Messed up verbal section 640 (Q50, V27)

Thank you piyatiwari for your words. You have made couple of good points.

1) Conceptual problem
2) Implementation problem

I was evaluating my performance after the exam and I came to the conclusion that it was indeed implementation problem. Couple of days before exam I read an article which said about experimental questions. The first 15 questions in verbal are most important and last 10 questions are important as they count towards your score and in between questions can be experimental and can be skipped. This is ofcourse correct and there are enough reasons behind that conclusion but I am not going to discuss anything on that. My approval until then to verbal was answer with my own pace and answer around 38 questions and the last 3 or 4 can be guessed. I was consistently scoring 35 above with this approach in GMAT prep tests and MGMAT tests. After reading that article (read this before 2 days of my actual GMAT) I thought OK, instead of guessing in the end let me guess somewhere in the middle and move on and finish all the questions. But I never implemented this strategy in any of the practice tests since I am completed with all the tests as it was only 2 days before the test. This was my biggest mistake, I should have never tried this strategy in the actual exam. I was comfortable answering questions till 15 or 16, but then I had this on back of my mind that I should skip some questions because I will ultimately run out of time and will miss out on the last questions. Since I never skipped questions in my practice tests I was little skeptical in skipping and instead I thought let me give a try and see the difficulty level and move on. I wasted lot of time(around 1.5mins for each question) in reading the questions and marking some random guesses. From here on I was not comfortable with the test. I had that guilty feeling that I wasted time in reading the questions and marked some random answers. It dented my confidence and eventually I had to guess 2 questions in the end. Rest is history

Important take away for prospective gmat test takers:- Never change your strategy last minute. If you want to change strategy try it with some of the practice CAT's and access your comfortable level.

I am retaking the test on Nov15th. I am also planning to register in e-gmat verbal online course. This looks like a very good course for non-native English speakers.

Also piyatiwari, to answer your last question. Quant was moderate, I dont say it was too easy or too tough. Nevertheless I just had that feeling of geographical difficulty may be because of frustration. GMAC can't do that !! Can they ??

Good Luck to all you guys

I really envy your Quant score. The good thing is that you have identified the areas you need to work on in Verbal. I'm just starting off my preparation and think i learnt a thing or two from the posts on this thread.

You may want to have a look at SC Grail 3rd edition. I just read it on the forum that it's about to release. I had used its 2nd edition and found it to be quite good. Though the 3rd edition has not released yet(so I don't exactly know how much better it is than the 2nd edition) but it looks very promising based on the book description on amazon
https://www.amazon.com/GMAT-Sentence-Cor ... e+sc+grail

I'll add my 2 cents on this issue. Recently i happened to meet a guy who scored 760 in his first attempt and 800 in second. He gave his first test in India and second in london. He also admitted the same and advised me to try giving the test in a region where the overall score is generally low. The feedback from him was that the quant was relatively tough in India, whereas verbal was at par.
My take on this is that people from this demographic region are traditionally strong in quant( because of the education system prevailing that lays more emphasis on Maths than any other subject) and therefore these people will invariably score higher in quant ( and thus overall) than people of other regions. GMAC may not like to give advantage to people of a particular region because the others don't have such strong academics backgrounds/system. Whether GMAC agrees or not, i feel that it's an unsaid truth. Conversely, I feel that major demographic regions from where people generally score low are thrown questions from not so difficult pool.
I would love to hear opinion on this issue of somebody who has appeared for the test in India as well as in Middle-east/ Russia..
However, It's good to keep these discussions at bay as they won't take us anywhere..

Rajeev,

You can ask this question to GMAT Representative. Is the guy you refering to a GMAT Tutor or your friend/acquaintance.