GMAT Strategy

It seems that I have a problem with the GMAT. In May of 2009, I took the GMAT and scored a 430 and in the low percentiles for both the verbal and the quant sections. However, I reasoned that I was not studying enough as I only put in 10 hours a week for three months, so I simply got the score that I deserved. Unfortunately, I scored low on the GMAT again today after studying almost every day for one year. Many nights were spent studying till 3am, and weekends were wasted away for the GMAT. The last year of my life was all about the GMAT, but this time I got a 420. Percentiles for each section were roughly the same.

I'm not just writing a sob story so that I can voice my frustrations to the world. I have some questions:

1. Is there a significant difference in the scoring criteria of the Manhattan GMAT practice tests, the GMAC practice tests, and the real GMAT? I scored between a 560 and 640 on all of my practice tests, but twice scored in the low 400s on the real thing.

2. What is the educational background of most of the people that take the GMAT? I'm an American who had a tough time with math in school, and majored in music when I was an undergrad. Am I up against a bunch of engineers and math whizzes? Who are the smart kids in the room and who are the average kids in the room? Are my fellow test takers throwing the curve so high that I am scoring low in comparison?

3. If any GMAT teachers are reading this, did you have students who had the same problem that I am having? Were you and the student able to identify the problem?

4. Has anyone had a similar experience with the GMAT? Have you been able to overcome it?

After one year of solid, disciplined study that only produced a 420, I feel like I am trying to move an indomitable object, but I don't want to quit either. My goal was only to score a 550-590 and in the 50th percentile for both the Quant and Verbal.

People who have experience with real test may help you better but here are some inputs. From the practice scores you mentioned you performance is not good in the exam. That could be just because of the pure stress or falling for GMAT traps and making silly mistakes. It's quite possible that you are making silly mistakes early on in the exam. This is what I observed with my practice scores. Initially my practice quant scores were in low 40's, even though most of my answers were right very few silly mistakes/wrongs. Mistakes such as not properly converting units ($ to cents, seconds to minutes/hours, feet to inches etc) affect the score very badly.

Another suggestion is take up some private tutoring may be just for analysing your strengths and weeknesses with respect to GMAT exam and fine tuning your strategy.

Don't worry about being up against math whizzes as your GMAT scores are absolute ( I just read an article which is on the home page of this site) in the sense that a score of 700 means your quant and verbal skills are at certain level. It is the percentile which is relative. I think schools care about your score more than percentile.

Good luck!!