660 (Q49, V32) 2nd attempt

Hi everyone,

Yesterday I had 2nd attempt to pass gmat with 700's score. As you may see, i was close, but not enough.

I started to prepare around end of Feb, however all the preparation during the spring was almost a waste of time: a had crazy time at work trying to close a deal, a got pneumonia for 3 weeks, and finally in May I got second baby. So since May I do not remember a sleep full night, or day and definitely a good sleep, at least sometimes, is an important component of a preparation.

My first try was 19th of July, and I had to fly to a different place to take the exam. The result was frustrating 620 Q47, V28, since my most recent gmatprep scores were 700+, so I decided to work more on Verbal and retake it within a month. I bought MGMAT Verbal books, studied them thoroughly for a month, worked a lot on practice questions from different bundles on forum, BUT... the outcome is a bit disappointing again.

At the test day, I woke up as usual, had breakfast, and warmed up a bit with math and verbal exercises. I took verbal first, and thought that I perform quite well during the test, however I made a huge mistake at the last question - I did not have time to submit the answer after I picked one. I am not sure if I was penalized for this. Math test was super easy, i had most questions on number properties, medians, 2 on overlapping sets, only 1 (very easy) on probability. By the last question, I had 6-7 minutes. Therefore, I thought that my math score would be quite poor, and I relied mostly on my verbal for a good total score.

I was actually surprised to see the final screen with Q49 V32... I never had Q49 at mock test (I think that @Bunnel signature collection really helped me), however V32 is a way below my mock average V36, and below my top V41. For the second time I have not seen any familiar verbal question during the exam, and that's probably the reason I failed again in verbal section.

Dear all, I would like to ask you for advice, if I should try one more time.

Few words about myself: I am male, from Russia, with a wife and 2 lovely boys (3 years, 3 months), over 8 years of experience (finance, risks, M&A in different companies), out of this 6 months working abroad. My undergrad GPA is 3.37 (out of 4) from top Russian school and masters GPA is 3.8 from the same school. My extracurricular activities include managing a US-Russian student organization for 2 years while being a student, and now I am board member of local Jewish community.

My target schools are Columbia and MIT, and their average gmat score is c. 710-720. I plan to apply for Columbia ED and R1 MIT, which leaves me with only a month to prepare the essays and all other stuff.

My thinking is the following: I am not sure if I can get again Q49 (and I assume that Quant score is more important for these schools) and enough increase in Verbal to offset a potential drop of my Quant result. I plan to explain to Adcom the difficulties of GMAT preparation with a newborn, and ask them to give me a year to study English at the needed level. (also I take TOEFL soon, and I hope that AWA score may also show that I know somehow the language)

So, having said that, what would be your suggestions? retake or focus on application, which may compensate poor verbal score, or you think that Q49 is not that good actually for these schools?

Best,