It’s not secret that business schools look for high GMAT scores. What you might not know is that the Verbal section on the GMAT has an outsized influence on the aggregate score. This means that the path to a truly great score, once you’ve hit the minimum marks on the other sections, lies in acing the Verbal.
On its surface, the Verbal section tests your critical reasoning and reading comprehension skills which are highly valued in business contexts. More deeply, what’s tested is your ability to prioritize information, make inferences, navigate complex and subtle informational environments, and understand the scope of what’s being discussed. More on this last point shortly.
Before you dive into strategy, it’s essential to understand what the GMAT Verbal Section includes, why it matters, and where your personal growth opportunities lie.
What Is the GMAT Verbal Section?
The Verbal Reasoning Section is a vital component of the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), purportedly designed to assess candidates’ proficiency in standard written English. General fluency is all that’s required; there’s no edge for people who are particularly linguistically accomplished because English is only the medium under which your verbal reasoning is tested. If you speak English as a second language, rest assured that the Verbal section would be just as challenging in your native language.
The GMAT Verbal Section has 23 questions and, like the Quant and Data Insights sections, a duration of 45 minutes. To finish on time, you’ll need to move through the section at an average of just under 2 minutes per question.
The new GMAT has an improved (and shortened) Verbal Reasoning section. While the “old” GMAT Verbal Section had a heavy dose of sentence correction questions, which gave fluent English speakers a head start (the GRE still does through its use of complex vocabulary), the new GMAT’s Verbal Section levels the playing field by removing the Sentence Correction problems entirely.
Despite not being as closely examined by admissions committees as a section, no one can afford to undervalue Verbal during their GMAT preparation. The subtleties of GMAT Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension require a test taker’s attention to detail to earn a competitive score.
Why Is the GMAT Verbal Section Important?
The GMAT Verbal evaluates crucial verbal skills and measures a candidate’s ability to understand communications effectively, an essential trait for future managers and business leaders. In a diverse business environment, clarity of expression, rapid comprehension of complex materials, and sound judgment are vital.
Also, the Verbal Section is a test of critical thinking, inviting test-takers to delve into the content to scrutinize and dissect arguments effectively. This skill is directly applicable to real-world business scenarios and finds employment in many other walks of life, professional and otherwise.
The Verbal Section also serves as a tool to predict academic success. Graduate management programs are intense and often require significant reading, writing, and presenting. The ability to comprehend voluminous written material and anticipate the implications of arguments are skills that can be further honed through the verbal portion of the GMAT, making it a valuable metric for universities and prospective students alike.
Impact of Verbal Score on Overall GMAT Performance
The Verbal Section is scored in one-point increments with a minimum score of 60 and a maximum score of 90. The mean score is 79. To score above the 90th percentile, you’ll need an 84.
Your GMAT score is composed of the Verbal, Quantitative, and Data Insights sections equally. These individual scores are then combined and translated into a scaled score ranging from 205 to 805, representing two-thirds of this final score.
| Section | Score Range | Contribution to Total Score |
| Verbal | 60-90 | 1/3 |
| Quantitative | 60-90 | 1/3 |
| Data Insights | 60-90 | 1/3 |
Expert tip: One of our tutors, Elijah Mize, who has achieved a top score himself, explains his understanding of how the total score is calculated.
- Total Score: (Quantitative + Verbal + Data Insights – 180)(20/3) + 205
Note that in some cases, it will be necessary to round the resulting total score to the nearest integer ending with a 5.
Balancing your performance equally across Quant, Verbal, and Data Insights is crucial for your overall GMAT score. Programs often seek candidates who demonstrate strong quantitative analyses and persuasive communication skills, reflected in the balanced GMAT scores. Therefore, mastering Verbal is just as important as showcasing your problem-solving skills.
The 2 Types of Questions in the GMAT Verbal Section
In the GMAT Verbal Section, test-takers encounter two question types designed to measure their English language command and analytical abilities – Critical Reasoning (CR) and Reading Comprehension (RC).
The balance of these two question types varies, but only mildly. The GMAT Verbal Section can have either three RC passages with multiple questions for each passage creating a balance of ten RC questions and thirteen CR questions. Alternatively, there can also be four RC passages, totaling thirteen or fourteen RC questions along with nine or ten CR questions.
Critical Reasoning Questions
Critical reasoning questions require you to assess a short argument, typically three sentences, logically. The argument is called the prompt, and with few exceptions, the prompt is an argument with premises and an identifiable conclusion. The prompt is followed by a question – the stimulus – which always belongs to one of the following categories:
- Conclusion: The correct answer is the logical conclusion of the premises in the prompt.
- Strengthen: The correct answer provides missing information that reinforces the conclusion or addresses a potential weakness/vulnerability of the conclusion provided in the prompt.
- Weaken: Conversely here, the correct answer weakens or undermines the conclusion by providing information to which the argument/conclusion was vulnerable, or calls into question one of the premises that support the conclusion.
- Evaluate: The correct answer provides the information most helpful in evaluating the strength of the argument and its premises.
- Assumption: The correct answer identifies an unstated assumption taken by the argument but that must be recognized for the conclusion to be considered well-supported.
- Flaw/Failure: The correct answer describes the argument’s flaw, failure, or vulnerability.
- Completion: The correct answer completes/strengthens the argument when filling in a blank in the prompt.
- Boldface Analysis: The correct answer correctly describes the role of one or two of the boldface portions of the prompt. The answers are always in an abstract, clinical meta-language that discusses the role without speaking about the content of the argument itself.
- Point at Issue: the correct answer identifies the point of disagreement between two speakers. This question type is rather uncommon.
- Reconciliation: The correct answer provides information that explains an unlikely or apparently impossible scenario or reconciles a set of apparently contradictory facts.
Reading Comprehension
GMAT RC passages are divided into two length ranges and three content domains.
Length ranges:
- Short (200 to 250 words, three questions)
- Long (300 to 350 words, four questions)
Content domains:
Some passages blur the lines between content domains, but most fall nicely into one of the three categories. A Verbal Section with three RC passages always has one long passage and two short passages with a total of ten RC questions. A Verbal Section with four RC passages may have one or two long passages with a total of thirteen or fourteen RC questions.
There are 6 identifiable types of RC questions:
- Main idea – These questions ask about the author’s purpose in writing a passage or about the primary concern of a passage or paragraph.
- Detail (supporting idea) – These questions ask about specific details in the passage.
- Inference – These questions ask about a fact or relationship that is implied in the passage.
- Logical structure – These questions ask about the organization of the passage, the relationship between ideas, or the role of a particular paragraph or sentence in the overall structure of the passage.
- Tone and style – These questions ask about the author’s attitude, opinion, or perspective on the topic, as well as the language and rhetorical devices used to convey that tone or style.
- Out of context – These questions present a statement and ask you to determine whether it strengthens, weakens, or is unrelated to the main idea or arguments in the passage. They may also ask you to consider new information and evaluate how it would affect the author’s argument or the passage’s main idea.
Valuable Tips to Tackle GMAT Verbal
There are many potential missteps that you can make on the Verbal section, and part of the challenge is that it’s easy to get caught up in your own reasoning without having the perspective to see your own mistakes. With only two minutes per question, the right strategies can make or break your efforts here.
Scope is EVERYTHING
Probably the most overlooked feature governing the Verbal section is the idea of scope. Scope – in short – is everything an argument is about and nothing that it’s not. Think of scope as a five to ten-word description that discusses what’s going on in an argument, article, passage, or book. It can be neither too detailed, nor too vague, yet must encompass everything that is relevant.
Determining the correct scope will usually eliminate two or three of the five answer choices on any given Verbal problem. Master the skill of defining scope, and the Verbal section is yours.
Don’t Guess Answers
It’s also important to remember that you’re taking an adaptive test. If you guess a question with the plan to come back and change your answer later, you’ll probably answer the question incorrectly at first. This incorrect response will negatively affect the difficulty of the questions selected for you. Less difficult questions lead to lower-scoring sections.
So even if you correctly answer three questions that you guessed on at first in the Question Review and Edit phase, your section score will still be lower than if you had answered those questions correctly the first time around.
To adapt the old economics adage: “There’s no such thing as a free skip.” Earlier questions have a greater effect on the “adaptivity swing” than later questions, so it is strongly recommended to avoid guessing before question 10 on any section of the test.
Use the ‘Question Review and Edit’ Wisely
The new GMAT has a new feature called “Question Review and Edit.” It allows you to change up to three of your answers after completing a section.
But remember that leaving any questions unanswered may affect your overall score. To avoid this, aim to finish each section with time to spare, then review any skipped questions.
Since the GMAT is adaptive, incorrect answers will lower the difficulty level of subsequent questions, impacting your score. Due to this fact, it’s best to put in the time to get the correct response the first time around. Avoid guessing before the tenth question of each section and use the Question Review and Edit feature only for necessary changes that you realize after you’ve already moved on. This approach will ensure the best possible score.
Examples of GMAT Verbal Questions
GMAT Critical Reasoning Problem
Let’s move on to an exemplary Critical Reasoning question. There will be a prompt and then a question: “Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?”
See if you can answer this question without referring to the answer choices, and then see if you can find the answer you came up with in the answer choice set. This is similar to what we did on SC, correcting the sentence ourselves before getting mixed up in the five choices.
Infotek, a computer manufacturer in Katrovia, has just introduced a new personal computer model that sells for significantly less than any other model. Market research shows, however, that very few Katrovian households without personal computers would buy a computer, regardless of its price. Therefore, introducing the new model is unlikely to increase the number of computers in Katrovian homes.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
(A) Infotek achieved the lower price of the new model by using components of lower quality than those used by other manufacturers.
(B) The main reason cited by consumers in Katrovia for replacing a personal computer is the desire to have an improved model.
(C) Katrovians in households that already have computers are unlikely to purchase the new Infotek model as an additional computer for home use.
(D) The price of other personal computers in Katrovia is unlikely to drop below the price of Infotek’s new model in the near future.
(E) Most personal computers purchased in Katrovia are intended for home use.
(You’ll learn to love the made-up companies and countries of Critical Reasoning questions.) Why did I ask you to answer the question without referring to the answer choices? Because if you don’t know what you’re looking for, how are you going to distinguish it from four fakes (the wrong answer choices)? Doing so is not impossible and will sometimes be necessary on Critical Reasoning questions (we’ll learn strategies for this in future articles), but it’s far better to come to the answer choice set with an idea of what you’re hoping to find there.
First, identify the conclusion of the argument. Words like “therefore” in this prompt are a dead giveaway. Conclusion: introducing the new model is unlikely to increase the number of computers in Katrovian homes.
Once you have the conclusion, you answer Critical Reasoning questions by identifying “the gap” – the gap between what the premises prove and what the conclusion asserts.
So, what do the premises prove, either by direct statements or by the logical consequences of those statements? Despite the lower price of the new Infotek computer, almost no Katrovian households without computers will buy this cheaper model.
Meanwhile, the conclusion asserts that the new model’s release “is unlikely to increase the number of computers in Katrovian homes.” On the surface, this may seem like a reasonably safe conclusion from the given premise.
When you can’t see a “gap” or an assumption right away, ask yourself questions like these:
“Is there any way that the conclusion could be false even while the premises are true? What would it take for this to happen?”
To contextualize these questions: Is there any way for the new Infotek model to increase the number of computers in Katrovian homes even if very few households without computers buy them? Yes, there is! Hopefully, now you’re seeing the limited range of the premise and the gap that it creates. The prompt only talks about Katrovian households without computers. It didn’t even mention Katrovian households with computers.
If these households purchase the cheaper Infotek model as a secondary home computer, then, contrary to the argument’s conclusion, the new model will increase the number of computers in Katrovian homes. So there’s our gap and our assumption. The assumption is what the argument would have to say in order for the conclusion to be proven with no gap. This argument would have to say that Katrovian households with computers won’t purchase the new Infotek model as a secondary computer.
Now answer choice C leaps off the page
(C) Katrovians in households that already have computers are unlikely to purchase the new Infotek model as an additional computer for home use.
Improving on CR usually involves thinking about the wrong answer choices, how they try to trick you, and why they’re wrong – even after you’ve answered a question correctly. But we’ll save that kind of study for future articles that go into more detail about CR. Those articles will also explain how the “gap” strategy can be used to answer almost every Critical Reasoning question type, not just assumption questions. For now, we’ll look at a shorter Reading Comprehension passage and a single follow-up question.
GMAT Reading Comprehension Problem
Passage: In recent years, Western business managers have been heeding the exhortations of business journalists and academics to move their companies toward long-term, collaborative “strategic partnerships” with their external business partners (e.g., suppliers). The experts’ advice comes as a natural reaction to numerous studies conducted during the past decade that compared Japanese production and supply practices with those of the rest of the world. The link between the success of a certain well-known Japanese automaker and its effective management of its suppliers, for example, has led to an unquestioning belief within Western management circles in the value of strategic partnerships. Indeed, in the automobile sector all three United States manufacturers and most of their European competitors have launched programs to reduce their total number of suppliers and move toward having strategic partnerships with a few.
However, new research concerning supplier relationships in various industries demonstrates that the widespread assumption of Western managers and business consultants that Japanese firms manage their suppliers primarily through strategic partnerships is unjustified. Not only do Japanese firms appear to conduct a far smaller proportion of their business through strategic partnerships than is commonly believed, but they also make extensive use of “market-exchange” relationships, in which either party can turn to the marketplace and shift to different business partners at will, a practice usually associated with Western manufacturers.
The passage is primarily concerned with
(A) examining economic factors that may have contributed to the success of certain Japanese companies
(B) discussing the relative merits of strategic partnerships as compared with those of market-exchange relationships
(C) challenging the validity of a widely held assumption about how Japanese firms operate
(D) explaining why Western companies have been slow to adopt a particular practice favored by Japanese companies
(E) pointing out certain differences between Japanese and Western supplier relationships
Future articles will discuss and provide guidance for the various types of questions that accompany GMAT Reading Comprehension passages. A “main idea” question like the one above is the best place to begin. These questions usually appear as the first question with a given passage. That’s a good thing because you won’t be tempted to skim and scan for the answer as you might be on a “supporting idea” (detail) question.
The best way to approach Reading Comprehension on the GMAT is to read the passage attentively. DO NOT try to answer the questions without reading the passage. That approach will take you more time, not less, and you’ll miss questions that you could have gotten right by simply reading the passage. Be thankful for “main idea” questions, especially when they come first because they force you to do the right thing and read the passage attentively.
A passage’s main idea or purpose is the key to the whole thing. Only when you understand a passage’s overall purpose can you understand the flow of its logic and the roles and relationships of the details it provides. This is why we start essays with thesis statements. They provide the map, the key, and the compass.
GMAT Reading Comprehension passages will jump in without such orienting thesis statements. You’ll have to read the whole thing and come up with that statement or main idea yourself. However, once you have a clear vision of this main idea, you can understand the whole passage and, with practice, correctly answer pretty much any Reading Comprehension question the GMAT will throw at you.
The first sentence of the second paragraph is the most important sentence in this passage. The West overestimated the prevalence of strategic partnerships in Japanese producer-supplier relationships, regardless of how effectively “a certain well-known Japanese automaker” (Toyota) manages its suppliers. Usually, you can make quick calls on the main idea answer choices from their first words alone. Here we have:
(A) examining
(B) discussing
(C) challenging
(D) explaining
(E) pointing out
Here, “challenging” looks promising. This passage is primarily concerned with challenging the validity of a widely held assumption about Japanese firms’ operations.
Once you’ve read attentively and answered the main idea question, or if there was no main idea question, expressed the main idea yourself, you’ve crested the hill of the Reading Comprehension passage. The ease or difficulty with which you answer the rest of the questions will depend on how carefully and accurately you completed those first two steps.
Prepare for the GMAT Verbal with an Expert Tutor
Remember, the right tutor can change your GMAT game. Their insights into test-taking strategies will empower you to tackle the Verbal Section confidently, helping you achieve that target score for an excellent admission prospect.
A good tutor will also guide you in balancing Quant, Verbal, and Data Insights, ensuring you maximize your overall score.
If you need extra help preparing for the GMAT, we offer extensive one-on-one tutoring. Start by scheduling a complimentary 30-minute consultation call with one of our Senior Instructors!
GMAT Verbal FAQ
Is Verbal Difficult on the GMAT?
The Verbal section can be challenging, but with proper preparation and practice, you can master the skills required to develop a truly great score.
Is 40 a Good Score for GMAT Verbal?
A Verbal score of 40 on the old GMAT exam was somewhat strong, but remember that as of 2024 the new GMAT has a different scoring scale. Focus on percentile rankings for an accurate comparison. Generally, a Verbal score above 82 would be considered strong.
What Is a Good Verbal Score in GMAT?
A good Verbal score in the GMAT typically falls within the higher end of the 60-90 range, but it’s essential to check your percentile ranking for a true measure of performance. As of this writing in mid 2024, a score above 85 would be exceptional.
How to Prepare for GMAT Verbal?
Prepare for the GMAT Verbal section by practicing reading comprehension and critical reasoning. Remain open to alternative answer explanations that you don’t agree with, and consider working with a tutor for personalized strategies.
How do I Improve My GMAT Verbal Score?
To improve your GMAT Verbal score, focus on enhancing your reading speed and critical thinking skills, and take regular practice tests to track your progress. If you’ve hit a roadblock, get outside help to assist you in seeing what you can’t observe on your own.
How Many Verbal Questions Are There on the GMAT?
The GMAT Verbal section includes 23 questions, which you need to complete within the allocated time of 45 minutes.
Contributor: Elijah Mize (Apex GMAT Instructor)