Not the best feeling

Indeed you should have scored above 650 in any case, considering the regular practice test results..

Would have been just a bad day..

I think, you need to appear again..

The Online doesn't provide an ESR unfortunately. That being said, you may have simply had an off day. Your mocks do show meaningful fluctuation on the Verbal side. Try to think about what happened during these mocks. Were there time management issues, for example? Did you find yourself getting stuck on an RC passage for too long? On the day of the actual exam, did you do anything different?

Thank You GMATNinja for the encouraging words. The spirit won't die.
I referred to the article shared by you and I believe the top reason which resonates most with me is #5 definitely. #7 might also be the case, but relatively a less contributing factor to the score. Since I took the Online GMAT Exam hence I won't be able to order the ESR and checkout where and what I missed.

I received my IR (8/8) and AWA (6/6) score today - some bright side of the exam but need to nail the core. As it was my first attempt, there are many learnings and I'll gear up for the next attempt. Would love some tips on how and where to start in Verbal again.

Yeah I too learnt about no ESR for the Online Exam today itself. Nonetheless, Thank You GmatTutorKnight

Yes, I agree. The mocks in which I scored <700 (Mocks 1 and 3), I had considerable timing issues - especially in Q3 and Q4 of the exam. For 710 and 730, I did manage my time well with a few guesses in between. Surprisingly in the exam, it seemed I am managing my time well (atleast that's what I thought which was clearly wrong) as I didn't rush through till the end of Q3. In Q4 I had less time per question, and I did have to rush a bit towards the end, but not as much as Mock Test 1 and 3.

Hi Kinetic20,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. When these types of score drops occur, the two likely "causes" involve either something that was unrealistic during practice or something that was surprising (or not accounted for) on Test Day. Before we discuss any of those potential issues though, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far? What “brands” of CATs/mocks have you used?
3) Have you taken any other CATs/mocks besides the 4 that you listed? On what dates (or approximate dates) did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) What is your overall goal score?
5) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Contact Rich at: Rich.C@empowergmat.com

Assuming that you took your official practice exams under realistic testing conditions, the results show that, on a good day, you are capable of scoring higher than V18. Thus, it’s quite possible that nerves, stress, tiredness, or a combination of all three negatively affected your test-day performance. However, it’s also possible that you have some lingering weaknesses that were exposed on test day. Although I’m unsure of how you prepared, it’s possible that, in your preparation, particularly in verbal, you did not really learn to do what you have to do in order to score high on the actual GMAT. Rather, you picked up on some patterns that were effective in getting you relatively high scores on practice tests. So, for you to hit your score goal, your preparation, particularly for verbal, probably needs to be more complete, meaning that you have to go through the various types of GMAT questions carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills.

For verbal specifically, you have to become more skilled at clearly defining the differences between trap choices and correct answers. Otherwise, you will get stuck guessing between two choices or be surprised to find that you incorrectly answered questions that you thought you answered correctly. Becoming more skilled in this way takes carefully analyzing all of the answer choices to lots of verbal questions to develop an eye for the logical differences between the choices. In other words, you have to go beyond answering practice questions and reading explanations to doing deep analysis of questions to learn to see everything that is going on in them.

You also may find it helpful to read the following article:

Why Was My GMAT Score Lower Than My Practice Test Scores?