V30 to V40+ in two weeks or postpone the GMAT !

[theadsingh]

I am in a dilemma!

Firstly,
Timeline:

(all 2017)

19th September Gave GMATprep1 - 590 - Q47, V25

prepared for one month

material:

Manhattan SC CR
Power Score CR
Grail Aristotle SC
Did OG18 full quant + verbal
*did not study math but practice questions from OG

19th October Gave GMATprep2 - 640 - Q49, V27

Revised material
Finished OG17 Verbal Review

1st November Gave GMATprep1 reset - 650 - Q49,V30

I have my test on 19th November. I have only one week to decide to postpone or take it. I need V40+ anyhow.
It seems near to impossible for V30~V40 in two weeks.

If you can revert to this mail for a one-week strategy it will really help.
Sadly, I cannot postpone my GMAT more than 2 weeks more.

[StaceyKoprince]

It is unfortunately very unlikely that someone would move from V30 to V40 in 2 weeks time. That jump is the equivalent of moving from the 59th percentile to the 91st percentile. I don't think I've ever seen someone do that in 2 weeks (and I've been teaching the GMAT for 20 years). Most people would need a couple of months at least to try to achieve that kind of improvement. (And, by definition, most people never hit V40—only 9 percent of all GMAT test-takers hit 40 or higher.)

I know that isn't what you want to hear, but it's better to know what is realistic and then plan accordingly.

You say that you can't postpone for more than 2 weeks. If that is the case, then your goal score will likely need to drop. Do you want to apply this year with that lower score? That might change your admissions strategy—you may need to apply to some less-competitive schools. But that might be fine if your main goal is to go to business school in general, not necessarily to a certain "rank" of school.

Or would you rather take more time and postpone your application for an admissions round or a school year to go for a higher score, in order to try to make your application more competitive?

(The point that I am making with those questions: You do have some choices here. They may not be the choices that you envisioned before—but you do have choices.)

Next, regarding how to improve verbal. You did make some improvement already on V (from 25 to 30)—nice work there. You can probably continue to improve via self-study, though you may need outside help for two reasons: (1) You want to improve a lot in a short period of time and a compressed timeframe is challenging when you're studying on your own, and (2) You want to improve to V40 / 91st percentile, which is a very high score.

As always in life, it comes down to time and money. You can try to save yourself time...by paying money.

So you could invest in a course or private tutoring, for example. You could also change some of your requirements—for example, lengthen your timeline to give yourself adequate time to continue lifting your score on your own.

If you still want to go for a relatively short timeframe, I would lean more towards private tutoring—more expensive, but also more targeted to your specific needs. If, on the other hand, you can give yourself the luxury of more time, you can push yourself as far as you are able and, if that doesn't get you all the way to your goal, then you can invest in tutoring to try to get the last X number of points.

Note if you continue to work on your own: You have listed some study resources for SC and CR, but not for RC. What did you use to learn how to get better at RC? Or is your RC already so good that you don't need to improve it?

What are your thoughts on all of the above?