10 Days for GMAT - Should I postpone it

[bansi98]

Hello,

My GMAT is 10 days from now (Oct, 07, 2016). I took a mock (GmatPrep Free test)this evening and scored a 580. My score break up is

Quant - 49 (Noticed repeated questions)
Verbal - 20

I am devastated after getting 20 in Verbal. When i wrote a mock 4 months back, I scored a 33 in verbal. Doing the mock, I seemed lost during the entire verbal section. I had to re read a lot of sentences. I was rushing through the CR questions. 2 of the RC passages I didn't even understand a thing as they were related to history.

I am not sure If I should take the test now or postpone it. I have completed the OG - 2015 for SC, practiced 100 CR questions, 20 RC passages, and 200 Quant questions.

Please help. I need to write my exam by Nov this year to apply to B schools this year.

[MartyMurray]

Hi bansi98.

You score on the verbal section seems to indicate that what you did to increase your verbal score level actually resulted in a decrease.

While I am not sure exactly what happened, the truth is that there are many methods commonly used for preparing for GMAT verbal, and that while some of them are effective, many, even though commonly used, are not actually very effective.

So it could very well be that your initial, basic, way of handling verbal questions is better than what you have learned to do.

Whatever the case is, pushing back your test date to give yourself time to figure out what is going with your verbal performance, to increase your verbal score and to, possibly, work some more on quant seems to be the way to go.

Getting your verbal score to go to your goal level could take a few weeks, or even a month or two.