GMAT 660 Q51 V28!! Help Needed With Verbal!!

by **sarangjn** Thu Sep 26, 2013 2:02 pm

Hi,

I took the GMAT a couple of weeks back and got a 660 (Q 51/V 28/AWA 5/IR 5). I am extremely disappointed with my verbal score. I would like to hear any inputs on how best to tackle the GMAT in my second attempt (November mid).

I did go to a private tutor and most of his materials were questions taken from official guides. The materials given by him were very good and I used to do each problem within 2 minutes. I also did Grail/Manhattan/OG material separately.

While studying I didn't have much of a problem with either Quant or CR.
My accuracy in RC was consistently bad until a couple of weeks before my GMAT. I am not sure if the accuracy improved because I started getting better at RC or if I was more familiar with the passages.
My accuracy in SC improved considerably and reached a stage where I was getting only 2 SC questions wrong per mock exam. About two weeks before my Test I stopped studying SC. Instead I started doing Quant & RC.

I gave my MGMAT mocks one week prior to my GMAT and was very pleased with the results (considering the fact that they are known to be tougher than the real GMAT)

MGMAT 2 680 - Q46 V36 (18/08/2013)
MGMAT 3 710 - Q47 V40 (27/08/2013)
MGMAT 4 690 - Q46 V38 (29/08/2013)
MGMAT 5 720 - Q47 V41 (31/08/2013)
MGMAT 6 730 - Q50 V39 (01/09/2013)

GMAT PREP 2 760 - Q51 V40

Exam Day

On the exam day, AWA, IR & Quant went pretty well. Once I started my Verbal, I found the sentence correction problems very "unfamiliar". I was unsure about the answers I marked for many SC questions. I tried maintaining the 2 minute/question time limit, but by the time I reached the 20th question I was lagging behind. I ended the Verbal section a minute ahead of time, so I think I might have gone through the last 20 questions a bit too fast at the expense of my accuracy. RC passages were not easy. Even as I was doing my verbal, I was getting a feeling that it was going very bad.

I am not sure where I went wrong in my preparations. I would like to give a second shot by mid november.

Can anyone give any insights on how to approach Verbal and what could have possibly gone wrong? I have never got a V 28 in any of my mock exams. I guess there was Exam Stress and I didn't sleep that well the day before my exam. But I don't know if I can blame it completely on those factors. Any inputs welcome!!

Thanks.