Wrote the GMAT for the 2nd time - Need Help!!

[megatonflare]

Hi All,

I've written my GMAT for the 2nd time yesterday, and I scored a 510 (Quant 42/69%, and Verbal 19/23%) and felt very disappointed :( . I have been preparing for this exam for the past 5 months now.

In short, I've taken 6 MGMAT, 3 Kaplan and 4 GMAT Prep practice tests and the scores are the following:

MGMAT - hovering between 590-610
Kaplan - hovering between 550-600
GMATPrep - hovering between 550-610

I used the following resources to study:

1) OG 12,OG 13,Quant review and Verbal review.
2) Powerscore 10 bible for CR
3) Manhattan SC, CR, and RC for verbal study
4) All the Manhattan quant books (word problems, number properties, etc.) for quant study
5) Kaplan GMAT 2013

I practice lots of quant questions from a variety of sources, Kaplan, OG, Gmatclub, Manhattan books, etc., and from the first gmat exam i wrote a month ago, the lesson i learned was to take my time and slowdown on the quant section. Doing so has improved my quant significantly, going from 46% to a 69%.

However, quant is not the issue for me, but rather the verbal is.

To prepare for the verbal section, I've done the following:

- Read 2-3 articles on nytimes and economist for a month to increase my reading speed and overall comprehension
- Practiced 90% SC, CR and RC questions in OG13, and tried to learn from my mistakes.
- I was struggling with CR, so I read through the Powerscore CR Bible, and did a deep-dive of the various question types in the GMAT (e.g., specific approach for a 'Weaken the argument' type problem, etc.)
- I thought my SC was relatively good, so i focused less on that as well, but I did go through Manhattan's SC book once, and tried to internalize the patterns, the idioms, comparisons, subject-verb agreements, etc.
- For RC, i did the passages found in the OG13
- In general, i tried to stay away from any verbal question that was not written by GMAC themselves, as I was told that there are lots of verbal questions out there that can confuse and hinder your learning, and thus should only stick to content written by GMAC.

Test Day Experience:

During test day, I showed up to the exam 30 minutes before. I wasn't feeling too nervous. I got past the essay and IR without too much trouble. For the quant section, I took my time trying to solve the first 15 questions, as I recall the first 15 questions really determine which score band (i.e., 500 or 600 or 700) your score will most likely end up in. Towards the end of the quant section, I got a little carried away with the 2nd last question and the time ran out. So I was unable to answer 2 questions :( I believe that may have brought down my quant score abit. If i'm not wrong, percentile reduces by 3% per question missed?

However, missing the 2 questions made me feel somewhat paranoid and nervous. All I was thinking about during the 8 minute break was, I will get penalized and my score won't be good on quant.

I proceeded with Verbal after, and this is where most of my troubles began. The first question was a CR question, and for some reason, I wasn't able to think straight, as I had read the question almost 3 times, and the contents weren't registering in my head. I think the answer I picked was wrong. The next question was an SC question, but it looked a lot different than any of the questions I've done on MGMAT, or Kaplan tests. For example, in MGMAT I am very quickly able to find the 3:2 splits and narrow down to the answer quite efficiently. However, during the exam, there were barely any splits, but rather each of the answers was very unique and I had to re-read each several times to figure out what I was trying to correct.

As I continued to answer, it felt like I was guessing quite often. The RC section wasn't too bad, the passages were relatively straight forward. However, CR and SC seemed a lot harder than what I was used to.
Finally I completed the verbal section on time, but i had rushed through a few questions towards the middle of verbal section. My score was calculated, and it was a bit expected as my quant score improved, but my verbal I knew I had not done well as I felt like I was guessing too often.

Overall, I would say I've figured out how to improve my quant, it was to simply take my time and not rush through the first 15 questions.

But for verbal, I am in need of some assistance in terms of:
- What I could have done better during the exam?
- What I could do now to prepare till I write my next exam?
- Are there any weaknesses in my approach / method / resources?
- Why did verbal seem harder than what I was used to? (especially CR and SC, has GMAC although kept the same underlying principles, but modified the way the concepts are tested?)
- Perhaps, is there a better strategy to internalize those concepts, methods outlined for CR, and SC? (I am quite a mechanical person, by that I mean I like to solve problems by following specific guidelines, recipes, basically knowing what my job should be for the various question types, and I tend to use less intuition I suppose)
- Any additional feedback would be great!

I wanted to seek your inputs regarding the above, and I would truly appreciate it.

Thank you very much for reading my post and I look forward to your responses and feedback.

Cheers,

-Faisal