GMAT 770 and canceled it

I got a score of 770 (Q51 V45) on my GMAT on the 18th of May, and I canceled it. My previous (and first) attempt on the GMAT was only three weeks ago, resulting in a score of 750 (Q50 V41) which also I had canceled.

Structure of this post:
1. Why did I cancel?
2. Preparation:
2a) General
2b) First attempt
2c) Second attempt
3. Detailed tips by topic

Several have called me mental for cancelling good scores repeatedly, and I look forward to your opinion, whether or not you concur!

1) Why did I cancel?
a) I faced significant stress on exam day. The temperature in the city was 46 degrees Celsius. I drank a lot of water, and my entire focus during most part of the verbal section was on bladder control, with a minimal fraction of my brain battling on finding decision points and arguments.
b) My final split was Q51 V45. I thought a better quality of 45 and 51 could easily result in a 780 on a better day.
c) I am from a premier engineering college in India (some say the best there is), but have a GPA which is as horrible as my college is good. I want to eke out the maximum brownies I can out of my GMAT.

2) Preparation:
2a) General: The intense part of my prep (~3 hrs a day) was for perhaps 5 weeks including both attempts. 2 weeks for the first, and 3 for the second. I have been familiar with the gmat format for over a year now, and had kept warm by taking one mock test every two months or so. I had also skimmed through the Manhattan SC book, but never got around to any serious prep apart from the mock tests.

2) First attempt:
a) I read through the entire Manhattan SC book several times. I am an impatient reader, and need several iterations. Each time I read, I cement a few more pages than the previous time. After perhaps 6 readings of the book, I cemented the first half, and was least bothered about the second half, particularly the chapter on idioms and the content after that chapter. I thought SC was my weakest part of the GMAT, and most of my focus was here. I solved all 140 or so questions in the OG. My accuracy was about 90%, and I was happy. I also viewed some 4 hours of youtube content from Veritas on SC.

b) On critical reasoning, I thought I was a natural at it, until the time I realised it was my weakest link in the entire GMAT. Thereon, I read through Powerscore CR. I found that book to be much better than Manhattan CR. Manhattan CR has detailed strategies and a diagrammatic way of solving which works if you have all the time in the world, but is super impractical for the GMAT. CR is not a pen-and-paper topic, and if you treat it so, you will run out of time. And you deserve to.

c) RC: I did absolutely no prep, apart from what I encountered in the mocks.

d) Quant: No prep either apart from the mocks, but revised my formulae for half an hour before the exam from this super useful (though slightly out of scope for the GMAT) PDF. I am not being allowed to post links here, so just google "techtud handa ka funda math formulas"
Mocks: I averaged about 720 on Manhattan. Never went above 750. Veritas was a large range, from 710 to 790. GMAT Prep: Gave only one mock, got 760.

Result: 750. I was super surprised at the result. I had decided to cancel any score less than 760, but as the test progressed I did not expect to even get a 720. SC and CR were super difficult, and there were a couple of answers which I had randomly clicked, not having come even close to the answer after 4 minutes each. Quant was easy, and I was super (unpleasantly) surprised at the Q50! Canceled it immediately, and braced for another three weeks of GMAT.

3) Second attempt:
I was very focused this time. I was slow, I was relying on my ear for SC, tanking CR, and getting through quant in time was a challenge. I wanted to specifically address these. Also, I had spent little time on official GMAT questions, apart from one GMATPrep mock and the OG Sentence Correction Questions. I wanted to get my hands on more official material.

I read through the Manhattan SC book more thoroughly. I re-solved all OG13 questions. I also attempted several 700-level questions on GMATClub. I fine tuned my techniques, some of which I have listed below.

For Data Sufficiency, my girlfriend took charge by forcing me to solve for speed, not accuracy. I solved all the 120 or so DS questions on the OG within 75 minutes. My accuracy wasn't much worse: 75% - 80%. This radically changed my way of approaching quant. I used to intentionally blast through quant on mock tests, and typically solved the entire section with about 25 minutes to spare of the allotted 62 minutes. I made a point of solving any and every question for speed. You think you got the answer? Mark it and move on. DS question: do you really need to solve it? Is there a way in which you could mentally answer whether or not it was sufficient, without actually finding the solution? These speed-up techniques really helped me. Why treat a DS question as a PS question? Why actually find X when all you need to do is only to check whether X can be found? I have taken many standardized tests in my life and have done very well, but have never been the most rocking superstar on them only because of speed. But this technique of being blind to accuracy and focusing purely on speed really helped me overcome this challenge. My accuracy also improved over the 3 weeks. I learnt more about the oversights I make.

This ultimately helped me on my GMAT day, where I adopted a starkly opposite technique: I forced myself to spend at least 1 min 45 seconds on each question, even if I got the answer in 10 seconds. This made sure my accuracy was stratospheric. I ordered an enhanced score report, and found that I only got exactly 2 questions wrong. Those two questions (I have a very good guess on which they were) were qs# 21 and qs#31 (the last).

The other very useful thing I did for my second attempt was to order all 4 additional GMATPrep official mock tests for about $30 per test (the new online ones). They were expensive, compared to Manhattan (6 for $10) and Veritas (6 or so free). But my goodness, these resources were a goldmine. They did much more for my GMAT than any other piece of material.
My scores were: Test 1: 760 (before my first attempt) Test 2: 790 (I screwed up by not hitting the reset button, leading to several known qs and an inflated score. Waste of time and precious questions)
I took the four additional paid tests under test conditions, hadn't seen any qs before, and scored 770, 780, 760 and 750 respectively. The last score, taken two days before my exam, were demoralizing; was I taking the GMAt again only to get the exact same score or less?

Tips:
1. Consume the official guides and all 6 of the official mocks, they are invaluable. No test provider even comes close in quality, whatsoever they may claim. Particularly so on the harder questions; Manhattan, Veritas, Kaplan et al have NO IDEA how to make a really really difficult GMAT question. They go overboard and in a completely inaccurate direction. Also, official resources are limited and precious. Have a clear idea when you will use them. Hint: don't use them up very early in your journey.

2. Sentence Correction:

a) First thing, go through the Veritas prep youtube content. They are only a few hours, and will give you the basics. Techniques like slash and burn and parallelism checking should become second nature to you before you start your real prep. These are important tools, without which you won't be able to apply any rules effectively.

b) Second, go through the Manhattan Prep SC really well, several times. Two things are very important here. First, do not skip terms and definitions (such as modifiers or dangling modifiers or participial verbs) just because your english is good or because even without knowing these terms and you can correctly solve the example in the book on modifiers so why bother knowing the term. These were mistakes I made early on in my prep. Secondly, after you have understood these terms, forget them. There is no reason for you to know what a modifier is, given that your english has been good without ever knowing what a modifier is. There is no contradiction in these two statements. The point I am trying to make is that these terms and definitions are only sharpeners for your english, not some new foundation you should lay. These books should only be telling you new and quicker ways of looking at SC questions, and not setting the basics of grammar for you. These tips will not apply for people whose english is average to poor; if so, please ignore me. I'll be blunt; you cannot start mastering english now and get a V42+. If you can prove me wrong, that's excellent for you.

c) Read the non-underlined part carefully. They often have more clues for your subject-verb agreement and parallelism and what have you, than all the 5 option splits put together.

d) Meaning is king. Let me repeat that in bold. MEANING IS KING. Oh wait that wasn't bold, that was caps. Let me correct it. Meaning is king. And this is where the test providers cannot match GMAT questions. GMAT is absolutely brilliant at creating meaning errors. Were you confused between "ability of" or "ability to" on the Manhattan test? On the GMAT, a meaning error will easily settle it for you. Read the sentence properly before you even look at the options. Understand clearly what the author wishes to say. Reread the question again. Cement your understanding of the essence of the sentence. Only then should you look at the options

3. Critical Reasoning: I only went through the Powerscore CR book apart from mocks and lurking around on GMATclub. This is my weakest area in all of the GMAT, and the area where I think I can do better on my next attempt. When you solve GMAT Club posts on this topic, be sure to only solve ones from reputable sources. Poor GMAT Club questions had seriously demoralized me in my self assessment. But there are some real gems too. The one thing which worked for me, as it has for many others, is to answer the question (or at least frame a few answers) even before you look at the options. Second, I always mentally rephrased the question to develop one binary metric. I used to run all the options through this one metric. There should be only one option which will give an answer "Yes" to the metric, and that's your answer. As a simplistic example, let's say the argument is "Studies have shown that elderly people who practice a religion are much more likely to die immediately after an important religious holiday period than immediately before one. Researchers have concluded that the will to live can prolong life, at least for short periods of time." and you have to find an option to strengthen it. Immediately mentally form a few answers: elderly people are religious; they want to live to celebrate festivals. Then develop your metric tightly and quickly: Does the answer choice tell me that: elderly people religious or otherwise enthusiastic of festivals and this enthusiasm is evidenced/correlated to prolonged life at least upto the festival? Any option which says "Yes" is your winner. This trick is particularly helpful in inference, weaken, cause and effect, or any question where the stem/stimulus is very wrong. This technique really helped me avoid reverse answers or shell games.

4. Reading Comprehension: I was good at this, I did almost no prep, and I doubt I got any better at this. So, I don't want to pontificate on this topic since I am no authority whatsoever on how to get better at it. The one thing I struggled with was in questions on the purpose of the passage; and the trick I found was to purely focus on the first 1 or 2 lines of the passage to get to the answer, no matter how tempting the other answer choices focusing on the conclusion or on the meat of the argument might get.

5. Quant: I did absolutely no prep other than, as described above, improve my speed. I come from a strong quant background, and have given exams like the CAT and done well on them. I was aghast at getting an Q50 on my first attempt, and I credit my improvement to Q51 solely to the improvement I made on speed at the cost of accuracy, which ultimately boosted both my speed and accuracy, as well as reducing my stress level and improving my quant confidence to very high levels. I don't think the GMAT can throw any quant question at me which I cannot solve in 3 minutes. I know of multiple standardized tests which can crush me on quant, just that none of them is the GMAT. If you are an indian engineer and pride yourself at your quant, and are still struggling, go aim higher. Brush up on your NCERT class 8-9-10. Prepare for quant on CAT, and I'm sure you'll get there. Unless every formula listed in the link I gave above (and repasted below) is child's play to you and you already knew and remembered it, you need revision and brushing up. Also, important to aim higher. Several GMAT questions could be just killed in seconds using good graph skills or basic calculus or basic trigonometry. I though trigonometry was not in the GMAT curriculum, and was surprised to get a question which was super easy if you knew what sin 60 was and how to use it, and almost impossible to solve without that knowledge. Several good questions on inequalities, and quadratics were just killed using graphs and or calculus, and I'm sure without that knowledge or skill the questions would take longer. Use your higher order knowledge and skills to your advantage in gaining speed. I am not being allowed to post links, so just google "techtud handa ka funda math formulas"

Hope this helped. I am going to focus on getting my application package together before attempting the GMAT again for a third time. Wish me luck for a 780!