GMAT Strategy

Hi Stacey,

Please help me with my retake gameplan. How should I prepare this time around.
I scored a 620(Q47 V28)
My confidence level is really low at this point. I took a date in December last year and I have been preparing ever since.

I’m a typical IT applicant. I have a total work experience of 12 years. Hence, the last real exam I gave was 12 years ago for my Bachelor’s Engineering degree.

I had taken a leave from work two weeks before the D-day to prepare, during this time I focused on revising OG11, and give the GMATPrep tests, understand the pattern of the GMATPrep questions, and practice from forums. I got about 5-6 hours of sleep the night before the test. I was pretty nervous, as I had postponed the test 3 times and had been preparing for a long time.

I was really hoping to get a higher score. I was totally depressed when I saw my score on the screen. I thought I was doing well in Verbal, I even finished in time.
As the test was ending, I was already feeling happy that I would probably see a score in the 700s.
I’m still trying to understand what went wrong in the test.

I could read a RC passage pretty quickly and my hit rate in RC was in the 50-60% range, I thought I was pretty good in CR (analysis of the argument, finding the assumptions, conclusion, etc. I thought I had also improved my SC hit rate a lot, recognizing the mistakes in the choices and coming down to at most 2 or 1 choice in the end. In each of the GMATPrep test that I gave, most of my wrong answers seemed to be from the RCs, more than 50%)

Kaplan CAT1: Feb 10 550
GMATPrep1: Jun 21 680 (Q49 V34) (16 wrong in verbal)
GMATPrep2: Aug 15 690 (Q49 V35) (15 wrong in verbal)
GMATPrep3: Aug 18 690(Q49 V35) -Identical!!
GMATPrep: Aug 25 720 (Q49, V38) (Lots of repeats in Verbal, 9 wrong in verbal)

My stamina seemed to be pretty good, during my practice tests. I was able to last for more than 4 hours, and even then, I could still read a long boring passage comfortably after that.

Sometimes, I used to feel overwhelmed with the amount of material and the number of sources.

I have been preparing from various sources.
The only material I felt that were useful in the end were:

1) OG11 guides (All 3)
2) Manhattan Guides (esp. SC, CR)
3) Powerscore LSAT (Found this towards the end, I thought it was very good), but could not read the whole book.
4) Forums (esp Testmagic)

Some of the reasons for my failure may be that I might have got a lot of questions wrong earlier in the verbal section, I got an RC very early (4th or 5th) in the Verbal section, and may have made 3 or 4 mistakes out of the 4 questions. But I guess I would have made about 20-22 mistakes to end up with such a horrible (28) score.

I still don’t understand how I could make so many mistakes in SC and CR. I was pretty confident about those types. I never guessed even a single question.

I realize that GMAT is a significant investment of time (I put about 3 hours on an average for the last 6-7 months), and some of the things you learn are lost and forgotten forever once the test is over. Not like you would apply all those skills into your everyday life.
I hope to be back, I will give the test again, but I’m not sure what will be a good time to prepare for a retake.

I don’t have a plan for what my practice strategy should be this time. Could the Instructors please help! How do I reach the magic 40 in Verbal?

Should I take a course?
I need a minimum of 720 and I’m hoping to apply in round 2 of most of the schools. I want to get this beast out!!