Hi everyone, some help needed here please. I don’t know how to improve my score, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Been 9 months since I started this crusade to get a decent score, aiming for 650 at least.
Let me tell you about my background, my approaching strategy for studying, and other relevant facts so you can judge or advise me.
Background: Average student, 27 years old, non-native English speaker (Spanish first language), lawyer degree, 3-4 years of professional experience (in financial corporate law firms), with a GPA of 8.5 over 10 or 3.4 over 4.
I work full time from 9am to 7-8pm.
Study Material:
OG 2018
OG Verbal 2018
OG Quant 2018
Veritas books (all of them Quant and Verbal books)
Manhattan Foundations of Verbal
Manhattan Sentence Correction
Manhattan Reading Comprehension
Experience:
I started classes with a tutor in January 2018, by that time I didn’t know even how to manipulate a square root, lots of loops in quant, limited vocabulary, etc. After months pass by and continuous practice, I improve significantly, however not enough for 650.
GMAC 1 21-Mar 420 Incomplete
GMAC 2 27-Mar 450 Incomplete
GMAC 1 12-May 490 Incomplete
Economist 1 12-May 420 Incomplete
Veritas 1 13-May 510 Incomplete
Manhattan 1 20-May 460 In a rush-verbal
Veritas 2 26-May 630 41 35 In a rush-verbal
Princeton 27-May 500 35 25 antes de tiempo
GMAC 1 29-Jul 520 37 24 complete
GMAC2 4-Aug 540 37 28 In a rush-verbal
GMAC 1 18-Aug 540 40 25 Incomplete
Study Approach:
I regularly study weekly 1:30 hours in the morning practicing with multiple random questions from the question bank of the
OG or PG verbal or
OG Quant (I use the Wiley online app). At work I find some spaces to review my mistakes and write them down on an
error log to keep track of them. At night at least 3 times a week I review 1-2 hours concepts and do a few exercises I have problems with.
Weekends I study 4-5 hours a day.
My
error log marks out that my must common mistakes, among others, are:
Verbal: I am weak at RC (inference questions primary), CR (at boldface and when there are various similar wordy answers), SC its fine.
Quant: I am weak at DS (primary questions regarding venn diagrams and some properties of numbers) and at PS with wordy questions (generally the answer of such questions will be a simple math operation but the question is written so wordy and confuse that I don’t get it).
I also struggle with the time of the exam in the verbal section, I spent too much time in RC and CR, looking and analyzing the argument and answers. I tend to decrease my accuracy when doing prep test drastically at the middle ¾ of the verbal section and that has a strong negative impact in my score.
I don’t know how to improve to get the score needed for my target school.
Any recommendations? Some advise? any comment is welcome!!
I appoint myself to an GMAT exam on late December 2018.