Is it bad to retake the GMAT too many times?

[anirudhdixit26]

hi
I gave my gmat in nov and scored 680(quant-50,verbal-30)
i was completely shattered by my verbal score because i had consistently scored (36-39) in verbal in various practice tests.(My scores ranged from 720-730 in the prac. tests: gmat prep as well as manhattan)I do not know what went wrong in my verbal section.I had already finished the official guide and its supplement book in coordination with the manhattan book for sentence correction before i gave my exam.i am planning to give gmat again since i am aiming for a high score.I would like to add that the explanations given for sc in this forum are excellent and focus on the basic concepts.These explanations drastically improved my sc skills.

Could you please advice how should i carry on my preparation especially in verbal and how can i improve my rc skills.One of the problems i faced was that few of the cr questions looked similar to the ones(especially language and structure wise) given in the og but were actually different.Instead of actively solving them,my mind wandered to the questions that i had already solved in the og and i lost my concentration. (could u also plz correct this sentence if its rong coz instead of seemed to be the only idiom in which gmat was interested that day and i got 3-4 questions of sc containing it. i know the basic rule that in x instead of y, both x and y should be parallel,i guess solving and wandered are participles and hence parallel but i am not sure).Some ppl,who have scored well in the gmat, have suggested that i practise cr questions from LSAT and use the critical reasoning bible associated with it.(I am currently living in INDIA and do not know much about the LSAT).Is it advisable to do so?I would like to add that my cr skills are decent and i had 80-90% accuracy in the og as well as various other sources.(though wish that i had this rate in the exam).Also,is it advisable to go for sources such as 1000 sc and 1000cr?(i had skimmed through them but didnot go through them thoroughly)The reason i focused more on og was because these sources donot have properly explained solutions and some of the questions seem ambigous.Furthermore,they contain most of the og questions.

Also, how can i improve my quant score to 51.( i finished my quant section with 3 minutes remaining and am confident that my last 5-8 questions were correct). Please suggest sources that provide extremely difficult questions on prime numbers,remainders,factors and inequalities for practice.I know that the score depends upon the difficulty of the question one answers and some questions are not counted,but is it possible to get a quant score of 51 by incorrectly answering 1-2 questions that are counted.
i need a 750+ score because the institutes i am aiming for(in india itself) have the highest avg gmat score of intakes in the world( around 730 i guess ,although the irony is that they donot rank among the top 50 b schools in the world )Since i do not have much work experience ,i would need a higher gmat score to compensate for it.I have about a month for preparation before my 2nd attempt.

[StaceyKoprince]

anirudhdixit26 - can you please start a new post with your questions in it? (You can just copy and paste what you already typed above.) It's too confusing to discuss the complicated situations of multiple students in one overlapping thread.

jigar24:

hence I spent to around 5-7 minutes on that question

Well, at least now you know NEVER to do that again. Think about what's going to happen. If you get it wrong, you've completely wasted that time. If you get it right, you're just going to get an even harder question. What are you going to do then? You can't keep spending that extra time!

(Also, I think there's a very good chance that you did not get the first 15 questions in a row right - I would bet money on it, especially since you said you only spent 21 minutes. You made careless mistakes that you didn't notice - if you'd been getting them all right, they'd have gotten impossibly hard well before the 15th question, and you wouldn't have been able to do them all in only 21 minutes...)

Note: we're always going to make some careless mistakes, so it's okay to make a few - though you do obviously want to minimize them.

Anyway, here's the takeaway: if you do not fix this timing problem, you should expect the same outcome the next time. You MUST fix this timing problem - you cannot continue to do what you did. (The fact that you still scored 44 given what you described is actually pretty encouraging.)

Re: the date, I doubt there's anything wrong with your score, but it doesn't hurt to point that out to them and ask them to verify everything. You never know! :)

In your 23Nov post, you mentioned that you had not been doing the essays on your practice tests. As I mentioned in my last post, that can be problematic - I'm guessing that that contributed to your drop on the verbal.

So there, are two things we need to deal with here: your score drop (from mid-600s to high 500s) and the additional score gain that you want (700+).

For the score drop, read this article to help figure out what went wrong (though I can already tell you that quant timing and no essays --> verbal lack of stamina are two big factors):
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/26/my-score-dropped-figuring-out-what-went-wrong

Re: the score gain that you want on top of that, you'll first have to decide whether you want to continue working on your own or whether you want to take a class or work with a tutor. Given the issues we've identified so far, coupled with your desired goal score and the fact that you'll be working again, you may benefit from a more structured approach with some outside help / direction.

I do agree that, ideally, you want to keep the momentum going and try to get ready to take the test again within the next several months. Most courses run about 8-10 weeks (ours runs 9) and most people take about 2 to 6 weeks after a course is over to review before taking the test.

Alternatively, if you decide to work on your own, you're probably going to need to set up a complete program with comprehensive materials (covering all question types and content areas). You can get an idea of a "complete program" from our course syllabus, which you can download here:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/freegmatlearningforum.cfm

Look under the "Highlights" section and click on "Official Manhattan GMAT Course Syllabus [pdf]"

You can, of course, choose your materials from whatever company you think is best; this is just to give you an idea of a "complete" program.

[jigar24]

Hey, thanks a lot for all your help.. Really appreciate it.. will keep you posted

[StaceyKoprince]

you're welcome! good luck!