Need Help: Exam in 5 weeks

[AACRUSH]

I ended up getting a 600 ( Q44, V33). I am a bit surprised with the verbal because I thought it went quite well. First, sorry for the rambling, not sure if you will have time to read.

I thought the math would be terrible as I did everything we were told not to do. I got flustered with the second question ( it was a simple percent question...), not sure what happened, then I essentially had 15 minutes at the end to do 3-4 questions. I am not sure what happened with the timing I just rushed in the beginning not marking the squares and then I took too much space ad my numbering was off. The fact that I got a 44 is shocking.

Now for the verbal, I thought it went well, I thought the RC was interesting and I did not have issues answering. I thought few of the SC was hard but nothing I was sweating over. As you can understand when I saw the score it was flipped. So I am bit perplexed.

My target score is 700+, but I wanted to get a first shot just to see how I do under the actual conditions and get rid of the jitters. I was honestly looking to see my score in the 660 range.

Now, I have looked at the recent gmat scores and I am a bit all over the place but still above 600...atleast. It seems if I am good at one the other one suffers.

The reason I am writing to you is to see if you could give me some advice on what to do from here. From my analysis it seems I should be focusing on Math PS/DS and Verbal CR/SC. Please do let me know what you think. I am at a loss, not sure where to start...is there a study plan one could follow?

I have used up all the MGMAT CATs and my GMAT cats and now I am back at the drawing board. Its not that I haven't studied....

I am reaching out to you since you are an expert in this area. It would be really helpful if you can shed some light on this .

These are some of my recent GMAT prep scores:

Exam Day
GMAT
600 Nov 4th Q 44/ V 33

630 Nov 1st 2015 Q 43/V 34 PS=44 DS=40 CR=27 RC=34 SC=40
Wrong/Total: PS=10/20 DS=10/17 CR=7/11 RC=3/13 SC=5/17

610 Oct 29th, 2015
Q 43/V 31 PS=33 DS=50 CR=22 RC=38 SC=35
Wrong/Total: PS=13/20 DS=2/17 CR=7/11 RC=2/13 SC 3/17

660 Oct 18th, 2015
Q 44/V 37 PS=44 DS=45 CR=42 RC=25 SC= 39
Wrong/Total: PS=7/20 DS=5/17 CR=2/11 RC=4/13 SC 6/17

[StaceyKoprince]

Actually, your verbal is a bit better than your quant. The scoring scales use the same numbers but they don't mean the same thing. Q44 is 57th percentile. V33 is 68th percentile.

Your scores were in line with your two most recent practice tests. You did have one higher verbal score on that first one, so one thing you can do is analyze that test vs. the others to try to figure out why you did better on verbal on that test (or why you did worse on the others).

It sounds like you had some anxiety issues during the test - and maybe you were also having some mental fatigue issues? (That can increase anxiety and / or make it harder to concentrate, stick to your timing plan, etc.) Try this:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... mat-score/

What study materials do you have? Do you also have our books (or someone else's)? Did you take a class? Basically, tell us what you have to work with.

Next, in terms of what to concentrate on: the first thing we need to talk about is how the test works. The # correct or percentage correct doesn't indicate very much about your strengths and weaknesses, because those numbers don't tell us anything about how difficult those questions were. So you're going to need to analyze a bit more deeply to figure out what to do.

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!)

You may also want to read this article that talks about how to build a study plan in general:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... our-score/