Hi Eddie,
My condolences for a score that clearly doesn't reflect your best work and all of the effort that you made these last few months.
In the way of a suggestion, it may seem counter intuitive but my first reaction to your post was "wow...5-6 hours per day for two months is likely a factor in his downfall". While putting in the time and effort is certainly important, in my experience there's not only a point of diminishing returns when you get to that many hours per day, there's actually a point where you may be doing damage to your score by "overtraining". From what I've seen from students who invest that kind of time on that regular a basis, they tend to:
-Focus on doing MORE (more problems, more practice tests) at the expense of slowing down to thoroughly understand concepts, question types, etc.
-Use metrics like "percent wrong" at the end of study sessions to gauge performance, often at the expense of taking a more holistic perspective of thinking about what they learned from that session (i.e. "I need to be more careful when performing algebraic steps" and "I spend too much time reading the question without getting to work on each problem")
-Build up the GMAT in their minds as a Mount Everest style pursuit, leading to increased (and usually overwhelming) pressure on test day
So, my recommendations to you would be:
-Slow down and take some time to process what you've learned about the way you take the test, and put "doing more problems" on hold while you analyze the mass of preparation you've already completed
-Set up your study regimen to allow yourself to be successful at the end of each session. For example, if you've noticed that you really struggle on Inference CR questions (those that ask you to supply the conclusion), spend 1.5-2 hours breaking down your mistakes on previous Inference questions to get a better understanding of what you're doing wrong, then attack 5-10 new questions with an emphasis on correcting those mistakes. If you thoroughly understand those new problems, pat yourself on the back - you've taken steps toward mastering a major area of concern!
-Require yourself to stop after sets of 15 or 20 problems to process what you've learned from doing them. Keep a journal of your qualitative thoughts regarding the test so that you can go back and revisit the takeaways and lessons from each study session
It's certainly frustrating that the GMAT sometimes penalizes those who work the hardest, but it's actually pretty relevant to what you'll be doing after B-school. I'd be willing to bet that quite a few Apple employees work harder than Steve Jobs does, but because his core competency is the ability to reflect on what he learns from each situation and come up with an elegant solution, he's arguably the world's greatest businessman. If you can think more holistically about the test and find ways to improve, you'll likely see both your GMAT score and your quality of life through this process improve significantly.
Brian Galvin
GMAT Instructor
Chief Academic Officer
Veritas Prep
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