Rebooting my GMAT : Experts may kindly help me please

Following the drubbing I received recently, I have started again with a target of taking GMAT again in four weeks. I'll keep posting here about my progress and wish if experts were to keep a tab on it and advise suitably, if they may.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/580-gmat-bea ... tml#487254

Day 1 :

First day of the re-preparation. And I needed to recheck my standing on the road.

Did a GMAT prep test. Afresh. And the results are slightly surprising. I scored 630 which is a big low from my previous highs. Quants 39 ( 20 correct 17 wrong, 50%tile ). Verbal 37 ( 29 correct 12 wrong, 80%tile ). Surprise because this is my lowest score after I started practice. However, I felt lot of similarities in my real test and this prep test. I carefully tried to follow some of the advises given by experts in various threads regarding trying to simulate the "real" condition.

This is how I simulated, last night I was deliberately up late for some time as at the day of my test I could not sleep well and felt much agitated. Around 8.30 went off zooming on my bike for a 15 minute ride on Bangalore roads and came back after 20 minutes. (hell traffic! office goers).

Started after having the same breakfast of yogurt and tea.

Integrated reasoning went well for two questions. After that I suddenly stumbled a calculation block in my mind on a silly sphere problem. (9.0 out of 10 times I easy solve it). However, twice doing the calculations did not fetch my desired result. Moved on after loosing some time, by the time I came on fifth problem I was in severe time constraint.Had to guess in some.

Lesson- I feel that one needs to ensure that the question attempted is totally correct as half correct answer is always wrong in GMAT. One cant guess half and solve half.

Quantitative aptitude- Started off confidently, However, I feel I need to work on concepts. One pattern is emerging that one cant afford to loose too many marks at start as a wrong start will impact difficulty level achieved and overall marking. Not too many questions from permutation and combinations and probability means that these question appear only when one goes at his best with number system and general arithmetic. Also, the accuracy needs to improve all the time. Predictably,the data sufficiency takes less time if concept is right.

Lesson- Need to work on number system and data sufficiency.

Verbal - Some of the shortcomings in verbal as I noticed is that one needs to read slow enough to understand the question, but fast enough to avoid boredom while reading. Also, it seems CR appears in RC questions as well. In fact, the two questions which I missed in RC were actually CR questions. Also, I found difficult to solve general type questions. Anyway, RC has been my strength always. The pattern of most mistakes in Sentence correction continued with RC coming in between. Also, three answers were wrong because I avoided my hunch and felt answers logically getting were right. Seems I need to listen to my heart more than my mind. However, I mismanaged the time again and now I realised that as happened in actual test, I felt hard to concentrate as overall time was piling up.

Lesson- (i) Practice reading fast. (ii) Make habit of sitting for more time in one stretch. (iii) CR questions usually make one read all the options . Practicing more CR automatically helps in RC as well. (iv) There are usually more than three RC passages and one appears quite late. In my real test the last passage started at question number 35. Full of boredom, I did not concentrate hard.

Mistakes done in my real test-
(i) Appeared without taking sufficient practice tests with actual pattern i.e. with AWA and IR.
(ii) Time management could have been better.
(iii) Didn't practice sufficient data sufficiency questions, solving DS makes concepts clear about tools in hand to solve the questions correctly.
(iv) The weak start in quants. Strong start of the test is very very important. It can literally make or break the test. If the questions from permutations, probability, co ordinate geometry do not appear early in quants section and boldface or verb tense do not do not appear early in verbal section, test is going in wrong direction. One needs to improvise early.
(v) Stamina was less and by the end of verbal section, fatigue took over the senses.
(vi) Should have taken proper rest before the test. Also, should not have appeared in morning considering I am not a morning person.
(vii) I should have avoided driving to test center, Cab would have been a better choice.

I have always learned my lessons hard way and again paid for it. However, I feel there is still something missing. Hope mates for GMAT and experts shall read this and advise something more. I will be thankful for the comments.

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