I hear you my friend. Do not even mention your quant and verbal, it's needless. You report intending for PhD admission. The top tier B.S. GMAT scores are as much of average as 730-740. The middle schools look for at least 700 score on the GMAT. Your best shoot for PhD without GMAT would be the UK and Scandinavian universities. The latter would not expect GMAT score to be attested for one's PhD admission application, rather they look into your research potential. Frankly, I have known a man who graduated from one of the top 5 B.S. with MBA in strategy in the UK - he would not be required GMAT for admission. It was just laugh of mine at his school's curriculum and knowledge portfolio after he came with an announcement of the completion of his MBA degree requirements there. Even my program's curriculum in a post-soviet country at the private business school supported by its partner institution from the US is much stronger. Regardless to say that I have more probability to remember stats and the net cash flow elements from my university days than he should do so. Most of the European B.S.-s except for the world recognized and GMAT admission test requiring ones- LBS, HEC, INSEAD, ESADE, IMD, Bocconi (several schools actually, I do not list all here) are vague in terms of business education. The same feature is echoed to their PhD programs.
My advice to you would be - stay calm and re-gain the patience. My exam score last year in November was 420, cold without any preparation - Q 25, V 22.
What I have done since then is narrated below.
I have went meticulously through all MGMAT math guides twice. I have completed OG11 problem solving (about 250) and data sufficiency (about 150) sample questions. I have familiarized myself with the Power-Score Critical Reasoning Bible. I have downloaded and reviewed Beat the Gmat free flash cards for SC, CR and RC sections, read Gayatheri's grammar notes, tested myself with advanced ESL test (written expressions and sentence corrections)-correct score rate 95% and elaborated more on RC strategies.
After the preparation stage above, I had tested myself with Kaplan free online test and obtained an overall score of 510. Although my GMAT Prep quant scaled score was in range min 38 - max 43, I attained only 32 in Kaplan. Later I tested myself with GMAT focus quant and obtained an upper ceiling of 39 for math. My verbal went from 22 in actual test last year to 26 score from the fresh CAT-MBA.COM.
It was not joyful to see little progress since the start of my preparation for GMAT. But I did not feel gruesome, as I spent only four weeks on my preparation by the time I took Kaplan's CAT.
I have decided to look for more challenging resource than OG11 and downloaded MGMAT math test bank questions. I have yet to to take six MGMAT cats. I have studied KAPLAN's straight math challenge (90% of the questions there were easy to me). I have uploaded an old version of the official guide - OG10 and started looking into its content with moderate and hard problems. I did practice the analysis of argument structures and boosted my potential for tackling CR questions.
Right now, I think, there are rooms in GMAT I would like to enter. I was planning to re-take my GMAT exam in November. However, I came to the conclusion that I am not ready to crack the exam. I do not wish to be considered for the PhD admission with low GMAT score. This is equal to nothing.
Makkwende, you should not be sorry for the today's score. Count this as though all these years after leaving the school you were employed. You have benefited from the society and man's earning power more than did majority of GMAT crackers. Many top scoring people are being fresh graduates. They have thousands of miles to walk the way that you have already done.
My best advice to you would be to find some peer who studies GMAT and who does possess strengths in certain areas of the exam. Put it like - 'you join efforts for the GMAT preparation with your peer to achieve one aim (cracking the GMAT) but are targeted at different uses of GMAT score i.e. MBA and PhD'. It's unlikely for many young fresh graduates to look into the PhD opportunities right a way. As I said, they are yearning for the thousands of miles' walk of yours.
You may need to score the high on GMAT to be successful for your PhD admission process. Therefore, do not look into the basics only. With the precise plan guided by Beat the GMAT experts and all the community members present here you are able to crack the GMAT.
My knowledge frontiers came to evolve the GMATPill's methods - the credited study means to boost the Verbal competence. I really like their videos, especially for RC, CR and SC. You do check their study methods at
https://www.gmatpill.com
