GMAT Verbal Help

The Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) is your chance to show admissions officers your capacity to succeed in any graduate business program. As such, the GMAT makes varied demands on your skill set, testing your verbal reasoning and quantitative skills. The GMAT Verbal Reasoning exam is a major hurdle that you will face on your road to the best graduate business program for you. While there are other obstacles involved in applying to business school, the GMAT is an especially important one because it is a standard metric by which admissions committees evaluate applicants. Different schools may have different grading scales or student expectations, but the GMAT is the same for everyone, making it a critical element of your applications. Whether you need top GMAT tutors in New York, GMAT tutors in Chicago, or top GMAT tutors in Los Angeles, working with a pro may take your studies to the next level.

On your GMAT Verbal Reasoning exam, you’ll have to answer forty-one questions in seventy-five minutes. Of these questions, you can anticipate that about one-third will be Sentence Correction questions, while the remaining two-thirds will be evenly split between Critical Reasoning questions and Reading Comprehension questions.

The Sentence Correction questions ask you to demonstrate your ability to communicate in a way that is unambiguous, concise, and adheres to the grammatical rules of standard written English. Specifically, you have to make a decision regarding an underlined portion of a provided sentence: you can either recommend modifying it by choosing one of several changes listed, or you can recommend it stay the same way it is written in the sentence by selecting the option that repeats the underlined text exactly as-is. Clear and effective communication is key to a career in management. When approaching questions, read each of the answer choices to yourself and make sure you understand precisely what is different about each one and how that affects the provided sentence as a whole. It may be helpful to ask yourself which of the answer choices would match the communication style likely to be preferred in a managerial position.

The Critical Reasoning portion of the GMAT Verbal section asks you to analyze arguments. You will be given an argument and then be asked questions about it, potentially including (but not limited to) identifying its components or modifying it with some change. For instance, a question might present an argument and ask you which of a series of hypotheticals would most strongly support or undermine the argument presented. Certainly, the ability to think analytically and closely evaluate arguments will be critical to success in management. Get a head start on this skill with thorough preparation for the GMAT Verbal Reasoning section! Varsity Tutors also offers resources like a free GMAT Verbal Practice Tests to help with your self-paced study, or you may want to consider a GMAT tutor.  

The final type of question on the GMAT Verbal Reasoning test is Reading Comprehension. For these questions, a short prose passage will be presented, accompanied by several questions. You will be asked to demonstrate your ability to identify the main idea, draw inferences, or make predictions based on the information given. The importance of reading for information is a skill with importance that cannot be overstated.

All of these skills are not necessary for success on the GMAT Verbal Reasoning test; they are critical skills that you will need in any management position you may eventually take. Taking time to assiduously practice these skills can be rewarded not only on the GMAT Verbal Reasoning section, but also in graduate school classes, when time can be in especially short supply. You can maximize your success later by investing time and effort now into mastering these skills. No matter your approach, the energy you put in today will be time you appreciate later! In addition to the GMAT Verbal Help Section and GMAT tutoring, you may also want to consider using some of our GMAT Verbal Flashcards.

You can start studying for the GMAT Verbal Reasoning section using Varsity Tutors’ GMAT Verbal Help page. Here, GMAT Verbal content is broken down into specific topics, which you can familiarize yourself with through model questions complete not only with provided answers but also with full explanations of why those answers are correct and how to arrive at them yourself. If you find yourself stumped when answering a particular type of GMAT Verbal question or need to practice one of the specific skills being tested, our free GMAT Verbal Help content can help you begin understanding the topic or question type at hand by allowing you to peruse numerous examples before attempting questions on your own in our free GMAT Verbal Practice Tests and Diagnostic tests. Our GMAT Verbal Help page can help you get off to a good start in reviewing for this challenging section and preparing for success.