Today I finally broke out of the ~620 score I've been stuck on and scored a 660 (from Q42,V34 to Q42,V38 - I started on 580 Q37V32 a few months ago). Surprisingly, this was the most stressing prep exam I have taken due to a lot of noise and heat, but I think the entire CR review of the
MGMAT book and interact class I did this week really helped me out - I only got 1 CR wrong compared to 5 last time!
Going back to the topic of this post, I seriously think that panic, stress and poor time management, despite my best efforts, are hugely impacting my score.
For quant: On the last few exams, I seem to get into a pattern where I fall 2 minutes behind in the first third of the exam, and then spend the rest of the quant section in a hurry. Furthermore, I have learned a million things since my second CAT exam, where I also scored a Q42 - in fact I skipped 11 questions instantly in that one as I hadn't learned geometry or Number properties yet but still scored a Q42. Now that I know all these things it feels like I am in such a hurry that I can't get things done! I don't think I am in Q48 territory but I think my knowledge with more time and calmness would take me to around Q45.
For verbal: On the last few exams, I always start out great. In this one I got 16 questions right in a row in the first half. However, halfway through,I had a brainfart on a hard RC passage in which I had no idea what I had just read. Seeing I was now 2 minutes late on my timing, I tried rushing and everything fell apart. I got all four questions wrong for that one, and my accuracy fell drastically for the rest of the section.
9 of my 11 wrong answers were after question 23.I obviously don't do this intentionally, but there is no easy answer to fixing it, except avoiding falling behind in the first place.
I think I am going to prioritise doing more practice exams and skip reviewing the questions in which I don't get the concepts (which is really time consuming, especially in quant). - The downside of this is I have 2 GMATPREP exams left which feel like the real thing, although I also have 3
MGMAT cats.
I would appreciate some advice on my strategy. Another thing I would like advice on is whether I should delay my real exam. I have it scheduled in 9 days (2 of which I won't have time to study). I could either delay it to Sept 3, or take it now and then retake it on Sept 20 (which would be more stressing as I will have other work going on in my life, and I want to take a 1 week holiday with my father in September which may make me forgot some stuff and get out of the GMAT flow).
Edit: After rechecking the GMAT policies, apparently now I can take it every 16 days. The next appointment (that isn't at 8am which would make me perform badly) after the 19th (my test date) is on Sept the 9th, so maybe I should take both and have this week's as a 'practice'/backup. The average for one of the masters I am most interested in is 610 so a 660 would still be great. I think I am going to take this route so I can take my holiday in peace after my second GMAT .
Thanks a lot for reading through this! Just writing it helps me out, but I would really appreciate some insight on what strategies I should pursue.