After thinking about it for 2 long years, I took my first GMAT on 4th September. It was highly disappointing to see a lowly score of 680 (Q49, V33). The reason for disappointment is two-fold. First, the score was not in line with the trend of my mock scores and second, I had totally judged my friend when he got a 680.
What stumped me was, as the post title suggests, the ghastly score of 33 in Verbal. But that's not as bad as not having a strategy for retake. I know I need to work on CR, RC and SC, but I just don't know how to proceed with it. So any guidance/experience would be helpful.
BackgroundI am a 27 year old Indian citizen, working at a British bank in Dubai. It's a FT job so I have to give it 10 hours. After I am done with household chores, I am left with 3 hours on weekdays to study, if I can force myself to be awake that is.
To be honest, I had started to prepare for GMAT in 2016 so when I started again this year in July, I was not a complete stranger to the GMAT world. It was my first GMATPrep mock which gave me confidence to book a test date after 40 days. Here are the scores:
21-07-2017: GMATPrep Free Test 1 - 740 (Q49, V42)
29-07-2017:
MGMAT Free Test - 650 (Q41, V37)
11-08-2017: GMATPrep EP1 Mock 1 - 710 (Q49, V36)
28-08-2017: GMATPrep EP2 Mock 1 - 730 (Q49, V41)
04-09-2017: GMAT - 680 (Q49, V33)
The mocks were taken under timed conditions with no additional breaks and in the order Verbal - Quant - IR - AWA. Of course I skipped the IR and AWA every time I attempted the mocks. And I did not come across any familiar question on these mocks because I always avoid GMATPrep questions on GMATclub.
On the test day, I was well rested, I kept myself hydrated and had enough sugar in my brain. I followed the same order as my mocks.
The section-wise scores for Verbal section, as per ESR, are as follows:
Critical Reasoning - 34 - 66%
Reading Comprehension - 31 - 60% (This is astonishing because this was my strongest section as per mocks)
Sentence Correction - 35 - 73%
It was as if GMAT could almost smell my fear of Strengthen and Weaken questions. All of them, except one on Find the Assumption and another on Complete the Argument, were either Strengthen or Weaken.
Sentence Correction seemed easy but not sure what went wrong there.
RC passages were dense. And in the entire verbal section, I only remember working on the RC passages. I have absolutely no recollection of how I solved CR and SC.
Following are the test materials I used:
MGMAT guidesPowerscore LSAT for CR theory
OG 15 and 16
GMATClub (for Questions and tests)
Target750.
A GPA of 6.78 out of 10 and my nationality force me to target this score, hence I need a solid 45 on verbal.
Any guidance/experience/links-to-debriefs that might help me shape my retake strategy would be much appreciated.