the more I study the worse I get ,esp Verbal

[dentobizz]

Hi everyone,I really need your advice on my Verbal score. I retook the GMAT yesterday got a disappointing 600(Q-46, V-27). I could only improve my score by 10 points and my verbal score dropped from 29 to 27,that was the most shocking development. My first diagnostic gmatprep score was 640 , so all the learning is proving to be counter productive.

My mock test scores were --
MGMT mock#1--620 [Q-39, V-35]
MGMT #2------670 [Q-44, V-37]
MGMT #3------690 [q-49, v--38]
Gmat prep1---620 [q--44, v-32]
MGMT#4-------700 [q--43, V-41]
gmat prep2---690 [q-48, v-37] (one week before the test)
MGMT#5-------720 [Q -47, V--42] (four days before the test)

Can't understand the cause of the huge discrepancy between the mock scores and the actual exam. This time around I had solved the OG 12 ,timing each question and revised all the questions I got wrong, questions I had to guess and the questions I solved after the 2 minute time limit.

Resources used--
OG 12, OG 11( RC and SC sections ) , OG verbal and quant supplements, Manhattan Gmat- SC, Number properties and Equation guides, Powerscore CR Bible,and Kaplan 800.

Test day:---
AWA was good, Quant was ok and I had expected something around 47-48 since I couldn't solve 2-3 tricky geometry and time-rate questions, so i knew that 49 wasn't happening (actually got 46).
Verbal went smoothly. CR--got the usual strengthen, weaken , paradox questions and couple of parallel reasoning and abstract reasoning questions. Didn't get any Boldfaced and speaker 1 vs speaker 2 questions, so that did concern me a little, but one cannot say for sure how the test is going. So didn't let that affect me. SC-- except 2 SC questions, I could spot the spilts and traps in rest of them , so thought I was doing fine. RC-got 4 passages on different topics as expected, nothing out of the blue.
The end result a pathetic 27. If I could gauge a bit that the test was going in a wrong direction I would have spent a little more time on questions or cancelled my score. But was really shocked with the 27.

Can't understand what I am doing wrong. In spite of making constant progress in Manhattan mocks and GMAT prep mocks (last GMAT prep2 score was 690 --48q, 37v) how the actual score can be so low (around 100 point difference). Moreover, I don't know what section in verbal was wrong. My guesstimate is that for scoring a V-27 in gmatprep software one usually gets around 20-21 questions wrong. But is it-- SC, CR or RC where am I making mistakes I can't understand. Are the gmatprep practice test reliable test performance indicators?

Any advice would really be appreciated. If I plan to retake I should know what am I doing wrong so that I can work on that weakness. I did take the necessary study breaks for 1-2 days/week as suggested by Ron, so I don't think I am over doing it. Please Help!

[kartik.money]

Sorry to hear about the verbal score but don't let it get you down! Verbal is tricky but once you begin spotting patterns in the questions, it's a matter of identifying the type of answer that is most likely to be correct. SC is more deterministic in that there are a finite set of rules that are easily recognizable once you've had more practice. So it may be likely that you got snagged on RC or CR. CR Bible really helped me rethink my approach to the CR questions. One thing I did notice with the MGMAT mocks is that the Verbal sections were definitely easier (esp the RCs) and I had to look elsewhere for harder RC practice. Have you ever tried Grockit? If so, maybe it's worth taking a look. Grockit has recycled questions from old OGs and is a really good resource especially in the last week of prep. I found it especially useful for RC - cause if you want to test how well you do on dry cryptic material, you'll find the best examples in Grockit.

anyway I hope this helps. Good luck!

[dentobizz]

How did I study:---

QUANT-- DS was a weakness so practiced more problems with different solution techniques-- algebra, plugging in numbers, back solving.

PS --had to work on few topics such as inequalities, exponent equations, absolute values, rates and combination/permutation, to get my score from 44 to 48.

VERBAL--RC was never an issue, except some difficult inference and application questions, so I reviewed them and analysed where I was going wrong. Also noticed that for me RC topics involving science/technology and business were easy to do (got 5/6 or 6/6 correct in the OG),but Topics related to literature and sociology were a bit difficult (got 5/7, 3-4/6 correct in the OG)

CR--followed the method mentioned in power score CR and commonsense.I was facing a problem with Evaluate the plan questions, bold faced and few difficult assumption questions. After revision was able to increase my performance--3 questions wrong out of 15 on my last gmat prep.

SC--was difficult earlier, but did OG again with emphasis on meaning, parallelism, s-v and modifiers, timing myself. Thursday's with Ron sessions were a great help for SC.Improved my accuracy from 50% (7-8 questions wrong out of 17 SC questions) to around 4 questions wrong out of 17 questions)

TIMING--this was another BIG issue as I didn't let go off questions ,bad guessing strategy that resulted in solving(last 7 questions in 5 mins)and hence my errors were highest towards the end of the sections. This was an area which I could improve, but not in totality (last 4 questions in 5 mins)

Thanks a lot kartik for the info.I will have a look at Grockit. I agree that Manhattan mock passages are bit easier in comparison to actual GMAT. May be I did miss out on patterns in the actual exam, because people who took the test recently scoring in the 670-680 range did say that they found the actual SC and RC very difficult in comparison to Gmatprep & Manhattan mocks. So at 600 I must not have encountered those questions or got them wrong. Moreover, the gmatprep questions tend to be repetitive and thus you can't get a real estimate of your score. I will need a fresh block of questions to get a reliable estimate.

Sorry to hear about the verbal score but don't let it get you down! Verbal is tricky but once you begin spotting patterns in the questions, it's a matter of identifying the type of answer that is most likely to be correct. SC is more deterministic in that there are a finite set of rules that are easily recognizable once you've had more practice. So it may be likely that you got snagged on RC or CR. CR Bible really helped me rethink my approach to the CR questions. One thing I did notice with the MGMAT mocks is that the Verbal sections were definitely easier (esp the RCs) and I had to look elsewhere for harder RC practice. Have you ever tried Grockit? If so, maybe it's worth taking a look. Grockit has recycled questions from old OGs and is a really good resource especially in the last week of prep. I found it especially useful for RC - cause if you want to test how well you do on dry cryptic material, you'll find the best examples in Grockit.

anyway I hope this helps. Good luck!