What happened?

Man I am sorry about your score. The same thing happened to me i wrote on Jan 4 and got the exact same score as you. But the funny thing is that I was not nervous.

Hey, I have noticed you do well on the math question discussions in the GmatClub. Don't loose hope Todd, I think you will do better if you are planning to take GMAT again, with more practice in math.
You got a great verbal score!! Good luck

For the quant part I wrote on my paper 1 through 37 on one columm, and counted down the time on the other. I did this so I would have a rough idea about where I stood. I remember the 1st question was pretty easy, and the 2nd question had a pretty basic trick to it. The 1st 2 were both problem solving, but about the next 6 out of 8 were data sufficiency. I think it was question 8 that gave me trouble. It was something with remainders that I couldn't figure out by picking numbers, and that took up some time. I ran into trouble on another question that was maybe 12 or 13 that also took up some time. I remember looking at my paper and seeing I was about 2 question behind where I wanted to be, so I kind of panicked and tried to quickly solve the next few to myself back on track.

I've kind of run out of prep material. I went through the OG except for the last 20 or so problems on each quant section, as I wanted to solve tough ones when I took the powerprep tests. I had done every kaplan test on the CD except the last one, which is what I took the day before the test. I did pretty well on all the kaplan tests, starting with about 74 percentile and moving up to getting a score of 50 on the last 2 tests. I'm now completely out of new prep material.

I knew that part of the reason I didn't do well last time was because of my nerves, so I went into the test trying to keep myself relaxed, but it didn't work. When I got stumped for the 2nd time during the testI got discouraged and started to think about all the work I had done and what I wanted to accomplish and just got too emotional. I really wanted success in this area and I think my nerves got the better of me again.

I'm definitely going to study the harder OG questions and try to keep answering questions in this forum. As far as I can tell I know the concepts well, so I don't really know what else to do before I take the test again. Any suggestions?

I am thinking about getting private tutoring. My feeling is that maybe if someone else saw me when I was solving problems he would be able to determine what I'm having trouble with. Also, I would have access to new material to work with. I definitely don't want to go to a class or have someone tell me "tricks" like backsolving, how to guess, etc as I know all that already. I've seen so many kaplan questions that I don't want to use them, and I've heard that princeton review doesn't have that tough questions. I'm aiming for a 49 or 50 on quant, and I want someone that would give me tough problems. I saw that veritas only has 99 percentile people, would that be the best place? Are there any others that would be good?

i had private tutoring but i skipped it because i found it not very helpful. the tutor teached somme lessons about strategy and thats it. he also tried to teach me some skills but i came to the conclusion that its not worth it because you have to learn by yourself. i found it much more helpful to meet with other people who also prepared for the gmat. i can really recommend the challenges. they are tough. and for the sc part i would recommend the "gmat885sc". solve them and write the type of problem next to the question and then confirm your reasoning by visiting https://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/index2.htm. for the cr and rc part i would recommend the lsat superprep.

It really depends on the talent and knowledge of the instructor. Like most human activities there are some outstanding people, a lot of mediocre one, and quite a few terrible ones. I would suggest staying away from "canned" instruction programs.

A talented instructor will know where to find more quality practice materials - there is no real risk of depleting this pool.