ESR Analysis PLEASE -need guidance on way forward

Hello, thelastskybender. Even without an ESR, you should deduce from your results on official practice tests that your Verbal performance falls within a predictable range of 30 +/- 2 points (that 27 could be considered an outlier). I am pretty sure you mistyped that V31 for the reattempted mock that resulted in a 760, as that combination of sub-scores would lead to a lower score. What you ought to consider now is that there is no single best resource that can get you to where you want to be. Any way you look at the matter, you will have to spend a lot of time reviewing questions you have missed. Until you understand why you pursued an incorrect line of reasoning, you will be way more prone to repeat those mistakes, whether you practice a handful of questions a day or a hundred. (In fact, I would argue that it would be worse to practice a greater volume of questions, since you would have so many more opportunities to reinforce bad habits.) When you review, you want to stop focusing on the correct answer. That is too easy, and all you will achieve is a bit of memorization. You might even create a false rule that if you see such-and-such a pattern in a question, the answer will be similar to one you have encountered in a different question. Such a strategy will only work for easier questions. Also, work from the ground up and leave 700-level questions alone until you can reliably achieve greater than 90 percent accuracy on Easy questions and 80 percent accuracy on Medium questions, per official categorization. Too many people prioritize Hard questions, which often deviate from easy-to-spot patterns, when the backbone of a strong score is Medium questions. Mess up on those, and you will dig yourself a hole on the exam that might take five more questions to get out of, and you can even run of space to prove yourself: there are only 36 questions in the Verbal section, after all.

You might consider checking out the resources found in the signature of any post by GMATNinja, particularly the collections. You can read articles or check out videos if you prefer that method of learning. You should probably study in earnest across the board. You might have performed poorly on CR questions on your last exam, but CR and RC questions are related, and it is rare that someone will get all of one question set correct while doing poorly on the other. Finally, if you want to practice new questions, GMAT Club can be an excellent resource for looking up questions from older sources. Try the Practice Question Banks. Just do not fall into the habit of forcing yourself to complete x questions a day. My guess is that you have done that already. Try something different, maybe no more than five CR or SC questions or perhaps a single RC passage, and then revisit each question by the end of the week to pick it apart. You can grow by leaps and bounds with a more focused approach. By coincidence, I have seen two people earn exactly a 730 after studying nothing more than Easy and Medium questions, people who at first were hammering through all the hardest questions they could find and not getting the results they wanted. When you develop a sound approach to Verbal questions by sticking to the fundamentals, you will prepare yourself to take on more challenging material. The process works from the ground up, not the other way around.

Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew