GMAT Strategy

Hi Everyone.

I am an Indian IT female software engineer with 100+ months of experience and like everyone else here was and still aiming to get that 700+ score tag on me, but sadly yesterday on my 1st attempt to GMAT I scored very badly with 530 (Q-43, V-21). I am so sad seeing this performance of mine on the actual test. I gave it about 3 months of preparation time, I was scoring in 600s in the mock tests (GMAT prep and Manhattan) but still went down all the way in the low 500s . I got very tensed when the test started and I think that messed up everything for me .

I know this score won't take me anywhere and that I want to take the test again, can't give up. But the time is very limited as I am planning to apply in the 2nd rounds of the schools which mostly are in Jan 2013. I want to take the test in another 30-40 days and aiming to hit the 700s, but I am not sure what will it really take to achieve that score in such a short span.

I have been studying like 10 hours a day, practiced so many PS, DS, CR, SC questions. I am aware that my verbal is very weak so I focused on it but could never gain on the pace. When I try to achieve pace, accuracy gets hit. My math is still better and I was very confident that it would be a savior for me as I was scoring 47-50 in the mock tests but that also didn't happen as per my expectation. I am now a lot direction less as I don't know from where to start, where should I be focusing on more, what should be my study plan etc.

Any help, any suggestion is more than welcome. Will really appreciate it.

Cheers,
Geet

I think you have multiple problems in Verbal section. To improve verbal you may follow the following strategy. If you have already practiced some of the sources mentioned below you can get other practice material. If you have any specific questions please let me know.

Critical Reasoning (CR)
Preparation: Critical reasoning Bible by PowerScore®, helps with all CR basics.
Practice: All GMAT® Official Guide (OG-12) questions alongside reading the Bible.
Aim: Achieve accuracy greater than 85% in all practice sets.

Sentence Correction (SC)
Preparation: Manhattan® SC 2007 edition, is an amazing book, one may call it the SC Bible as it prepares you exhaustively for SC.
Practice: Read the GMAT® Official Guide (OG-12) for SC & understand the
concepts through Answer Key. Re-do all questions, if possible. Please pay
significant attention to idioms as questions on them are tricky but relatively easy.
Modifiers also require significant attention.
Aim: Achieve accuracy greater than 85% in all practice sets.
Important Tip: Don't spend equal time on all types of SC questions. Practice all of
them initially & identify your weak areas. Focus your efforts more on these for
more robust & efficient preparation.

Reading Comprehension (RC)
Preparation: Read editorials from NY Times® or Washington Post® online or
from other newspapers on daily basis. It helps in building your reading speed. It should
be a daily exercise.
Practice: Practice from all possible sources as a lot of raw practice is required to
ace RCs. Practice at least 100 RCs before you start giving mocks.
Aim: Read easier passage in 2-3 minutes & understand the basic gist of it. If the
passage is really tough you can take up to 4 minutes. Do not rest until you
achieve accuracy > 85 % in all practice sets.
Important Tip: We also advice against jumping to questions first & then looking
for answers in the paragraph. Reading essay first makes answering "main point"
& "summary of essay" questions seem like a cakewalk.

Possibly you didn't do well because of the exam stress which you mentioned was one of the reasons. Then also 21 on Verbal is surely quite low. Also studying for 10 hours/day is the last thing you want to do. It simply doesn't work. Read "The Right and the wrong way to study for the GMAT" article in this ebook. The rest of the ebook will also help you determine where you went wrong and how you could do better