6 mo's of study, Verbal and Quant scores flip-flopped?

[Meesh]

It's hard to convey just how disappointing it is to have put in 6 months of study, nearly 300 hours, and end up with the exact same score as I started with, a 600. But I'm resolving to move forward and attempt the test again, the goal still being to break a 700. So, I'm posting here to hopefully get some guidance so that I will know how to more effectively direct my studies over the next couple of months.

Let's start with my test scores.

Test 1 | GMAT Prep Software
Mar 29... 2 months of study (maybe more like 6 weeks, as it took time to buy and receive the study materials and just to get acquainted with the test)
Score: 600
Quant: 30 (25th percentile)
Verbal: 42 (96th percentile)


Test 2 | Veritas Prep
May 16
Score: 590
Quant: 36 (40th percentile)
Verbal: 35 (74th percentile)

Test 3 | MGMAT
May 24
Score: 610
Quant: 37 (40th percentile)
Verbal: 36 (81st percentile)

Test 4 | Veritas Prep
July 3
Score: 590
Quant: 38 (46th percentile)
Verbal: 34 (69th percentile)

Test 5 | MGMAT
July 25
Score: 600
Quant: 40 (47th percentile)
Verbal: 33 (69th percentile)

Actual GMAT
August 15
Score: 600
Quant: 39 (42nd percentile)
Verbal: 34 (71th percentile)


One major thing factored into my actual test that I should mention. During my practice tests, I never accounted for the time getting into and out of the testing room, and apparently this threw me off big time. I was late back from both my breaks by about 7 minutes each time. I couldn't believe it at first, but looking back, getting in and out of the room took a good 4 minutes wasn't ticking on my mental clock. My timing with everything else was great. Despite this setback, I managed my time well and completed the test without missing any questions, albeit, a bit hurried. My score otherwise might be a few points higher.

From the beginning of my studies, I knew that Quant was my trouble area. I'm a humanities major and haven't taken a formal math class in over 10 years. I had to start studying with the absolute basics, times tables and algebra. I've been progressing steadily so there is no real mystery to solve here. The nature of quant makes it easy to diagnose and trouble-shoot problem areas.

What absolutely baffles me though, is how my verbal dropped from the 96th percentile to the 69th. I've spent a lot of time thinking on this and still have no answers. What I will mention is that on my first test, I hadn't studied any verbal material up until that point. As to why I did well, I can say that I've always been an 'active reader', and do well at discerning author intent, argument structure, logical meaning, etc.

My weakness on verbal in the beginning was SC. Besides noun, adjective and verb, I was pretty clueless about the parts of speech. On the first test, I read all the passages by ear. I'm a native speaker though and for me it seemed to work out ok.

Recently I went back through the verbal section on this first test with a fine tooth comb. I wanted to attempt the problems again to see if there was something fundamental that I was doing wrong now that I hadn't been doing then. If anyone cares to see it, I might be able to find and post it, but there was nothing that would explain a 27 point drop in score that I could discern.

I'm not sure how to proceed with studying. My study materials were the OG and Magoosh to start, but after a few months I started to feel overwhelmed by the amount of material and I needed a more solid gameplan, that's when I signed up for the MGMAT Interact course. I have to say I found the SC material to be the most helpful, but the CR is almost no help at all.

My plan this time around is to concentrate on verbal only. I think my overall score will benefit the most If I improve verbal than spending more time on quant, but I feel I'm going at this blind. Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm sorry that this test is driving you crazy!

I was late back from both my breaks by about 7 minutes each time.

This is quite a big issue, actually - particularly if you handled that 7 min deficit in the way that most people would try to handle it (which is to say: the non-optimal way).

Most people would try to save a little bit of time across a majority of the questions. The problem with that is that you give yourself repeated chances to make careless mistakes. You can make 2-3 careless mistakes in the section and not have it impact your score much, but if you start making 5, 6+ careless mistakes, your score is going to come down in a big way. It's not just that you're getting those questions wrong. You're also not lifting yourself to higher level questions and giving yourself a chance to get those right and lift even higher.

If you ever do find yourself behind by 7m again, the best way to catch up is to guess immediately on the next 2-3 really hard questions you see. Sacrifice the smallest possible # to get yourself back on track (and selectively choose the hard ones, which you're more likely to get wrong anyway).

In short, that timing issue likely did have a relatively big impact on your score. If you did attempt to deal with it in the way that most people do (rushing a little on everything), it's not inconceivable for that to have a 50+ point impact on your score.

Next, for verbal, if you scored in the 96th percentile on verbal without prep, then you are a natural at verbal (lucky you) and you probably messed yourself up by learning a bunch of techniques for things that you already knew how to do naturally. Now, you're thinking about things and second-guessing things that you didn't before...and that's likely leading you to pick against those instincts that helped you so much at the beginning.

So what I would do is start to try to get yourself back to what already worked for you on the verbal. Go back to using your ear and trusting your instincts. Where that leads you astray (ie, to the wrong answer), then you can go learn that specific thing - but think of it as retraining your (already quite good) ear on that specific issue / trap. It sounds as though you did pick up some good things on SC, but for CR (and maybe RC?), your natural skills were already what you needed.

Next, if your goal is to break 700, then I'm going to guess that you may want to apply to some top-10 schools. If so, then you need your quant to be higher than 39. Let me know - if that's the case, then we need to talk about this too.

I'm also going to recommend that you follow the below analysis path. It'll take some time / effort, but it will help us to come up with a really solid plan.

First, read these two articles:
http://tinyurl.com/executivereasoning
http://tinyurl.com/2ndlevelofgmat

Think about how what you've been doing does and doesn't match up with that and how you may need to change your approach accordingly.

Then, use the below to analyze your most recent MPrep CATs (this should take you a minimum of 1 hour):
http://tinyurl.com/analyzeyourcats

Based on all of that, figure out your strengths and weaknesses as well as any ideas you have for what you think you should do. Then come back here and tell us; we'll tell you whether we agree and advise you further. (Note: do share an analysis with us, not just the raw data. Your analysis should include a discussion of your buckets - you'll understand what that means when you read the last article. Part of getting better is developing your ability to analyze your results - figure out what they mean and what you think you should do about them!)