Got 460 on GMAT but scored high 500s & 610 on prep tests

[marlinchik]

Hello,

I hope someone can help me.

I was studying hard for gmat. My goal was to get upper 500s or cross 600.
On my MGMAT practice tests I was scoring upper 500s and even got a highest score of 610. I took Kaplan test and got 540.

With that I felt confident that I could do well on a real thing and got the exam scheduled. In the worst case scenario, I thought, I would get lower 500s.

I was wrong. Yesterday I got a shameful score of 460 that made feel like the only thing left for me is just go and jump off the roof. The prep tests I took made my verbal look awesome (somethimes reaching 72%), but on a real thing for my verbal score I got 22 points. My math score surpassed my verbal score.

On my prep tests I tested like I was taking a real test every time.
What did go wrong???

Feel very mad and cannot find an explanation.

[StaceyKoprince]

This happens sometimes; it really sucks. The only (and best!) thing to do now is to figure out what went wrong so that you can prevent this from happening again. I know you're disappointed, but if you were getting good scores multiple times on different practice tests, then those scores were not mistaken - you can do this.

I just wrote an article about this exact situation: My Score Dropped! Figuring Out What Went Wrong. The link is below; the article was published yesterday. Read it, think about it, and then come back here and tell me what you think went wrong and we'll figure out how to prevent this from happening again in the future.

http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/26/my-score-dropped-figuring-out-what-went-wrong