Similar topic as the original poster--hopefully someone can address my problem. I actually only made the decision to apply for a Master in Accounting a few weeks ago when my company tentatively approved me for 90% education reimbursement (VERY exciting). That meant furiously compiling information for application deadlines as well as cramming for this ominous GMAT event. My first practice GMAT test, administered by the free downloaded software from mba.com, landed me a score of 530; Quant-36, Verb 27. Since the admissions offices will be considering the Quant score most heavily, I focused on learning all the applicable problem solving and mathematical concepts. I ONLY studied Problem Solving and Data Sufficiency problems. A week later, my second test score was a 570; Quant-39, Verb-29. I know that my scores don't hold a candle to some of the geniuses out there, but I consider myself a pretty intuitive guy.
The next week, I spent hours doing about 150 problems out of the OG GMAT book in all ranges of difficulty to try to get that Quant score up. By the end of the week, I was getting about 18/20 questions correct, on average. I felt REALLY good about it. I wasn't even concerning myself with the verbal section.
TEST DAY: I got 8 hours of sleep. Ate a great breakfast. Got to the test center in plenty of time. Completely calm, ready to stick it to the test. As I'm going through the problem solving section, I spent a little more time trying to get the right answers than I should, and ran out of time before I could put any answer for the last question. Other than that, I felt like I got a majority of the questions correct and I was confident in my answers. In the verbal section, however, I felt distracted, I was guessing far too often, and there were too many answers that appeared like they could be correct. No confidence in that section.
END EXAM: Accepted scores, and the results shocked me! Completely opposite from what I thought! Total score: 530; Quant-32, Verb-31.
QUESTION: How did my Quant section drop 20 percentile points from my practice test?? Do the practice questions represent a different degree of difficulty than what I saw on the test? How much does the omission of answering one question affect my score?
I am at a loss. I don't even know how I would begin to prepare for a retake.
