Burned twice by GMAT Test Day!

Hi,

After working on my GMAT skills for months (2 atleast), I gave my GMAT online exam on Sept. 13th 2020. I went into the exam pretty confident because I had completed the OG twice (once in the physical book, second on the online portal), had scored the following on my mocks:

1. 660/Official Mock Test 1/July 24th 2020 (Diagnostic) V31 Q49
2. 740/Official Mock Test 1/Sept 8th 2020 - V40 Q50
3. 720/Official Mock Test 2/Sept 11th 2020 - V40 Q49
4. 73/Official Mock Test 2/Sept 12th 2020 - V38 Q50

Getting such decent scores just a day prior to the test, I was confident of landing a 730-750. But one look at the title of this post, you can imagine that I did not achieve my target score. I scored a 700 - V35 Q49 on my GMAT Online Test.

Given the fact that application deadlines were on the horizon, I decided to brush myself off and give a test center based GMAT on Sept 26th 2020, which was the earliest date possible at a center within reasonable distance from me.

Learning from my mistakes, I decided to change the following:
1. The way I took RC notes: I used to take long winded notes, mostly consisting of scribbles as I thought that this made me absorb more of what the passage is saying. But I realized that even scribbling and then pausing to write each keyword now and then, ate into my time on the Verbal section. Therefore, I decided to reduce the amount I scribble, and form keywords using diagrams/flowcharts after every couple of sentences.

2. Sentence Correction: Even though I filled my youtube recommendations with GMAT Ninja videos, exhausted my GMAT OG material (twice), I couldn't help myself to make mistakes in SC questions in mocks. I realized this just before my second test, that the culprit here, is the timer. Therefore going forward in my exam, I decided to hide the timer whenever I saw an SC question.

3. Critical Reasoning: I decided that the best way to improve my critical reasoning was just to practice as much as I could and get a feel for the questions. No other way around it.

3. Rebuffing quant: I decided that a special attention to inequalities, venn diagrams and combinatorics would really help me. And it did, because going forward I was able to achieve a Q51 in most of my mocks.

Here are some mock test scores I was able to achieve after my GMAT Online attempt:

1. 720/Official Mock Test 3/Sept 19th 2020 - V37 Q50
2. 770/Official Mock Test 1/Sept 20th 2020 - V44 Q51 (This might've been due to me not resetting the test, but I saw maybe 3-4 questions in verbal which I remembered from my previous attempts. SO not very different)
3. 690/Official Mock Test 4/Sept 22nd 2020 - V30 Q51
4. 720/Official Mock Test 5/Sept 24th 2020 - V39 Q49

Not my most consistent or best scores, but I saw them indicative of identifying my problem areas and just kept on working to fix those.

Sept 26th 2020: I went into the exam with 5 hrs of sleep, hyping myself up to not get nervous during the exam, meditating before stepping into the center etc. I feel I followed most of the lessons I learnt in my two weeks gearing up to this exam, but alas scored only a 710 - V38 Q48 (Can't attach ESR as I'm a new member even though I have been lurking here without an account for 2 months; Can email if requested).

Based on my mocks, I was confident that I'll score a 51 in my quant. But an easy or medium question on fractions threw me off my game completely during the exam. I wasn't ready for it. Even though I thought (Thought =/= reality) that I closed my verbal section stronger than my mocks, I can clearly see that such isn't the case.

Now I've booked an appointment to retake GMAT on Oct 17th 2020 in New York (even though I live in Pennsylvania) because it was the closest center to me with the earliest date possible. I still intend to apply for Darden and Duke in Round 1. Being an Indian Male Engineer, I have to score 740-750 in order to make it in either of these schools.

If I apply myself in the correct manner, I feel I can exceed 750, opening up doors for possibly better schools in Round 2. Having been burned twice by the GMAT has only made me hungrier. I'm willing to try any methods to boost my score to 740+ range. Does anyone have tips/advice/tricks for me to use in the coming three weeks (which I still work full time, prepare applications)? I would love to hear from everyone.