'cuse me, I meant to say the 500-600 jump is easier.

And I agree with kbot, at the high 600-700 level, pacing is definitely more crucial as well as having a solid grasp of the material. At that level, the questions might even be worded differently.

That is my main problem. I don't understand the questions well enough to consistently get me to the that 700 level.

Another interesting point: I took the test with little studying earlier this year and scored in the 92nd percentile on my verbal (I knew the quant would be a disaster and I wasn't surprised).
NOW, however I'm no where near the 90th on my verbal! I don't know what happened. My theory is that before, I think I relied more on what made sense (CR) or sounded right (SC) and the RC was relatively easy because I just liked reading.
But now, I think I'm just soo overwhelmed at all the things I have to memorize (i.e: idioms, figuring out assumption/inference, verb-agreement, etc..) that I'm thinking too much about the verbal questions.

How should I address this? I need to push my verbal back to the top considering the verbal score actually carries more weight towards your overall score (or so I've heard).

Thanks

When in doubt, go with your gut. This especially if you are a native english speaker, which it sounds like you are. You can learn all the techniques and strategies, but spending too much time applying what you've learned can sometimes bring your score down because you can end up in a place where you try to apply everything you've learned to determine which of two choices is the correct answer. The problem is that this often is very time consuming.

Thinking too much = thinking too long.

Be wary.