GMAT Strategy

Alas, I found this site a little too late.

So, I have 1 week, my test date is on April 8 @ 8:00 AM.

I took the prep test from MBA.com and I got a 550, then I took it again and I got a 640. This was about a month ago.

I then took Princeton Review's GMAT practice test and I got a 520. I then took Manhattan GMAT and I got a 500.

So, at this point, I'm freaking out. I don't understand how my score could drop so significantly. I got a 44 on quantitative on mba.com's prep test but I'm getting 30-35 on the other review sites websites. What's weird is I got 19 wrong on the Quantitative and still managed to pull a 44? That doesn't sound right. I got only 7 wrong on Princeton review's and only got a 33 or so.

I have GMAT Edition 12 Book, Cracking the GMAT by Princeton Review 2009, Barron's older GMAT prep book from a few years back and Manhattan GMAT Prep for SC. I've been taking prep tests on Manhattan GMAT's website and the scores are depressing.

Anyway, what are your guys' suggestions for prepping? I am not working so I can study as much as necessary.

Also, is MBA.com's Prep software accurate?

Yes, the mba.com tests are usually the most accurate. Remember, however, that all tests have a margin of error. The 640 seems to be an outlier - that is, my guess is that your true score is in the 500s, not the 600s.

And yes, you can get many questions wrong and still do fine on the exam. The GMAT is adaptive, meaning that there is little link between the number right and the score (do a search of this forum if you want more details; it has been discussed at length).

With only a week, you're definitely not in the best spot. It's very hard to cram for the GMAT, since it really doesn't test much factual knowledge. Rather, it tests your problem solving and logical reasoning skills - these are things that are hard to improve in a short time. Since you only have a week, however, you should focus on the few things that are fact-based. Probably the two biggest things that I'd look at are the common sentence correction grammatical rules and the common math formulas. There's probably little good in studying reading comp and critical reasoning at this point, except maybe just familiarizing yourself with the setup and the common question types. Improvement on these sections tends to take the longest.

Good luck!

I would say make sure you know your fundamental content...in the OG there is a math review section and I would suggest making sure you know that material cold. Beyond that, I would say practice with Official Guide questions as much as possible as these are probably the most accurate.

Good luck!