Strategy advice badly needed! Stuck at ~640, 1.5 months left

[deepa.iyengar1]

So I'm going in for my 2nd attempt at the GMAT on December 30th, I didn't devote the time necessary to study the first time which was monumentally stupid, but either way this time I really am aiming for a 700/710. I spent the last ~2 months redoing my "foundations" in Math & Verbal, but based on my CATs it seems to me like my biggest problem is timing. Especially on IR & Quant.

Quant:
- Timing is my biggest issue: I always seem to spend too long trying to get everything right in the beginning & then as I speed it up after the first 5 minutes, I botch a line of questions, then start getting 500-600 questions which is discouraging as I know I'm doing badly, and then it's just like a rollercoaster of timing messups of not being able to spend time to finish ones I know I can do, and not abandoning truly hard ones that I'm clueless on because I really want to move into the 700 level questions.
- Content/Types: I am still missing some exponents & roots, algebra, quadratics questions - I'm going to work this week on drills on this. I can't keep getting 500-600 level questions on these things wrong . On everything else, I find that it's not a knowledge issue, but rather that I'm not able to get these questions right on the test (somewhat timing related, but also somewhat just not having seen enough of every type of problem to quickly recognize how to solve - but when I review them in practice, 70-80% of the time I can get them right on the first try. this is really frustrating - how can I get more of these right??

Verbal:
Timing: I actually don't tend to run out of time on verbal. I think I am a pretty quick reader so I tend to make up for time spend deliberating over SC questions in the RC. I am not so fabulous at grammar but have a really good ear.
- Content/Types:My verbal score is ok, but the challenging thing for me here is that unlike Quant - I don't really know what to work on. When I review the questions, I have a hard time categorizing the types of mistakes I'm making on verbal. I think if I had a more "systematic" way of understanding why I'm missing the ones I am on Verbal, I could get the boost here that I need. Any suggestions there?

IR:
I only just started taking the IR section on my test this morning, so I'm sure I'll improve some. But my gut-reaction is, I didn't have enough time to thoroughly answer anything! 12 "questions" in 30 minutes, and each one is 5-10 minutes of work easily! How do you guys recommend the timing piece there? My guess is practice makes perfect, but I have such an uphill battle to climb already with my Quant score, I'm trying to think of a way to get the most bang for my buck in terms of spending time improving IR - but only enough to not raise an eyebrow to the admissions committee.

Date Verbal %ile Quant %ile IR Score %ile

10.24 36 81% 37 40% n/a 610 64%
10.31 36 81% 42 51% n/a 640 72%
11.15 37 83% 39 43% 0 630 71%

Overall, I have a month and half left to go here, my plan is to take 6 more tests before the real thing and work during the week to fix my problem areas in the meantime. I work full time, so am spending about 2-3 hours max on weekdays, and then Saturday/Sunday about 5-10 hours depending on how that day goes (with Sunday mornings being practice test day).

Would love ya'lls input on how I can make a 700/710 on the GMAT. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

[StaceyKoprince]

Read this right now:
http://tinyurl.com/executivereasoning

And then this:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -the-gmat/

Then start a reply and tell me why I told you to read those and what you've learned you need to do differently going forward. Give me ideas for how you think you can learn to internalize what those articles say.

Next, on the piece where you're not getting stuff right during a test but can after. Certainly the stress of the timing situation is affecting this. But you also may not be studying in the most optimal way - what you're really trying to learn when you study is not how to memorize a bunch of problem types but how to think your way through new problems and recognize certain broader / more universal clues that can point you in certain directions.

Read this:
http://tinyurl.com/2ndlevelofgmat

How do you need to change the way you've been approaching your studies, based on what that says.

To address your timing problem, you need these two:
http://tinyurl.com/GMATTimeManagement
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -to-do-it/

Read the first one through section 4, as well as the second one completely, then start doing what section 4 (the 1-minute time sense) of the first one says. You'll build your way through sections 5 and 6 eventually.

As you do what section 4 says, use this series to help learn how to apply the 1-minute time sense to problems:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2015/09/ ... gmat-quant

For verbal, the "2nd Level" article above will help you to figure out why you're missing certain questions. You can also use the below article to analyze your last 2-3 CATs in our system to look for any trends:
http://tinyurl.com/analyzeyourcats

How often, on verbal, do you realize that you made a careless mistake? I'm wondering whether the mental energy expended during quant (trying to do a bunch of stuff you should be letting go, and stressing out over timing) could be harming you on verbal - causing careless errors due to mental fatigue. If that's your stronger area, it's important to be working systematically enough that you are not making more than a 2-3 careless mistakes across the entire section.

For IR, we generally recommend that you only try to answer 8 to 9 of the 12, giving yourself more time on the ones you do answer. (Still answer the others - but guess randomly / immediately.)

my plan is to take 6 more tests before the real thing

No, definitely don't do this! I was already surprised that you'd taken 3 in less than a month. You don't learn / get better while you're taking a CAT. All you're doing is testing yourself as to how much better you've gotten since the last time you took a CAT. If you take them too frequently, you won't see much change (since you aren't doing enough between CATs to get better) AND you're wasting a ton of study time, since one CAT takes nearly 4 hours plus another easy 5 to 10 hours to review.

Read this:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... many-cats/

I've given you a lot so digest everything, think about how you need to rejigger your overall mindset and the way in which you're approaching your studies, and then tell me what you think!