I'm sorry financeguy - I know you are probably a bit discouraged right now. I believe I made the biggest gains in my score because I kept a meticulous
error log. By that, I mean that I wrote out the problem and the full explanation for every single one I got wrong, even if my error was just a stupid mistake, or misreading the question - ie, even if my mistake was NOT due to a basic lack of understanding of the material. With 10 minutes to spare on both the quant and verbal sections, I believe that you certainly have time to make the crucial incremental gains in your verbal score that you will need to send you into the 700 club. Also, when I did groups of problem sets, I was ruthless about time - I set a stopwatch, and would give myself 10 minutes and a group of five problems to do, ie two minutes per problem, and after a while I developed a real feel for my timing. This might be useful to you - take small groups of problems, set a timer, and force yourself to
fill the time completely. I strongly suspect that the errors you are making in the verbal section are related to you rushing through everything. Speaking in the most general terms, for SC's, even tough ones, you should allow yourself only two minutes - less time if the answer is truly obvious to you. SC's are where you make up your time in the verbal section. For RC, obviously you must spend a bit more time. Make yourself breathe a little when you scan the passages. I don't advocate diagramming them - that would take far too much time. During my exam, I wrote down just the main point of each paragraph - something really brief - so that I had a working idea of the structure. That really helped me when I moved onto the questions, and I think it helped to keep me from making hasty, inaccurate responses. I spent the most time on CRs. Here again, I did not diagram, but did make quick notes about the structure to help me see the logic path.
Finally, in your errors on your past tests, do you see a pattern? Are you having particular difficulty with one section or one type of problem over another? If so, this might point you in the right direction for your plan of attack.
Hope this helps. Don't give up.
Cheers,
Uphillclimb