A shocking 600. Totally disillusioned. Please help guys.

Question

Hi all,

Just came back from the exam centre. its 600 (Q45, v28). Now this is by far the lowest I have scored in verbal. I never felt I was doing this bad while I was answering the questions although no boldface questions did ring the alarm bells. Verbal started with a sc and then I had my first RC passage at around question 5 and then another one around 12 or so. I am not sure if this did the damage.
I have solved all of OG11 with around 75% accuracy in verbal under timed conditions. 
Two Gmatprep gave following returns:

Gmatprep I: 680 (Q45, V38)
Gmatprep II: 700 (Q47, V39)
MGMAT CATs: Between 630-650

I also used following additional materials:

MGMAT SC guide. (Must have gone through from start to finish about 4-5 times. Generally was very comfortable with SC.)
OG quant and verbal review guides.
Kaplan PP and 800.

I could not believe the score I saw at the screen at the end of the exam. I dont know what hit me but this entire experience has left me totally devastated. I never thought 4 months of prep leaving entire personal and social life aside will come to this. But I know I have to pick the pieces and start afresh. Although I am not sure how. 
Guys, I will definitely need your help to formulate the approach to tackle verbal. I am sure the verbal score does not reflect my ability. May be that I need to be more organized.

This is what I plan to do in the next one month;

1) Powerscore CR bible 
2) GMAT club challenges to take my quant score in the region of 48-49

Please give your suggestions and advice. I will really appreciate it. 
Thanks a lot in advance.

terp26 · Answer

Your Q score was to be expected. Verbal maybe lower, but Verbal on GMAT is a lot harder than GMATprep in my opinion.

navy01 · Answer

You must have deviated from you verbal strategy. Did you feel too stressed out? Did you run through the checklists for the question types from MGMAT?

StartupAddict · Answer

You studied off of McGrawHill and Kaplan. That's why.

Throw those books in the Garbage and stick to Official Material.

xALIx · Answer

StartupAddict, some of the folks on here suggested that the Kaplan GMAT 800 was decent for verbal, do you disagree? 
Whats a good alternative?...I've gone through all OG11 and the Offical verbal supplement, but I'm still around V38

Thanks,
Ali

stingraybullray · Answer

Hey mandhan, may be you just had a bad day.

The prep materail you used and the practice tst scores are really nice. May be you gave in to the pressure. Its just one of those days. Retake the exam and I think you will pull it off this time. You will get used to the pressure. Cheer up and Crack it.

mandhan · Answer

Thanks for your encouraging words stingraybullray. 
I have already rescheduled the test for 3rd week in August. In fact I was not panicking at all in verbal during the exam. Now when I look back, I realize that I was a bit careless in choosing the answer choices, especially early on in the section. Although I had worked on my concepts, more so in SC, I was going ahead with answers trusting my instinct (mainly in CR and RC)which was what I had done in about 10 full length tests that I had written. Iroically enough, when I was looking back at my verbal scores from those tests, I never saw my verbal drop below 35, with 41 being the highest (some repeat questions). Thats why my verbal score from the main exam seems a bit intriguing and hard to take.
Anyways, I am starting afresh with a lot more focus this time around. Started with powerscore CR book to get some techniques for CR and also referring to spidey's/rajat's/sahil's SC notes and as I am finding out, they are a great compliment to the mgmat sc book. Also trying to beef up my quant by another 2-3 points so that I will have that much more buffer for verbal.

Lets see if things work out this time around.

bhatiagp · Answer

Dont worry ... GMAT is a test of the mind.. I have gone through what you are going through, just keep calm.. take posisitves from this test, and use it to prepare towards your exam in August

mandhan · Answer

Got my online score report. its 5.5 in AWA.

barfer · Answer

Excellent AWA, man. You definitely can do =>V40. Just be trained.

bh · Answer

Hi Mandhan

I am in a very similar situation like you. I scored a 640 (49,29), never got luch low verbal score in any prep. I got 38 and 39 in my GMATprep verbal. I think I probably messed up CR and RC. Although I thought that I am pretty strong in CR, I was clueless in most CR's in the test. (normally I donot make more than 2 mistakes in CR on GMATprep). Did you feel the same?

I got 710 in GMATprep1 and 700 in GMATprep2. By the way this was my second attempt. I got a 680 in my first attempt in June 2007, without preparing much (just OG). This time I worked hard for three months and took 6 manhattangmat CAT's and four KAPLAN CAT's.

BH

mandhan · Answer

Hi bh,

Yes, CRs during the main exam were very subtle, with almost no giveaway answers and I thought a bit more difficult than those in OG. I think I just got a bit careless really. Maybe I should just have backed up my instincts with a quick review of the remaining choices before clicking ahead. Also, mid way through the verbal section, I started thinking about the end, the scores and all that which did affect my concentration. Overall, I can see there are some lessons to be learnt for my next attempt which is in third week of august. I hope there is a positive turnaround in store. 
Good luck to you and the fellow test takers in the coming few weeks.

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A shocking 600. Totally disillusioned. Please help guys.

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