7+ months, Magoosh, eGMAT, and 3000+ practice questions and a mere 640

I just took the test and scored a 640. That's not an impressive score. I don't even know if that score is worthy of any of your time. However I learned quite a few things that I think can make a difference some people so I am going to share here. I won't go too much into Magoosh or eGMAT as I don't think I am ready to do so yet. I think once I have given both platforms my all, I will be ready to share my evaluation.

1. While it might not be true that doing hundreds of questions will improve your score, it is true that doing so will reduce the probability that you would see a question you have never seen before. While obviously I did not perform all too well and I don't get to brag about getting a 700 or 750, I did see 2 questions I had seen before (exact same, just different numbers) and another 2-5 that were identical in terms of information given and question asked.

2. Perfect your ability on every question type. There is a little of every topic on the test and if you can’t afford to get two questions wrong back to back like I can't (anyone who wants to score a 600+ in my opinion), not knowing any topic all too well will hurt your score by quite a bit. I was running out of time and guessed on a question or two only to realize the next 1 or 2 questions were on Permutation or Overlapping Sets, neither of which is really my forte.

3. For the last month or two, I was doing 36 practice questions in 65 minutes and getting 75-90% of the questions correct. In this exercise, I used to include 12 of each question type. Big mistake. I realized today that I didn't just happen to get 14+ RC questions on my official mocks, in fact that is the how the test is designed. I saw a total of 4 RCs today or about 14 RC questions. If you are doing questions with time restrictions, be sure to remember that there will likely be more RC questions than CR or SC. I think I might actually start doing 15 RC questions across 4 passages in my practice Verbal mocks from here on or just do full practice tests prepared by one of the platforms.

4. Expect more SC questions than CR. I think I probably saw 13-14 RC Qs, 14 SC Qs, and 10-11 CRs. It’s not uncommon to see 3 SC questions in a row.

4. Don’t take more than 5 minute breaks if you must take the breaks. Experts here almost always suggest that you take the breaks and I agree that you should. After each section, I think it was great to get to breathe some fresh. However, expect to be told that you must wait another 2-5 minutes when you return to take the next section (happened to me during both of my breaks and I lost 3-5 minutes from Verbal and IR). I was so frustrated but the fact is that most of us are not willing to argue over that so I think we all should prepare for the worst.

5. Really work on execution. I read here how important it is to work on execution but I think I finally understand what the experts mean. There wasn’t really any quant topic I didn’t know (thanks to having done over 300 questions) but I kept stumbling upon questions and spending over a minute to realize that I need to start over. This is especially true for PS questions.

7. GMATClub works. The questions I had been seeing here for months were very much in sync with what I saw on GMAT today.

8. Timing has godly level of impact on the test. The reason I didn’t score what I thought I would is because I underestimated how quickly time can get away from me. I started off slow and then tried to catch up and did to some degree but then in the last half of the test, I really struggled with more difficult questions and the clock ticking away. I know its all in my head but it felt like the clock was ticking faster. I am going to work on timing more in the next phase of my prep.
Overall, think I failed in execution. There was really not anything on the test I had not seen before. But I kept seeing questions in quant that I’d solve to realize that wasn’t one of the answer choices. I would work through a DS question and recheck my work to realize that I missed something big so I would spend over a minute on top of the original minute and half.