How to Score High on GMAT Verbal Focus Edition

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Last Updated on April 23, 2024

So, you want to know how to score high on GMAT Verbal. Excelling in GMAT Focus Edition Verbal is certainly no easy feat. The good news is that any student can improve in GMAT Verbal with the right strategies.

In this article, we’ll walk through 10 highly effective steps to get on track to your Verbal score goal. If you want to score high on GMAT Focus Verbal, or you can’t seem to increase your GMAT Verbal score no matter how hard you try, these GMAT Verbal preparation and practice strategies will help.

Any student can improve in GMAT Verbal with the right strategies.

Here are the strategies we’ll cover:

• #1: Understand the GMAT Focus Verbal Game
• #2: Master Each Verbal Question Type Separately
• #3: Don’t Just Run Through Practice Questions to Prepare
• #4: Learn Before You Practice
• #5: Review All Practice Questions You Answer Incorrectly
• #6: Start Your Practice Untimed
  • Why Doing Timed Practice Early in Your Prep Usually Doesn’t Work
  • Achieve High Accuracy Before Adding Time Constraints
• #7: Make Sophisticated Analysis Your Goal
  • How Sophisticated Analysis Can Help You Avoid Trap Answers
  • How to Make Your Verbal Question Analysis More Sophisticated
• #8: Avoid GMAT Verbal Gimmicks
• #9: Get Comfortable With Discomfort
• #10: Select Appropriate Study Materials
• Bonus Strategy: Get Pumped!
• Key Takeaways: What Is the Best Way to Study for GMAT Verbal to Earn a High Score?
• What’s Next?

Let’s discuss the first step on the road to mastering the GMAT Focus Verbal section: understanding the game you’re playing.

#1: Understand the GMAT Focus Verbal Game

To tame the GMAT Verbal beast, you have to understand its nature. And, at its heart, GMAT Verbal is more than just learning concepts and “tricks of the trade.” Of course, those things are important. However, it’s a mistake to assume that everything will fall into place if you simply memorize Verbal concepts and patterns. Why? Because the Verbal section of the GMAT tests concepts and reasoning, just as the Quant section does.

In other words, GMAT Focus Verbal is a content game and a logic game.

So, just as test-takers shouldn’t expect to earn high Quant scores by simply memorizing math concepts, they shouldn’t expect to earn high Verbal scores by simply memorizing structural markers, trap answer types, and so on.

If anything, GMAT Focus Verbal relies less on conceptual knowledge than Quant does. Case in point: in many cases, you can increase your Quant score by simply learning some new concepts. However, your Verbal score may not increase just because you learned, for instance, how Weaken questions work.

GMAT Focus Verbal is a content game and a logic game.

No doubt, developing concept knowledge is an essential aspect of earning a good GMAT Verbal score. However, to master the Verbal section of the GMAT Focus, you must also develop skill in:

• seeing what is going on in questions
• using logic to identify correct answers.

Learning the rules of the game is just the first step in your GMAT Verbal preparation. Once you’ve learned the rules, you must train yourself to actually play the game.

#2: Master Each Verbal Question Type Separately

The question of how to prep for GMAT Verbal most effectively is one that constantly comes up among test-takers. For whatever reason, preparing for the Verbal section just does not seem as straightforward as preparing for the Quant section.

The truth is, however, that the same best practices that apply to mastering Quant also apply to mastering Verbal. How can this be? First, for both the GMAT Verbal and Quantitative sections, you have a considerable amount of content to learn. (And, presumably, you don’t have an infinite amount of time to learn it.) Second, in learning content for either section, you need to ensure that you don’t leave any gaps in your knowledge. After all, there is no way to pick exactly which question types you’ll see on test day and in what amounts.

So, to learn the most and learn the fastest, you should take a topic-by-topic approach rather than mix topics together. In other words, the best strategy for Verbal GMAT preparation is to master one Verbal question type at a time. This approach will keep your prep organized and help ensure that you’re truly learning each question type you study.

On the other hand, if for example you try to master Paradox and Inference questions at the same time in your Critical Reasoning study, you’re likely to experience a lack of progress in both question types. Moreover, you’re likely to discover later that you have some serious gaps in your knowledge. Ultimately, that type of studying, which students generally employ to save time, typically makes GMAT prep far less efficient.

#3: Don’t Just Run Through Practice Questions to Prepare 

Here is a popular but ineffective Verbal preparation strategy. A student answers a couple dozen Official Guide Verbal questions with a timer going and gets many questions wrong. Then, the student reads the solutions to find out how to answer the missed questions correctly. I know of students who answered literally hundreds of questions in this way and didn’t see their Verbal scores budge.

The thing is, many test-takers—particularly native English speakers—underestimate the difficulty of the Verbal section. They figure that simply answering a bunch of Verbal questions will prepare them for test day. But GMAT Focus Verbal is no joke, even for native speakers. Increasing your score by, for example, 5 points can require significant work.

So, unless your baseline Verbal score is very close to your goal, doing practice questions probably won’t suffice to prepare you for test day. After all, you likely won’t learn the numerous requisite concepts and strategies by simply reading solutions to questions you answered incorrectly.

Completing lots of practice questions before you’ve mastered the concepts and strategies they require is like hitting golf balls at the driving range without first learning how to properly hold a club. Will you improve your swing that way or just solidify bad habits?

Moreover, reading an explanation of what you could’ve done isn’t the same as knowing what to do and putting those steps into practice. Also, in your practice, you probably won’t immediately apply what you learned from a solution. Rather, you’ll move on to questions requiring different skills. And there is a good chance that you won’t think to use that prior information by the time you see another question to which it applies.

#4: Learn Before You Practice

Although answering practice questions alone generally isn’t sufficient GMAT Verbal preparation, it is an important second step. So then, what is the first step?

For best results, first build strong foundations in the concepts and strategies related to a Verbal question type. Then, answer practice questions of just that type.

For example, for Critical Reasoning questions that ask you to weaken an argument, you would learn what a premise is and the various ways arguments can be weakened (concepts). You also would learn to identify the conclusion before you answer the question (strategy). Then, you’d practice by answering dozens of Weaken the Argument questions.

Similarly, before practicing Reading Comprehension questions that ask you to identify a passage’s main point, you would learn the difference between main points and supporting details of a passage (concepts). You also would learn to eliminate answer choices from worst to best (strategy). Then, you’d practice answering Main Point questions.

So, to learn each question type, read all about the question type, watch videos, and put what you’re learning into your own words. Once you have a thorough understanding of the question type, practice with many questions of that type.

This order of events is important for a number of reasons. For one, you won’t waste time trying to answer questions without clearly understanding how to get them correct.

Secondly, your practice will help solidify the knowledge and skills you just gained, so what you learn “sticks.”

Finally, your practice results will indicate whether you fully understand the topic you just studied and are ready to progress to the next topic.

#5: Review All Practice Questions You Answer Incorrectly 

Keeping in mind the importance of your practice results, you must review any questions you answer incorrectly during practice. Then, if necessary, go back to your study materials and further study the concepts involved in those questions. (Remember, simply reading answer explanations for missed questions generally won’t be sufficient for learning concepts you didn’t fully understand.)

As you’re reviewing your incorrect answers, take note of the reasons why you got each question incorrect. Did you make a careless mistake? Skip over a keyword in an answer choice? Not recognize the specific question type? By determining why you didn’t identify the correct answer, you can see what you need to do differently going forward.

Once you’ve understood the concepts related to a question type and learned to consistently answer questions of that type correctly, you’ll be ready to move on to the next topic. If you repeat this process for every Verbal topic—learn, practice, review, correct—by the time you finish your GMAT prep, you will be a machine at GMAT Focus Verbal.

#6: Start Your Practice Untimed 

You don’t want to try to go “from 0 to 60” as soon as you start doing Verbal practice questions. Why? Because, to improve at playing the GMAT Focus Verbal game, you have to develop skill in seeing what is going on in Verbal questions. The most effective way to develop that skill is by doing careful, untimed practice.

In fact, I always recommend that students complete their practice untimed in the earlier stages of their GMAT test prep. I don’t want students to even think about the clock when they first start doing Verbal practice questions. Let’s discuss the reasons why timed practice is a mistake early on in your prep.

I don’t want students to even think about the clock when they first start doing Verbal practice questions.

Why Doing Timed Practice Early in Your Prep Usually Doesn’t Work

One problem with doing timed practice in the earlier stages of your Verbal prep is that 2 minutes or less is generally not enough time for a novice to fully analyze a question and arrive at the correct answer.

When people do timed practice early on, they tend to rush through questions and get many incorrect. Then, they either get the missed questions correct the second time around or try to learn from answer explanations what they need to do to get the questions correct.

This process does not reflect what test-takers have to do to get questions correct when taking the actual GMAT Focus. You won’t get second chances to answer questions or have explanations to refer to. So, practicing in this way, people don’t really develop their Verbal skills.

A second problem with timed practice is that it lets you off the hook. Rather than deal with the mental and emotional challenges of working your way to correct answers, you give yourself an excuse to say, “Oh well,” and move on to another question. Your time is up, so you just have to guess and call it a day, right?

With that kind of easy out, how will you ever train yourself to do what you need to do to find correct answers? How will you hone your analytical and logical reasoning skills and build your stamina and mental toughness? How will you sharpen your eye for nuance and detail? You won’t!

That you’ve learned about a question type doesn’t mean you’re ready to answer those questions at test pace. A more accurate view is that, having learned the concepts and strategies related to a question type, you’re ready to start training to answer those questions, in whatever amount of time you need for each question.

Achieve High Accuracy Before Adding Time Constraints 

In the initial stages of your GMAT Focus Verbal prep, the best approach is to practice untimed until you’re consistently getting questions of a particular type correct. In other words, your first goal is to do whatever it takes to achieve high accuracy.

In fact, I would not consider it unusual for a student who is just starting to practice with Weaken the Argument questions to spend 30 minutes analyzing and gaining a full understanding of a single question. I would not be worried about that student’s prospects for earning a good GMAT Focus Verbal score—or even a perfect score. On the contrary, this level of slow, methodical practice, without the pressure of a timer, is precisely what I recommend.

The truth is, if you can consistently answer a particular type of question correctly in 10, 20, or whatever number of minutes, then you’ve developed the baseline skills necessary to get that type of question correct faster. Moreover, as you continue to correctly answer questions of that type, you’ll naturally speed up.

If you never follow through with the difficult work of sticking with a question until you find the correct answer, you won’t build those necessary skills. Thus, correctly answering those questions within a few minutes will always be somewhat of a struggle.

So, once you’re achieving high accuracy untimed, you can work on speeding up to test pace while maintaining high accuracy.

Don’t put the cart before the horse! Accuracy first; speed will follow.

#7: Make Sophisticated Analysis Your Goal

At this point, you may be wondering what a person could possibly be doing working on a question for 10 minutes or more. Actually, such work is some of the most important you’ll do in your GMAT Verbal training.

Remember, seeing what is going on in Verbal questions is the key to consistently answering them correctly. And the fact is, much of what there is to see in GMAT Verbal questions is fairly sophisticated in terms of logic and trickiness. So, the more sophisticated our analysis of Verbal questions is, the higher we’ll score.

For example, in CR, evaluating answer choices as simply “relevant” or “irrelevant” may get you to a Verbal score of 80 or 81. However, to achieve a score of 83 or 84+, you need to go beyond “relevant” versus “irrelevant” in your analysis. You need to fully articulate what the effect of each answer choice is.

You’ll be surprised how great a difference analyzing Verbal questions more deeply can make in your accuracy and your score.

For one, such analysis can help you avoid trap answers. Let’s discuss how.

How Sophisticated Analysis Can Help You Avoid Trap Answers

Many trap answer choices in GMAT Focus Verbal rely on shallow analysis. So, if you often find yourself stuck between two answers, or you often select trap answers, it may be that you need to work on thinking in a deeper, more detailed way about answers choices.

For example, in RC, are you carefully analyzing passages to determine whether answer choices are supported, or are you looking for choices that simply match the wording of the passage (a common trap)? In CR, are you fully analyzing the logical relationships between the answer choices and the passages, or are you considering only the topic or the presence of certain keywords?

When solving Verbal questions, you must consider whether you’re performing detailed, sophisticated analysis of each answer choice or relying on shallow analysis that may lead you to fall for trap answers.

How to Make Your Verbal Question Analysis More Sophisticated

To make your Verbal question analysis more sophisticated, when completing untimed practice, do the following:

• Treat each answer choice as if it were a question.
• Seek to identify and clearly articulate precise reasons why each answer choice you see is incorrect or correct.
• Don’t select an answer until you have fully analyzed and understood every choice.

Also, it’s necessary to develop an awareness of whether you have fully supported your answer with solid logic. In answering Quant questions, this awareness comes naturally. For example, if a Quant question asks for the rate of Machine A, you know that you haven’t done what you have to do to identify the correct answer until you find the rate of Machine A.

In contrast, in answering a Verbal question, it’s easy to decide on an answer without having solid reasons for choosing it. So, when answering a Verbal practice question, it’s important to consider whether you have truly supported your choice with solid, logical, sophisticated reasoning before you make a final selection.

By practicing this way, you’ll develop skill in doing the type of analysis that results in a high Verbal score. Yes, in the beginning, you’ll spend a lot of time on each question. However, remember, speed will come with skill!

#8: Avoid GMAT Verbal Gimmicks

The antithesis of sophisticated analysis is relying on GMAT Verbal gimmicks. That said, we all look for ways to make preparing for test day quicker and easier. So, it’s easy to fall for gimmicky methods of answering Verbal questions.

Plenty of GMAT Verbal gimmicks circulate throughout the GMAT community. You may have already come across supposed shortcuts to Verbal success such as eliminating “extreme” answers or reading only certain parts of passages. Many of these shortcuts don’t work consistently or well, especially on harder questions, and some of these gimmicks may even hurt your Verbal performance.

For example, many GMAT students have heard that the main idea of an RC passage will be stated in the first or last paragraph. While it is possible that the main idea is stated in one of those paragraphs, there is no rule that it must be in the first or last paragraph. In fact, some trap answers in Main Idea questions are related to what is said in the first or last paragraph but don’t actually articulate the passage’s main idea. So, the “shortcut” of checking only the first or last paragraph to find the main idea can get you into trouble.

The thing is, gimmicky methods may get you a slightly above-average Verbal score. So, at first, they may seem to work. However, I wouldn’t count on continuing to increase your GMAT Verbal score beyond that middling point.

So, be discerning about which strategies you rely on for your GMAT Verbal preparation! Ask yourself, are you putting your faith in a shortcut that doesn’t require any real knowledge or skill. Or, are you using a reliable strategy for implementing genuine Verbal knowledge in an efficient way?

#9: Get Comfortable with Discomfort

You may be surprised to hear that cultivating sheer determination to find correct answers no matter what can add 5 or more points to your GMAT Focus Verbal score. So, I cannot overstate the importance of learning to sit with your discomfort when answering Verbal practice questions, pushing through that discomfort, and not letting it get the best of you. Persevering through discomfort is how you strengthen your GMAT Verbal muscles to the point where you can handle whatever heavy lifting comes your way on test day.

There is a significant amount of scientific research showing the role of mindset in test prep. (For more on this topic, check out these articles on how reappraising anxiety as excitement improves test performance and the importance of grit.) If we never learn to deal with the discomfort we feel when something doesn’t come easily to us, chances are we’ll never advance to the point where that thing does come easily.

If you quit the moment things get tough, if you tell yourself, “I’m too confused to figure this out,” you’ll remain in that state of confusion. So, if you want to improve in GMAT Verbal, expect to feel uncomfortable sometimes when you answer questions. Welcome that feeling! It means you’re learning and growing and doing what you need to do to increase your Verbal score.

#10: Select Appropriate Study Materials

A major mistake that test-takers make when preparing for the GMAT Focus is that they bounce around between multiple study resources. Maybe they try to cobble together whatever free resources they can find online. Maybe they just pick up the latest GMAT book without researching what kinds of study materials are out there.

If you’re serious about scoring high on GMAT Verbal, you need study materials that allow you to do the type of structured, linear, and methodical learning, practice, and review that I’ve laid out in this article. A patchwork, last-minute, or haphazard approach won’t cut it.

If you don’t currently have a study resource that supports the necessary work, websites such as GMAT Club, Beat the GMAT, and MBA Insight are great places to research GMAT prep materials. Those websites feature verified reviews from test-takers, so you can see what materials have gotten the job done for others in your shoes. Furthermore, if you plan to study on your own to increase your score, be aware that most online self-study courses (including Target Test Prep) offer low-cost trials. So, you can commit to a study resource after you make sure it will give you all the tools you need to hit your score goal.

Do the necessary legwork up front to select appropriate, effective study materials. Your Verbal prep will be more organized, and in the long run, you’ll save yourself time and frustration.

Bonus Strategy: Get Pumped!

The process of increasing your Verbal score is a game of inches. Every concept you learn, every strategy you master, every practice question you do, you get closer to your goal. The great news is that there is no ceiling to how high your Verbal score can go. The idea that you have a Verbal score ceiling is a total myth.

So, be confident that you can develop the skills necessary for achieving your score goal, regardless of your starting point or any struggles you face during your GMAT prep. I’ve seen many TTP students increase their GMAT scores by hundreds of points, including making huge gains in their Verbal scores. For example, this TTP student recently increased his GMAT Focus score by 140 points and earned a perfect Verbal score.

As long as you continue to develop your skills, your score will continue to increase. So, seek to enjoy the GMAT Verbal game as you learn to master it. See it as a fun challenge rather than as something boring or intimidating. At its core, Verbal Reasoning is kind of a cool, tricky logic game, and you’re learning to play the game! Moreover, you’re doing something important for your future. This game is going to open many doors for you! Get pumped!

Key Takeaways: What Is the Best Way to Study for GMAT Verbal to Earn a High Score?

Scoring high on the GMAT Verbal section is an important part of earning an impressive GMAT total score. Moreover, business schools generally prefer to see “balanced” GMAT section scores because quantitative, data analysis, and management-level reading and analytical skills are all necessary for success in the business world. Meanwhile, to be competitive at top MBA programs, you need relatively high scores in all sections.

So, here are the steps you can take to improve in GMAT Verbal and earn your highest possible score:

• Understand the GMAT Focus Verbal game.
• Master each Verbal question type one at a time.
• Don’t just run through practice questions to prepare.
• Learn before you practice.
• Start your practice untimed.
• Achieve high accuracy before adding time constraints.
• Make sophisticated analysis your goal.
• Avoid GMAT Verbal gimmicks.
• Get comfortable with discomfort.
• Select appropriate study materials.
• Get pumped!

What’s Next?

Is the GMAT Verbal section easier than the GRE Verbal section? This detailed comparison of the GMAT Verbal syllabus and structure on both tests will help you determine which test better suits your strengths.

Can you score high on GMAT Verbal if English isn’t your first language? With our advice on how to excel in GMAT Verbal for non-native speakers, you can!

Want even more GMAT Verbal tips? Check out these Critical Reasoning strategies and these Reading Comprehension dos and don’ts.