Welcome to F1GMAT’s #AskAtulJose series. I am Atul Jose. Today’s question is a little different from the usual ones I get about MBA application and school selection. The question is:
Q) I retook the GMAT 3 times and couldn’t cross the safe 730+ score. I found GMAT reading comprehension to be the toughest to crack, although I worked in a research-based finance role that requires reading 100s of pages in reports and analysis. How should I approach the prep to improve my RC score?
When most of the clients approach me, there is always a hurdle left to be crossed, and often it is the GMAT score. Surprisingly, reading comprehension is the thorniest part of the hurdle. However, there is a silver lining. RC or reading comprehension is an excellent scoring opportunity, and anyone who crosses 730+ is likely to get all their RC right. This is not the case with sentence correction or critical reasoning, even for those who are acing the GMAT.
#1 Step to Improve your GMAT RC Score is to Read Dry Boring Scientific Material
You mentioned that in your job, it is your responsibility to decode dry analysis and reports, but you are forgetting that even though the content is boring, you have considerable experience in connecting concepts in Finance. The speed with which you decode a concept depends on your expertise, and GMAC does an excellent job at presenting topics that are unlikely to be in conversation in popular culture. So you can’t read up on every domain, function, or industry and expect to understand all the concepts. That would be counterproductive, but a sense of how the concepts in, let us say, Physical Science or Biology or History is connected will drastically improve your comprehension. Once you understand the structure of a passage - how the author is presenting the case by introducing a concept/ideal followed by an argument to expand on the idea and finally, a position that supports or takes a stand against the idea will help you comprehend similar reading comprehension passages. So it is more about understanding the language of the industry that will help you ace RC.
#2. Tip to Improve your GMAT RC score is to Write Fast Notes
There are many shortcuts published by Speed Reading experts or even in the medical science community that requires memorizing thousands of Latin names with acronyms that will improve the recall of a concept/idea covered in the passage. Whatever method that you use don’t write notes in full sentences. Find shortcodes to summarize a vital sentence, conclusion, or paragraph. This way, when you glance through the notes, you will immediately understand how the passage is structured, the ideas in the passages and get an overall sense of the author’s position.
#3. Tip to Improve your GMAT RC score is to find the Author’s Biases
This is extremely easy in a bi-partisan world we live in. You have a 2-party system, media that rarely takes the middle ground. The opinions are always skewed to the left or right. So it becomes easier for a GMAT test taker in the 2020s to recognize author biases if they are exposed to two media channels with opposing ideologies than, say, a test taker from the 2010s. So for an open-minded person, recognizing biases is extremely easy. And regardless of the ideology that you believe in, I have yet to see an author who is not biased in one way or the other. Interestingly, in GMAT Reading comprehension passages, the author rarely uses sentences that clearly indicate a position. There is always a buildup. You have to infer and look for the placement of adjectives. So pay attention and read the entire passage before concluding on the author’s ideology. But the great thing about recognizing biases is that it becomes extremely easy to answer the main idea or the passage structure question.
#4. Tip to Improve your GMAT RC score is to Practice for each Passage Types
If you are getting stuck in passages where the themes are around Biology or pre-historic fossils or some topic that you are naturally not inclined to pay attention to, then you really have to overdose on such passages. It is not an easy advice to follow. Our minds will rebel against anything that is uninteresting.
Take up a boring biology paper and create a video explaining the concept to a general audience. That will increase your interest in topics that you won’t traditionally find appealing. This way, eventually, with a week or two, you will have this mindset to explore any random topic regardless of your fundamental understanding in those areas.
Once you overcome the hesitation to read random topics, measure your performance in each subject matter using a stopwatch. Write down the time taken to read the passage as well as answer each question. For slower passages, practice similar topics until you can finish each question in a minute and 20 seconds.
So these are the 4 Tips to Improve your GMAT Reading Comprehension score. To summarize
#1. Read Dry Boring Scientific Material
#2. Write Fast Notes
#3. Find Author’s Biases
#4. Practice for each Passage Type
