Frustrated, Demotivated and discouraged.

Hey Anin,

Wow, that's an attention-grabbing post title! Hopefully some of us in the community can be of help...

I'd say this - it sounds like you're putting a ton of time and effort into the "what you know" facet of the GMAT, but I don't see much evidence (and it's usually the case with particularly-motivated students) that you're putting as much effort into the twice-as-important "how you think" component.

I'd highly recommend that you go back to your most recent practice test or two and revisit the questions by asking yourself about your thought process on them:

-What was your first reaction to the question (did you make sense of it by determining what was being asked or what information was given?)

-What mistake did you make in answering incorrectly (are there patterns in your errors that you can fix quickly?)

-Did you spend too much or not enough time on certain questions?

-What types of concepts or skills did you tend to miss most often? Were your "I didn't know how" errors more common than your "I made a critical mistake" mistakes? (My hypothesis, incidentally, is "no")

Some self-analysis along these lines should do at least one of two things:

1) Alert you to some significant holes in your conceptual knowledge base and give you some emphasis on what to study

2) Show you some common thought process errors that you need to fix in order to capitalize on all of the things you already know how to do

If you're putting in the kind of time and effort that it sounds like you are, my sincere bet is that you're missing out on that second point, and now you just need to work on getting credit for all of the things you already know how to do. It isn't easy, necessarily, but ultimately I think it's more fun and pretty rewarding to fix those things. Best of luck!

Hey Brian,

Thank you sooo much for your response and kind words. I greatly appreciate it. I'm going to apply each word from your response and work on it. You are right, what I'm missing is probably some self analysis. I will keep you updated on my progress. Thanks again for your help.

Thanks, Anin - glad that helped! Please do keep us all posted...like I said, the good news is that now your job is to get credit for all the hard work you've already done, so I think you'll see the progress a little more concretely!