I took Kaplan's course, my diognastic was 550 and I repeatly increased my score up to 610 on the Kaplan practice tests. I was hoping I'd get a score around that. My goal is 650. I got 460 twice on my real gmat exams. 1st: V13, Q42, awa 4.5, 2nd :V18, Q37 awa 5. Any comment on what might gone wrong. With my infant at home I cannot say I got regular sleep but why I got fine scores from practice tests then, I don't understant. I can't decide if I should take another prep course.
Did you take the GMATPREP before your GMAT attempts ?And if yes, how much did you get on them ? As a matter of fact, the GMATPREP tests correlate closely with your performance on the actual tests. Also the Verbal section on the GMAT is trickier than those on the Kaplan tests. Most of the questions in the Kaplan tests are reworded versions of the questions on the OG.
The bigger question to ask here is not how much did you get on so and so exam but how much strong were you conceptually? Going by your Verbal scores, it's not very difficult to see conceptual clarity. You'll see a lot of stories here of people saying "I practiced blah blah number of questions on Verbal,yet landed up with a bad Verbal score".
Achieving a 650 would require an absolute clarity of concepts and the ability to apply those concepts well. When do you plan to take the GMAT, by the way ?
