What should my next step by after the first disastrous GMAT?

Hello guys,

I will begin this post by saying rather famous and worn-out phrase " I wish I knew about GMATclub forum long time ago". I never imagined that Internet forum could be so useful and helpful, but in a short period of time, I concluded that this forum is more valuable than all books gathered together. Here is my story.

I come from Eastern Europe, and although a non-native speaker, I have been studying in the UK for the past four years. Uni went pretty smoothly, graduating with a GPA above 3.6 (major in business, concentration in finance). Until recently, I thought that I am not gonna pursue a master degree (wanted to work and wait for a decent chance to go for a MBA), but in the last moment things drastically changed in my life, and due to complications with visa, I had to continue education on a higher level immediately in order to stay in the UK. In other words, in February this year, I started looking for top master programs in finance, and soon I realized that all of them require GMAT.

To make a long story short, I had my GMAT exam booked for 12 of April, and I started studying for it on 20th of March, so less than 20 days. This is how I tried to do it:

-I bought following books: OG 2012, Cracking the GMAT (The Princeton Review), Kaplan Math Workbook and Kaplan 800
- I studied every day minimum 6 hours, going through all the books, just doing questions without keeping track of time and without error log
- I did two GMATprep tests approximately 10 days before the exam and scored 580 and 620
- One week before the exam I found out about the gmatclub forum, and begun to realize how poor and disorganized my strategy was, and I how much time other people devote to this exam. At this point I knew I was screwed ((
- During that last week I was just doing only various questions from the forum, since all the questions from the books I already knew by heart

It is not hard to understand that my score on the actual GMAT was catastrophic: 540 (q37 v27). To be honest, I didn't expect any better, but anyway, disappointment was obvious. During the exam I had issues with time management, especially with Verbal section, where in most of the questions I just guessed at the end, because I thought I spent too much time already on them. Not to mention quantitative part, where most of DS questions I guessed as well.


It is obvious that I tried impossible, I guess the fact that I went to a mathematical gymnasium and that I scored 110 on my TOEFL exam couple of years ago, made me "confident". If you ask me, I definitely have problems with math, since I was never able to do hard questions on the forum in the allowed time or without looking to a solution. On the other hand, I dealt with verbal section quite easily, and was able to do most of the questions (700+ level) on my own. The thing is that it always took me a lot of time to do it.

So here is where I would like to hear your opinion guys?
What should be make next move? How to prepare it better?
Should I go for a GMAt prep course? ( The thing is that I feel that such courses would go through basic stuff, which I already covered, would that be necessary)

I am planning to take a new test on 23 of May, I am realistic and therefore I aim for 650 "only". I would really appreciate if some of you great guys here would share your thoughts, since I realized that this is the only place where I can get an meaningful advice. Thanks in advice guys


P.S. I apologize if my message was posted in the wrong section.