Still scoring low on the GMATPrep

[Spike142]

So my overall goal is to breach the 700 mark. I am in no rush, it is my senior year in college and I want to get the GMAT out of the way and possibly go to school in the following year.

Anyway I keep scoring rather low on the GMAT prep. I have taken it three times already and have seen steady improvement but not at the rate that I wish to see it. Here is what I have studied thus far:

1) Princeton Cracking the GMAT, and the Practice Problems (pretty disappointed in the book actually and the DVD is a total ripoff...Not trying to be negative just was a bit disappointed.)
2) OG Review nearly all Quant. questions and most of the Verbal
3) MGMAT (Through Geometry Guide)
4) MGMAT flashcards
5) BTG Practice Questions

I can do almost every problem in the OG Review. I think I just might be having a hard time applying what I have learned. I have been at this since mid January. I am not too sure what I might be doing wrong. I think it has something to do with my testing strategy. I would like to take the GMAT at the end of April but I do not want to schedule it before I start scoring in the 600 range of the GMATPrep.

Scores Thus far:
1) 490 (Diagnostic Test)
2) 530
3) 540 (ONLY ten point difference c'mon!)

Any leads would be greatly appreciated. If you are contributing I would like to go ahead and say thank you for your time, your input means a lot to me and I appreciate the time you have spent writing back to me.

[PurpleReign]

I'm not a gmat expert, but here are my thoughts...

How were you studying with the OG questions? Did you do them timed? Or did you do them leisurely? For me it was best to try to simulate the actual test as much as I could, so I would limit myself to 2 minutes to each question for quant. You could be having a pacing issue? Did you finish all of those gmat prep tests or did you get an incomplete penalty?

I also have not heard much about the Princeton Review materials so I can't speak to that. If you think you have the content knowledge down (what is a prime number, divisibility rules, grammar stuff), then I'd focus on developing a tactical strategy (if you haven't already). The MGMAT strategies worked for me especially with the verbal. I was already strong in verbal, but missed too many questions than I'd like to. Once I adopted the diagramming and split strategies in the verbal section, I consistently scored in the 90+ percentile.

Hope this helps!