quant vs verbal, prioritizing

Given your level of preparation, I think you should be able to reach the 600 mark. You seem to be fairly prepared.

Do not neglect the verbal entirely. Even though you are looking at the Quant you should not go any further than 2:1 ratio of Quant: Verbal.

Keep in mind that a very high verbal score can carry you a long way in terms of your overall score. As you get to the upper reaches of the verbal it has a significant impact even with an average quant score.

That is a good rate on Sentence Correction, but how are the other two verbal sections? Remember the verbal section adapts as a whole so you have to do well at all three to face the tougher questions necessary for a high score.

As to something that you have to study for the quant, what you are really looking for is a pretty decent score. So I would say

1) Focus on having a solid technique that will not fail you. Spend some time making sure that you do the same thing when you start each Prob Solv and each Data Suff. You want something that will hold up under the pressure of the test.

2) Make sure that you have some procedures in place to avoid "silly" errors, such as answering the wrong question. Some people check the question just before they answer it, I prefer to start each Quant problem by writing down the answer. That is one example, you also have calculation errors, strategy errors, and forms of misreading to avoid.

3) Study Data Suff. The test seems to be containing more and more Data Suff. questions and these can really be difficult and time consuming if you lack a good strategy.

4) Study the things you are good at...you have laid off of the verbal because you scored better perhaps? This is a mistake. If you are naturally capable of doing something you should study that until it really works. You can generally take something from good to great in a much shorter time and with much less frustration than you can improve your worst areas up to a decent standard. Do not ignore the areas where you are weakest, but do not spend all of your time their either. It is often better to improve a particular area, say modifiers in sentence correction, or word problems involving weighted averages, until you are quite sure of doing well on any given question as opposed to spending your time working your worst areas up to a state where you might get them right if you happen to get the right problem.

The subject of your post is "quant vs verbal, prioritizing" so my response is that I would do something close to 50/50 in terms of studying and work for the best score possible, which for you should be at least a 600.

Thank you David. I am definitely going to spend an additional 2 hrs per day now looking over my sc/cr guides. What you said about making a good section great makes sense, more so than looking to improve a poor section and then scoring "average," in both sections. I have been using the mgmat books for the fundamentals, and then testing my understanding using the fundamentals/challenge sets (created by jeff sackmann). So far I have scored an 85/100 on most fundamental sets, and a 77/100 on the algebra challenge set. I have a 3 ring notebook with dividers which I have divided up into og questions, errors, jeff sackmann questions, and mgmat notes. I am shooting for 650.