Frustration!

The good news is that you're not far from your goal score, so you should be confident that you can get there!

You say that you've been studying daily since March, but you only took mock tests last year. That's not enough! At this point, you should be taking a practice test at least once every 2-3 weeks.

It's not enough to "finish" the books and learn the content. You need to practice under timed conditions so that you're able to balance timing, stamina, and decision-making.

When I see students scoring below a 500 even after extensive practice, the issue is usually one or more of the following:

1. Timing.
If you run out of time in a given section, your score will drop precipitously at the end. Have a timing strategy and practice staying on top of your target time. This means that you'll need to guess and move on with the more difficult problems.
Here's more:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... rt-1-of-3/
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... ut-timing/
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... mat-quant/
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... illing-me/

2. Careless errors.
Many students think that because they know the rules, their score will improve. But if you're making careless mistakes on the easy problems - even if you know the rules - your score is not going to go up. You need to carefully track the mistakes you've made and think about how to avoid those errors in the future. More here:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -studying/

Good luck!

Hi sarsar,

Since you originally posted this message in a different Forum on this site, I copied over my response (as a reminder of some of the ideas that you need to work on):

A score goal of 450+ is really modest, so you should be able to achieve that goal with a few adjustments to how you deal with the Exam. To hit that level, you don't need to correctly answer ANY questions that you think are too hard or too weird - so you should 'dump' any questions that you don't feel good about (just take a quick guess and move on). There should be plenty of questions that you CAN deal with though - and on those questions, you have to do the necessary work (on the pad, NOT 'in your head') to correctly answer them. If you can keep the little mistakes to a minimum, then you should be able to hit your goal.

Have you gone back to review your last practice CAT Test? If not, then you should plan to review your entire performance. Be honest with your assessment - how many questions did you get wrong that you COULD have gotten correct (meaning that you made some kind of little mistake, misread something, missed a detail, etc.)?

In addition, if it's been at least a month since you last took a FULL-LENGTH CAT (with the Essay and IR sections), then you should plan to take one soon. Once you have that score, you should post back here and we can discuss the results (and how best to proceed).

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich