I must say I am disappointed.

I have noted down my weak points. Here the trick is to be extremely systematic. I am sure I will get the proper frequency after a little bit more practice. Also, The Yahoo Group GMAT, is a great help. Some fellows there throws around some very good quality questions.