The GMAT Aftermath and Beyond

After my not-so-disastrous-but-not-so-glorious-either GMAT score, I spent most of Thursday, Friday and part of the weekend in a daze. There were a lot of family commitments I'd made and had to honor them. Nevertheless it was a lot of fun hanging out with friends I'd not seen in a long long time.

However, as much as I wanted to not think about the GMAT and the MBA, the fact is that the GMAT and the MBA are something that are on my mind all the time. The MBA is a strong driving factor for me today. It is just a bridge to cross in a longer journey; but a bridge that will propel me forward much faster.

I've been trying to analyze where I went wrong, what I could have done better and most importantly, how do I plan the next few weeks before I re-give the GMAT and ensure that my score jumps at least 60-80 points.

Some quick thoughts:

Quantitative:

• Clearly quantitative was bad. I hardly had any time for the last few questions and so just clicked random answers since I did not want to lose extra points. I'm sure getting those right (since they did not seem super hard) would have caused my score to go up at least 10 points. So timing myself is all the more important.
• I was over confident of my math abilities. I was good at math in school. The fact is that I've not had to do math for a long long time (10+ years) and I've surely gone rough since then.
• I ignored that type of math I was weak in: co-ordinate geometry and some parts of number properties. I had three co-ordinate geometry questions and they were moderately hard.
• I am in the habit of solving each and every DS problem until I am certain of the answer. I need to learn to gauge when enough is enough.
• Lastly, I got the feeling that my math concepts are still rusty. I'm going to have to dig deeper into refreshing them. Maybe actually get a high school level book?
  

Verbal:

While I'm able to point a few reasons on what went wrong in Math, I'm having a tough time figuring out how to improve my verbal? Things that could have gone wrong:

• I screwed up the SC - more than I think I did. I thought I was picking the right answers but could have picked the wrong ones?
• I've not come up with a "formula" for tackling SC questions. Should I spend time learning (to a point of cramming so its in my head) the grammar concepts from the Manhattan SC book? Or maybe the key is to slow down, understand each sentence (extract the meaning) and then pick an answer.
• I had one really tough RC. All the options for all the questions seemed right to me. I just picked the ones to the best of my ability. I'm sure that must have hit me bad. But then those were just 4 questions. What about the rest?
• CR/RC: Maybe do the LSAT CR and RC questions to get tougher questions. That way the GMAT may seem easier. I've read that many people have tried this strategy successfully. Even if I can get most of the CR/RC right and as many SC's as I can right, this could boost my Verbal score.
  

Due to personal reasons I am not planning to apply to business school this year, but will apply next year. Hence, I still have some time to buckle up and try the GMAT once more. However, I've not been able to come up with a decent strategy to study for the next few weeks. Obviously, there is no point boiling oceans and doing the whole OG/Kaplan set all over again. This time I need to focus a bit more and tackle those areas where I truly suck.

From the top of my head I'm thinking:

• OG (just the last 50-75 questions for each section that were tough)
• Kaplan 800 (I never finished this book)
• Redo Manhattan GMAT. But slowdown. Its not a race.
• GMAT Hacks (www.gmathacks.com): I've read on a few forums (beatthegmat.com) that the gmat math bible has great explanations. Has anyone used this? Would you recommend this?
• MGMAT tests. Their quant is surely tougher and more wordier. Might be a good exercise for the brain.
  

What do you recommend?