Advice on improving my GMAT score

Hello,

I sat my first GMAT exam last week and scored a disappointing 540 (Q38, V26). My target score is 700 with a minimum of 660 acceptable. I would like some advice on how I can improve on my score. I'll explain in detail my previous revision strategy.

Study resources: Manhattan prep guides and Magoosh
Revision period: 8 weeks
Study schedule: 10 hours on weekends and on average 1 hour every evening (some evenings 3 hours and others evenings none at all for 5 consecutive days). I took 1 week of leave from work to focus on GMAT 4 weeks before the exam and another week just before the exam.

Practice exams and use of resources:
- After 2 weeks of study from Manhattan prep quants I sat my first practice test (OG Exam 1) and scored 600 (Q41 and V31). I thought it was possible to improve on this as I had not touched verbal yet and only covered 75% of quants from the book. At this point I was only doing questions from the book.
- In order to improve my quants score I signed up for Magoosh. After each topic I did practice tests (30 questions in 60 minutes) in the evenings. On average I was scoring around 70% (not 90% as recommended on this forum).
- After another 2 weeks of study I did Exam 2 from the Official Practice and this time scored 580 (Q39 and V31). I still had not studied verbal at this point but had covered 75% of quants topics on Magoosh and completed about 25% of practice questions.
- I continued with the same approach but also started learning verbal material from Magoosh and Manhattan guides. At this point I had also started doing OG2020 questions online (on average I was still scoring 70% in my practice questions).
- 10 days before the exam, I sat Exam 3 from the Official Practice. This time I scored 560 (Q38 and V28). I had covered almost all verbal and quants from both Magoosh and Manhattan prep guides by then.

I would like to know how I can improve my revision method. I am extremely disappointed that despite putting in the number of hours and going through so many questions, my score is no better than it would have been if I had sat the exam without any prep. This result is also rather embarrassing because in my undergrad engineering I was amongst the top students in my year and I also have a PhD in engineering.

Upon self-reflection I have identified some issues

- I might have moved on from topics without fully grasping all fundamental concepts.
- I did not keep an error log. Even though I made regular notes of difficult concepts.
- I may have focussed on quantity rather than quality
- I re-did every question I got wrong but I often made similar mistakes or had no idea how to solve them (despite going through the answers in the first time)
- Even though I spent 8 weeks to study, it was very sporadic. For example, 1 week I spent an average of 5 hours per day and another weeks none at all (due to work deadlines).
- Never achieving 90% in any tests made me feel like I will never score high and the decreasing result from my practice exams made me feel like I'll never achieve 700.

I would be grateful if any members on this forum could give me some advice on how I could significantly improve my score. I have scheduled my next exam two months from now.

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