2 GMAT same mark -- HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE (need strategy)

[donduck]

Hi all,

As you may know, I've used to check out this website pretty often. I've attempted the GMAT twice (Aug and Sep 2010) and will be doing my final attempt in Jan 2011. I took a 6 week break from studying and decide I don't want to completely give up yet. However, this will be my last and final shot before I decide to give up and declare defeat (which I definitely don't want).

Facts
- 2 GMAT Exams:
- Aug 23: 520 (Q: 70% V: 11%);
- Sep 27: 520 (Q: 61% V: 19%);
- Materials: OG 12th Ed., Manhattan GMAT (SC & CR),
- Practice (all CAT): GMATPrep, Manhattan GMAT (3 exams), Princeton (free), Master The Gmat, 800score review (did terrible on them)
- did the best the day before exam #2 -- 580 on Manhattan GMAT
- I didn't follow the BTG 60-day study guide
- no issues with AWA (Exam #1: 5.5/6; Exam #2: 6/6)

I have 75 days before the next and FINAL attempt (exam date: Jan 29).

Background
- Aug exam: spent 7-8 weeks studying (took 9 days off work to study the week before exam)
- Sep exam: focused solely on SC and CR, which lead to a dropped score in the Quant section
- L-O-V-E-S the PS section
- need 550 to meet minimum requirement (prefer to attain 600 on the GMAT)

Weaknesses
- RC: reading speed, retaining info and understanding the material
- SC: very weak grammar structure (no basics -- I am a native English speaker which never learned English from its roots)
- CR: reading speed & weakening the argument questions
- DS: equalities problems (ie. is X > Y?)

Additional Thoughts
- I overall felt I did better in SC and CR areas in the verbal section in my second try on the actual test. But as I progressively improved more in the SC and CR, the adaptive nature of the CAT made the RC questions increasingly unapproachable. It has gotten to a point where I am not understanding the paragraph and subsequently not understanding what the questions are being asked. Definitely felt overwhelmed once I get hit by the RC questions every single time on the exam (b/c I did considerably better in SC and CR compared to my first attempt)

Materials I can utilize (I have not used b/c I was already overwhelmed with the aforementioned study materials)
- OG Verbal Review
- Princeton Review 2008
- Master the Gmat 2009
- OG 11th ed.

Questions
- how to perform better in math?
- how to increase performance in RC?
- I didn't follow the BTG 60-day study guide. I'm planning to follow it -- is this a good strategy?
- any good 2 month strategies to overcome my weaknesses?

Please kindly let me know your thoughts on my situation. Your opinion is much appreciated.

Don
**currently terribly fearful of the GMAT experience**

[rishi raj]

You have a good amount of time to improve and if you put your best ,I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to achieve a 600.
After reading your post, I feel that you need to work a bit on your grammar. I maybe misconstruing your typos for grammatical mistakes,but still feel that you need to improve a bit on this front.
For sentence correction, work on the basics.I cannot overemphasize the importance of knowing the fundamentals well. You'd agree with the fact that spoken English is quite different from grammatically correct english and moreso from the "GMAT type" of English.

For RC, look up strategies on the RC forums here and then practice as much as possible and read as varied passages as possible, You may find RC99 to be good for this purpose.

For CR, OGs are quite good to start with but don't start doing the questions sequentially .Instead target a particular type of question say Assumption questions and then do all the assumption questions from OG12. This way you'd be able to have a strong foothold in all the different areas tested on CR.