From 600 to 650. Should I retake one final time?

Question

I took the GMAT for the second time today and scored 650 (Q47, V33). Overall 80 percentile. Although it is an improvement from my 600 (Q45, V28) in july (8-t66792), but needless to say that I am disappointed. I had hoped to reach the 700 mark this time but that was not to be as I bottled for the second time. I can almost see the dream of doing my MBA from a reputed school vanishing. I have two options. Either to apply to the 2nd tier schools here in Europe or to muster some courage for one final flourish knowing that most of my effort can be invested towards verbal should I decide to retake. For the time being though, I feel totally drained out and sapped of energy. Now I am going on vacation tomorrow and I hope the next 10 days away from anything remotely related to study/work/GMAT should help me reenergize and help gain some perspective on my current situation and on my next steps.

Back to my test day experience in case it is of help to someone.

I had my appointment scheduled at 8.30 in the morning. Reached the centre about 1 hour in advance. Had a good breakfast and came to the reception at 8. Went through the formalities of photo/fingerprinting etc and was immediately allowed to start. AWA was fine. Never had any trouble with it. I had got 5.5 on my first attempt and hence decided not to spend too much energy on stamina on the essays.
Quant started with a fairly simple question and up until question 13/14, I was fairly confident with my answers. After that, started getting nasty DS questions which involved loads of calculation. I started loosing time and hence ended up guessing a few of them between 20th and 30th questions. Finished quant barely on time and thought I could not do as well as I had planned. Anyways, took some confidence from my first 14-15 questions hoping that a few of the problems I had guessed on might turn out to be trial questions.

Took the break again, and was back for verbal knowing well that this section had the potential to make or break my final score. Strated with a couple of SCs and nailed them under 2 mins. Then two CRs and a short passage. I thought I was doing ok as most of the questions on RC were inference/suggest types. Midway through the section, I strated to feel the stress and had to take a few deep breaths to regain composure. Overall, I thought SC was way tougher than GMATPrep with quite a few questions with 2-3 split of answer choices. CR and RC were OK but I obviously ended up getting quite a few of them wrong.

Final score again left me staring at the screen for the next few minutes. Finally took the stuff out from the locker and went back to the office

.

Now some thoughts if I decide to retake:

For Quant, GMATClub challenges should help me with time management and raise my score by another 1-2 points. Its verbal which I seem to have hit a dead end with. 33 was again one of the lowest I have scored on verbal. Although I have not really gathered my thoughts yet but feel I need a lot of practice on all the three segments of verbal to raise my score by another 5-6 points.
I know there are masters of both quant and verbal on this forum and advices/suggestions to plan my strategy, mainly for verbal will be greatly appreciated by this mere mortal.

Thanks for reading through my post guys!!

. Now some thoughts if I decide to retake: For Quant, GMATClub challenges should help me with time management and raise my score by another 1-2 points. Its verbal which I seem to have hit a dead end with. 33 was again one of the lowest I have scored on verbal. Although I have not really gathered my thoughts yet but feel I need a lot of practice on all the three segments of verbal to raise my score by another 5-6 points. I know there are masters of both quant and verbal on this forum and advices/suggestions to plan my strategy, mainly for verbal will be greatly appreciated by this mere mortal. Thanks for reading through my post guys!!

dk94588 · Answer

I think, for most people at least, you start to run out of gas for the tail end of the verbal section, maybe if you do a lot of practice tests to increase endurance you could do better. I would take it again and try to get into a good school (you would be surprised what 30 days and a lot of time commitment can do for a standardized test taker). I would do some sort of boot camp emphasizing verbal and endurance (like take just verbal practice tests 4 at a time (for 5 hrs at a pop) like once or twice a week. good practice tests are hard to come by tho. Never give up on your dreams, especially if you think you can do better.

rigger · Answer

Thanks for sharing your experience. Where are you planning to apply to? If it's the Harvard's of the world, then I would definitely take it again.

Did you use the Manhattan SC guide and PowerScore CR bible? Where do you think your weak areas are? I think you should practice the SC1000 and CR1000 question sets. Go through them thoroughly as they take a significant amount of time. However, practicing them will pay dividends on verbal.

mandhan · Answer

Thanks for your encouraging words dk94588 and rigger. I must have gone through cover to cover of manhattan SC at least 5 times. In all the practice from various sources, always had a hit rate of more than 90% on SC. CR and RC were always iffy for me although I could see the scores in these two areas stabilising in the last two weeks. Having said that, I was never as confident tackling CR and RC as I was solving SC problems. 1000SC and 1000CR should help alongwith some active reading of scientific journals etc. I have got powerscore CR bible. Good feedback by some fellow members here at GC notwithstanding, I found the book a bit too much of a dry read with quite abstract contents. Now I think I should put my foot down and read some of the technical details which were, I must confess, useful.

I agree with dk94588 about building endurance and short sprints of say 3 hours at a go on verbal seems like a good idea. btw, what do you guys think about GMATClub verbal tests. I have about 3 of them left. Are they good practice? Also, does someone of you have any opinion on any verbal course by the testprep companies in the market?

I have almost decided to take GMAT on one final time. So please let your thoughts and opinions on handling verbal flow. I would much appreciate them. My absolute dream school is LBS followed by insead, cambridge and imd in that order. Right now all of them seem to be a stretch.

dk94588 · Answer

any practice is good practice, but GMATclub, as well as all other providers, does have strengths and weaknesses, so I would do a large array of different providers. I am sort of trying to get the tests for free by making 200 posts or getting kudos tho, so I can't really tell you if they are or not. I know searching the forums here and trying to answer the questions ppl post is helpful tho, i mean I got a 41V and I'm still learning stuff on the forums.

tan888 · Answer

It looks like you are showing good improvement with each test. Like other posters have mentioned, perhaps taking a month and focusing on the verbal will help you get you to where you want to be.

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From 600 to 650. Should I retake one final time?

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