My Undoing Persists! - 610(Q39, V35) - 3rd attempt

Hey Everybody,

Foreword: A long and depressing debrief follows. Be warned!
In the late month of March I retook my GMAT and much to my anguish, my score dropped from 630(Q41,V29) to 540(Q41, V23). This left me in psychologically incapacitated. Post this horrendous performance of mine, I took a break for 1.5 months wherein I abstained from GMAT related studies. In the month of May, I decided to give another shot at GMAT and used the below materials for studies.

Study Materials:

Quant:MGMAT books (revised). Advanced GMAT Quant (Purchased the kindle version).

Verbal: E-GMAT (SC), MGMAT – SC, Aristotle CR bible.
Other stuff: OG 12th edition, OG Verbal review, GMAT prep pack, SC and CR – GMAT prep compiled.
Well, with the above materials I started off by brushing my quant basics. This time, however, I did not dedicate individual months for Quant and Verbal as I had done in my previous attempt. I dedicated equal studying time for both quant and verbal.

Quant: For the most part of my quant preparation, I revisited the basics, and reviewed my notes on quant. Post this, I worked on the Manhattan Advanced GMAT Quant. The questions although seem overwhelming are for the most part doable. But, I did take my own sweet time to solve them. My thought was to achieve the ability to reason and solve the problems. On completion of the Advanced GMAT Quant, I attempted GMAT prep pack in timed condition. My accuracy for the easy and medium difficulty questions was around 90%. For the ‘Hard’ category questions, my accuracy was around 80%.

Verbal:

E-gmat (SC):
On enrolling for the e-gmat SC course, I went through all the lessons and the UGE (User generated exercise). The course is exceedingly well structured and the exercises help to imbibe the concepts very well. I’ve learnt a great deal from this course especially the Verbing and Verb-ed modifiers, AS vs Like, Conditional verb tenses to name a few. In my previous attempt, I remember screwing up a verb tense related question involving the usage of would/will. This time, however, I was able to nail a similar question. And, this I attribute solely to e-gmat SC.

RC – Only strategy I followed for RC was to read through the entire passage with undivided attention and paraphrase after each paragraph. This helps especially for questions such as ‘Primary purpose of the passage’ and ‘Why does the author include the 2nd para’. Well, for the most part the only passages I had practiced are from the practice CATs.

CR – Revised the Aristotle bible and the notes I had prepared, and did questions from OG and Prep pack.
In the month of July I started taking the practice CATs from MGMAT and GPREP (V2.0).
I feel really miserable contemplating my current state, despite my near good performance in my practice tests, as my practice scores ranged from 690-730 in the MGMAT CATs. All the CATs were taken simulating the actual test scenario with IR and AWA.
My GPrep scores were: GPrep 1: 710(Q48,V40) and Gprep2: 710(Q48, V40) – Prep 2 taken a day before my GMAT.
Well, 25th was my GMAT test day. As the place I live in doesn’t host a test center, I had to travel the day before and I did not prepare much on the last day. During my previous attempt, I had a morning appointment and the lack of sleep was the buzzkill (I presume). So, I had booked for a noon appointment. But, just like last time, I found it difficult to sleep and the only sleep I could muster was from 530 AM to 9:00 AM.  Nevertheless, I got up, had a quick breakfast and did 10 quant problems from OG and got 3 of them incorrect. Felling a bit low, I left for the test center. I left early as it takes 2 hrs to reach any goddamn place in this damned city (Bangalore) and as I had to commute via bus.

The Exam:

AWA: Pretty much nailed the essay, thanks to chineseburned.

IR: This section was way simpler than the ones in MGMAT – CATs.

Quant: After taking the 8 min break, I sat in to face the music. I had a real bad feeling about the quant section. First question was on a distributing tickets ratio wise. I spent a good 2 mins and answered it correctly. Second question ensued, this was fairly easy too. Third question was rather tricky, I guess I screwed it as the ensuing question was easy. Experience dictates that the test has to get difficult hereon. But, that did not happen.. 11th question was where I completely lost my confidence as the question asked me to substitute ‘Y’ in a linear equation and get the value for ‘X’. well, I did face few tricky questions, but I had no clue as to how to go about those questions. These questions were particularly DS type and category geometry, inequalities, and number properties. By the time I was done with the quant, I knew I had bombed the GMAT yet again!

Verbal: Although I felt downright depressed after my quant, I mustered up some confidence and went in to face the verbal. Much to my surprise, I was able to answer the SC and RC questions with ease. CR, however had closely contesting options and I never felt at ease choosing the correct option. At the fag end of the verbal section, I was losing out on time and I had to blindly choose an option for the last 4 questions.
Well, when the screen report or cancel the scores popped, I even thought of cancelling my scores as I expected around 530-560. Much to my surprise, I had breached the 600 with a 35 in verbal!!. Although the V35 bought a warm feeling inside me, the Q39 reminded me of how miserable I’ve become in quant.

Guys my confidence has been shattered into infinitesimal pieces. I need your valuable insight into the following queries.

a) I shall be applying for the fall 2013 admissions with my first score of 630. And, the universities that I’ll be applying for have the average GMAT in the range of 620-640. Will my 2 despicable retake scores hinder my chances?

b) Am caught up in a mental predicament regarding re-take. What are your suggestions on a re-take.

c) If ‘Yes’ for ‘B’, can anyone provide me a convincing insight into my screw up in quant. Surely the ‘47’ I got the first time wasn’t a fluke (or was it?).

I shall deeply appreciate your views and suggestions.

Cheers,
Big ‘screw up’ Nasty!