Many GMAT students mistakenly believe that focusing their study on math is the best strategy to raising their GMAT score.
Sure, if you have a known weakness in math youll need to brush up on your math skills and logic. And yes, the GMAT math is significantly more challenging than the SAT math (more emphasis on logic and structuring the problem rather than on pure calculation).
But at the end of the day, doing well on the VERBAL section is more influential to your total score than if you did equally well on the MATH section--this is ESPECIALLY true in the 700+ range. If you are targeting this score range, you MUST improve your verbal section.
So now you see a discrepancy between the two sections!
If you score 99th percentile in Verbal (49V), and your Quant score is
39M = 57th percentile = Total (730, 96th percentile)
41M = 63th percentile = Total (730, 96th percentile)
43M = 70th percentile = Total (740, 97th percentile)
Notice it does not matter how many correct answers this student can get on quant. In the end, her score is around the same score of 730 whether her math score is 39 or 43. Doing well in Verbal pays off!
Now is the opposite true? What if a student scores extremely well in Quant but mediocre in Verbal?
If you score 99th percentile in Math (51V), and your Verbal score is
30V = 57th percentile = Total (670, 85th percentile)
32V = 65th percentile = Total (690, 88th percentile)
34V = 70th percentile = Total (710, 92nd percentile)
Notice doing extremely well in quant does not guarantee you a good score. In fact, an mediocre score in the 57th percentile for verbal and a perfect quant score only give you a (670, 85th percentile). Doing well in Quant is good, but not as good as doing well in Verbal!
Let me repeat:
Doing well in Quant is good, but not as good as doing well in Verbal!
I can't believe this! A high quant score and average verbal score yields a LOWER score than a high verbal score and an average quant score!
Indeed, the GMAT is biased towards success on the verbal section!!
Why would the GMAT creators do this??
My best guess is just the fact that there is a flood of non-native English speakers from international countries who are taking the GMAT exam. These international students tend to be strong in quant but are less familiar with the idiomatic intricacies of the English language and inductive reasoning. Thus, putting weight on the verbal section can help prevent GMAT scores from going up (which is another trend that has been happening). This is only a guess at best. Nobody but the test makers can say for sure.
But whatever the TRUE reason is, it does NOT matter. What does matter is what this bias in the GMAT means to you. If your verbal abilities are not strong, then you MUST brush up on them.
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"OK, I believe you. I need to improve my verbal score. But will studying necessarily improve my score?"
Yes and no. Depends on how you study. There are people who spend 6 months studying and do not see any improvements on their score. And then there are those (including me but also many others, Im sure) who scored in the 70th percentile and then studied for just 2 weeks and scored in the 98th percentile on the real thing.
You need to target your studying. There are 3 sections to the verbal: 1) Sentence Correction 2) Critical Reasoning 3) Reading Comprehension
By far, the easiest way to raise your score quickly is to ACE the Sentence Correction part of the exam. Its easier than you think. While the GMAT test makers have unlimited imagination in making questions for critical reasoning and reading comprehension, they can only test you on sentence correction in so many ways. If you master all possible TYPES of questions on the sentence correction AND VARIATIONS on those concepts, then you can go into the test with CONFIDENCE that you will ace the entire sentence correction part of the exam.
I strongly believe that ANYBODY can master the sentence correction section. You see, the GMAT exam is beatable. You just have to know how to do it without wasting your whole life on the test.
Are you looking to MASTER the sentence correction in AS LITTLE TIME AS POSSIBLE?