Need Urgent Help

[tina kapoor]

I took the gmat today after studying for 8-10 hours everyday for the past six months. Today, I finally took the test and got a score of 530. Both verbal and quantative were equally bad for me. I have done the kaplan book including the kaplan 800, took the princeton review classes and did their books as well as the OG 11. I just dont know what do anymore. I have studied everything I could and still ended up with this terrible score.Its not that I was nervous or anything because I was pretty confident going into the test. I have rebooked the test and will be writing it in a months time. Please help me. I am feeling extremely stupid and depressed to have scored a 530 after 6 months of intense studying. I have never felt this terrible before as I feel today.

[beatthegmat]

I'm sorry to hear about you GMAT experience today.

Seems like you've covered a lot of material during your prep, but can you describe your study strategy to date? Did you pursue a prep strategy that emphasized analyzing your mistakes and targeting your weaknesses?

I recommend taking some time to put together a solid study strategy for your retake. Take some time to review the Beat The GMAT blog and Beat The GMAT del.icio.us to get some sense of how you can approach your prep effectively.

If you feel that self study didn't work for you, think about taking a class with Manhattan GMAT. As a member of Beat The GMAT you are entitled to a 10% discount on all products.

What is your target GMAT score?

[tina kapoor]

I did keep an error log for my mistakes. Should I just redo the OG 11 and 10 again? My target score is only a 600 but I am having an incredibly hard time achieving that. Should I buy the 6 online tests from manhattan for $40. I really dont want to take another course again as I have spent so much money on the princeton course. Please advise me on what to do next.

[beatthegmat]

I did keep an error log for my mistakes. Should I just redo the OG 11 and 10 again? My target score is only a 600 but I am having an incredibly hard time achieving that. Should I buy the 6 online tests from manhattan for $40. I really dont want to take another course again as I have spent so much money on the princeton course. Please advise me on what to do next.

It's more than just keeping an error log--by analyzing your errors I mean doing a really deep analysis on the problem, picking out the key concepts, figuring out the traps, and going through each answer choice and understanding why four of them are incorrect and one of them is correct. It's a really rigorous process, but produces incredible returns if you can do it consistently.

Hm, I see that you've already taken a prep course with Princeton Review--isn't there a policy that the company has where you can get a significant discount if you re-take their course? I'd look into that some more...

Take some time to look through the resources I provided in the earlier message, that's a great place to start.

[beatthegmat]

One more resource: mayonnai5e's blog

[ngufo]

tina - did you do all the Princeton tests? If so how much did you score in them. Also how did you do in the Kaplan tests. Did you write the GMAT Prep 1/Prep2, and the Power Prep1/2 - what was your score inthose?

In case you did get decent scores in these tests, then probably you did just have a bad exam. Have you been making sure every mistake you did you revised it? That might help

Also did you finish answering all the questions in time? That can help pull up your score a lot also.

Finally make flash cards for all the sentence corrections - will help you keep track of your mistakes, and prepare better.

Take care,
-ngufo