How to cope with the bad gmat score

[vibrant]

Hello,

I gave my second GMAT exam yesterday and scored very low. A disappointing 580(Q 45, V 25). Last year in the December month I have given my first GMAT exam and scored miserably 560(Q 43, V 24). I am in a shocked and confused state as I am not able to understand what went wrong.

During my first attempt I only devoted 1 month to the preparation and scored consistently poor in the gmat prep exams (on a average 560-580). That quiet explained my poor performance in the real test as well. That's why I decided to give a second attempt.

But this time I devoted around 3 months for the preparations. For Quant I completed all the Manhattan Books and also its sentence correction guide. On all the Manhattan mock tests I scored an average 680 (Q 44, V 38). In the GMAT prep tests I scored 660 and 680. I am not able to understand this difference of 100 points between the mocks and the real test. I am weak in Sentence correction because in all the practice tests also I was only able to get 50% correct. But know I am quiet sure my full verbal is weak. There are a couple of questions which are troubling me .

1) I am having a self doubt whether I will be able to score well (around 700 , for admission in some good college) in the GMAT.
2) Should I think of retaking the GMAT or leave it . If I take, I am not sure what strategy to follow.
3) I am terribly upset with the second score. Don't know what to do next. Feeling like stuck somewhere.

Please advice me what to do next and how to cope with this.

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm sorry that you had a disappointing GMAT experience. Your quant score held up, so it was only the verbal score that was problematic.

This article contains various reasons why someone might experience a score drop; take a look and tell me which factors you think apply to your case:
https://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/inde ... t-wrong-2/

If you were able to score more highly on both our tests and GMATPrep, and you weren't doing something to give yourself an artificial advantage (eg, you'd seen some of the questions before, or you were skipping earlier sections, or giving yourself extra time), then it's a matter of figuring out why you weren't able to replicate that performance on the real test and taking steps so that you will be able to do so next time.