550!! Shocked!! Pls help... !

[socrates]

550!! plz need help...advice..nythin!! i can´t believe it....!

Well, heres a bit of my history... I'm not going to insert smilies or ny other "happy" thing.. coz i really dnt think its funny..

QUICK BACKGROUND:
From a commerce background..a little more than 2 yrs exp.. a non-native of English but its my second lang.. n believe am fairly good at it.. i quit my job to prepare for GMAT n have been struggling (full time) with it for d past 1.5 yrs..

GMAT:
Last October, I took the GMAT for the first time, after a 10 month toll.. but scored a meager 580(Q42 V29)..I was shattered, depressed but convinced myself that I was probably not prepared enough..n I moved on for another full time endeavor starting Nov...

I had focused on my verbal in my second prep since that is what had kicked me off in my first attempt. I'd put in serious 8 hours every day for the last 6 months and was sure I had done everything I could n when I saw somewhat consistent scores, I was sure I would score somewhere around 650-700, and went in confidently for the second attempt yesterday..

I knew I could probably NOT get a 700+ if I was nervous. I felt that a 650-670 would be what I would get if all went as the prep tests.
And I do think that all was pretty normal.. (not too nervous or stressed, i slept well the night before, revised my notes.. went for the test.. n AWA was good enough...)

But, the end result was yet another horrific shock. a nightmare! 550! Even lower than my first!! I hadnt seen these scores of 500s ever since i re-started my prep. I had taken these tests under full exam conditions - in an isolated room - with AWA (which i was generally confident of, since I had score a 5.5 in my first attempt) and two 8-minute breaks. I'd share my mock tests results too..

GMAT ATTEMPT 1: 580 (Q42 V29)
1 Kaplan Premier Online--Q40,V33------29-Nov-11---580 (1st test aftr d REAL 1-DEJA-VU!)
2 Kaplan Premier Online--Q48,V23------19-Jan-11---630
3 Manhattan GMAT---------Q47,V32------28-Feb-11---650
4 Manhattan GMAT---------Q44,V34------15-Mar-11---640
5 Kaplan Premier Online--Q39,V34------25-Mar-11---620 (this was the last KAPLAN test id decided 2 take.. the questions were very messed up and some even had grammatical errors)
6 Manhattan GMAT---------Q47,V32------09-May-11---650
7 Manhattan GMAT---------Q45,V36------21-May-11---670
8 GMAT Prep1-------------Q49,V35------09-Jun-11---700
9 Manhattan GMAT---------Q42,V34------11-Jun-11---630
10 Manhattan GMAT---------Q46,V30------13-Jun-11---620
11 GMAT Prep--------------Q46,V34------16-Jun-11---650
12 Manhattan GMAT---------Q49,V29------18-Jun-11---620
13 GMAT Prep--------------Q48,V34------20-Jun-11---680

After these tests i was confident I would at least score a 650 if not the magical 7..but reality check:
GMAT ATTEMPT 2 : 550 (Q40, V29) :(

I thought the score was a joke (what are the chances of a conflict between official and unofficial scores???) Or is 580 or 550 my actual GMAT level? I don´t think so... coz that would have reflected in my mock tests. I took both my shots in different countries. Could the demography have affected the scores? How does one go LOWER than a previous attempt??

I referred to everyting considered "good" :
OG 12 (completed 3 times - 6 times including the 1st prep- with the error log, and the MGMAT OG ARCHER, referred back to my mistakes more than once and made sure i din't repeat them.)
OG QUANT REVIEW - 2ND EDITION
OG VERBAL REVIEW - 2ND EDITION
MGMAT 8 GUIDES (they were helpful but alas!)
POWERSCORE CR BIBLE (even the bible cudnt help!)
Even extra reading such as NY Times, Economists..

I almost know the answers of OGs by now. But even when I dint know them, I somehow felt that the questions in the official guides were a little too easy for the real thing. I agree that they aren't really adaptive questions but even the tough ones din't really seem too tough. The questions slowly became very familiar..there was nothing new..

In fact, I somehow feel that neither the GMATprep nor the MGMAT CATs were close to the real GMAT. The real one is tougher and very different. Is it possible that the GMAT prep questions are now outdated??? I used the version 1.2 - copyright 2005-2008. Is there a newer version of it?

Well, that was my story.. I wanna know WHAT REALLY WENT WRONG?? Is there any way to analyse the GMAT attempts? I was focused during the exam. I gave every question my best shot and I felt that the exam was not going so bad at all. The questions in quant were very different than my prep but I was sure I was tackling them well. I don't remember too many questions off it and anyway I don't really know which ones I made mistakes in. I was confident of almost 80% of my answers. I even double checked each and finished them on time. I fell a little behind in the verbal section but managed to complete it. Could that tiny delay of last 2-3 questions have caused me this big a shock? It's hard to believe.

I have no idea how to prepare for my next shot. I fail to believe that GMAT is not my cup of tea. If it can be anyone else's, it can be mine too! So, please, any advice would be much appreciated and solutions, obviously, would be useful. I do need to clear this exam.. Is it that I can subconsciously not support the big deal of a GMAT on the real day???? I wish to clear off the GMAT before the format changes (June 2012?) But I need to understand what went wrong..
What scores (GMATPrep, MGMAT, KAPLAN or whatever) do I need to achieve to know whether I am ready or not? Where the ones I have been achieving too low or unrealistic?!

I understand that it ultimately boils down to what happens on THE day.. how i preform on THE day..but there must be SOME reflection of SOMETHING SOMEWHERE.. that would help me know when am I really ready?

I am thinking of taking up a job and preparing for the GMAT along with that. That is not really impossible right? Apologies for this really long story.. but.. I guess better late than never.. ! Help needed!!

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm sorry you're having a tough time with the test. Unfortunately, you're not the only one who has seen a big drop on test day - it's common enough that we have an article about it. The task now is to try to figure out, as specifically as we can, what went wrong and why - if we can figure that out, then we can devise a plan to deal with those things.

Read this and see which parts you think might apply to your situation, then come back here and post again:

http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ent-wrong/

One thing I'm noticing is that your official verbal score was at the lower end of the range you were scoring on your last few practice tests (29 to 34; you scored 29), so that's not completely strange - just at the lower end. Your quant score, though, was 2 points lower than your lowest practice score, and that score itself was 4 points lower than the next lowest practice quant score.

Look at test 9 (MGMAT, Q42) and figure out why your quant dropped there. Look at test 12 (MGMAT V29) and figure out why your verbal dropped there. That can help you to figure out what might have gone wrong in both of those sections during the real test.

You can use the below article to help you in this practice test analysis:

http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ice-tests/