My gmat story.. any suggestions ?

[prithviraj.dasari]

I am non-native speaker, and studied in Telugu medium (1-10th standard).
I have been , qualitatively, studying for GMAT religiously for 6months.

Gmat mock prep written when i started my prepration that was in Early january this year.
Jan 2010 - gmatprep - 640(M49,V27)

All my mock tests are taken in real exam conditions.
Here are my Manhattan round1 scores -
July 4th mgmat1 - 600(M47,V27)
July 11th mgmat2 - 660(M47,V33)
Aug 1st mgmat3 - 660(M47,V33)
Aug 8th mgmat4 - 680(M46,V37)
Aug 15th mgmat5 - 650(M49,V31)
Sept 12th mgmat6 - 650(M51,V31)

Here are my Manhattan round2 scores -
Sept 15th mgmat1 - 730(M50,V39)
Sept 19th mgmat2 - 660(M50,V32)
Sept 25th mgmat3 - 720(M49,V39)
Oct 3rd mgmat4 - 680(M51,V33)
Oct 5th mgmat5 - 750(M51,V41)
Oct 10th mgmat6 - 700(M50,V35)
GMAT prep scores -
Oct 8th gmatprep1 - 600(M49,V22)
Oct 11th gmat prep2 - 700(M50,V35)

Oct 13th Real GMAT - 580(M49,V20)

I am not sure what happened in exam. I was not nervous. I thought, i was answering fine :(
I am having 5 years of working exp. in IT. I would like to do MBA in finance from one of top 30 institutes.
I would like to get minimum score of 720.
any suggestions what should i do? if some one suggests me of training institute, which institute?

Thank you,
Prithvi.

[StaceyKoprince]

First, it looks like your later study was concentrated around taking practice tests to the point that you were repeating tests (and seeing some questions repeated as a result). You don't actually improve much by taking practice tests over and over, and when you take tests with repeated questions, there's a very strong chance that you will have artificially inflated test scores unless you follow certain rules very strictly.

In particular, when you saw repeats, you would have had to look immediately at the timer and make yourself sit there for the full length of time for that question type. Second, if you got the problem wrong last time, you would have had to answer it incorrectly again this time. Did you do these things? If you didn't do these things, then you gave yourself an artificial advantage that you would never have on the real test.

Second, it looks like you took multiple practice tests within a few days of the real test. This is, unfortunately, a good way to tire yourself out before the real test, lowering your stamina.

Your quant score was great but your verbal score really dropped, which leads me to believe that stamina was at least part of the issue. Did you feel like you were having to read things multiple times? Did you feel slower than usual, or were you going back and forth over answers more than usual?

Also, did you have any timing problems?

Read this article and see what else you can figure out; then come back here and post:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/26 ... went-wrong

Also, let me know the answers to all of my above questions.

Finally, just an FYI: this folder is specifically for MGMAT instructors to answer student questions, so if you ask us where to study, we're naturally going to say MGMAT. :) If you want an unbiased answer, you should ask friends or other students online what they've used and liked.