My GMAT Focus score is not improving

­Hi Lfss, 

As someone who sat the test recently and battled with similar concerns and self-doubt, from my point of view, I think you are doing the right thing now with taking a step back to re-asses, since your diligence and consistency of effort is definitely not an issue here. Spending ~30 hours / week for 9 months is significant and sufficient to score very highly in this exam IF you are indeed doing deep work. Consistency and diligence are critical qualities which I can tell, you possess, so you can absolutely conquer this exam.

I would be tempted to say perhaps your 12 hour work shifts isn't allowing those 3 hours on the weekdays to be as focused as you could be and so dialing down on that may actually result in more effective studying. Trust me when I say this, it is an exam which you can definitely score highly. While being naturally gifted helps and so does academic background, but those serve as catalysts and not having either does not become a bottleneck but rather a pain in the neck (ie will take longer but definitely possible).

In my view, you may benefit from revisiting the following 3 items:

• (a) re-assessing your fundamentals to gauge appropriate place to start for every topic in the GMAT exam
• (b) quality of resources
• (c) structure and approach to prep needs refinement

Before diving into each, I would like to ask you a couple of things first: The answer to the following will help tailor the above 3 to suit your circumstance.

1. How much time do you have / when are you intending to apply for MBA programs? Can you dedicate an additional 4-6 month period to the GMAT? My advice is never to rush the process. Anyone is capable of achieving a high score, given sufficient time & effort, coupled with a structured approach to preparation personalised to your circumstance. 
2. Ask yourself, do you really need a 715 score? Of course you can attain it, but be sure to know the "why".
   
   1. If its to get in your dream school, do note, that 90th percentile is at 645 & 99th at 705. Harvard's median GMAT score (classic edition) is 740 which is ~97%-ile. Which converts to 685 under GMAT FE. So you can get away with a 685 and have just as much chance of securing a place there. During GMAT prep, often the larger goal (securing an admit at an MBA program) gets fuzzy and the GMAT morphs into something larger than what it really is (a standardized exam) which is only part of the process. Your undergrad gpa, work experience, volunteering / co-curriculars, recommendation letters, essays are cumulatively much more important factors and enhancing those will balance a "low" gmat score.
   2. If you are short on time then reassess whether another school can provide you the post-mba opportunities that you are looking for. This can easen the burden on you in trying to meet ambitious GMAT scores in unrealistic timeframes.
3. What is your budget re preparation? Noting this, it would better place the forum to provide you with resource recommendations. While very high quality, free materials exist across this forum, YouTube and the internet; paid prep programs offer structure which you would have to create on your own otherwise. Not saying its impossible, but it takes that additional effort and appropriate guidance.

(A) Fundamentals

GMAT consists of 3 sections: QR, VR & DI. DI is a mix of QR & VR with some new elements mixed in so being strong in those 2 sections gets you 80% of the way there. Hence, start with QR & VR, leaving DI alone for now. I do note that your DI scores are noticeably lagging behind QR & VR, but that is OK, we can come to this later.

For Quant, revisit each topic and ensure that your fundamentals are strong. An indicator is if you can get the "Easy" questions right 100% of the time. Then you can slowly start to do medium & hard questions progressively. 

For Verbal, all I can recommend is consistent practice and just read. Wider reading (articles, news, novels, anything that interests you and is written professionally helps). The more you read, the better you become with comprehension. This will directly help with RC & CR. For RC doing even 1-2 passages per day under timed conditions will alone yield tangible results within 1-2 months. Ensure that you vary the topics (business, humanities, science, etc).

(B) Resources

As a start, now that you have finished Magoosh, I suggest focus only on official materials. Having finished Magoosh, I also feel similarly - it is good to build basics but not enough to master the exam.

Depending on your budget, I propose the following prioritization schedule for paid resources (in order of importance): In my view, I strongly recommend 1-3.

1. Official Guide & Practice Exams 3-6
2. Official review (Quant, Verbal & DI)
3. GMAT Club Forum Quiz
4. Target Test Prep (I haven't used it, and its expensive but have heard excellent things about it). Can try using this code for discounts SPRING15. The forum in general can be helpful in securing discounts; for example look at this post.
5. Critical Reasoning Powerscore Guide (I havent used it, but have heard its excellent & if you struggle with CR then this can really help)

For free resources refer to my debrief where I try to provide a comprehensive list. Only draw-back with "free" is it requires you to structure your prep properly. And if you are tight on budget, I had suggest at minimum purchasing GMAT Club Forum Quiz ($20/month) and practicing topic by topic official questions only (you can filter and access every official question out there).

(C) Structure

If budget is not a major concern/challenge, and you are stressed for time, I would recommend giving Target Test Prep a go. That way you can just follow their program and it would take away the stress of having to structure a program for yourself by leveraging the wisdom available in the forum & YouTube.

Otherwise, have a look at some study plans such as this from GMATNinja &/OR this post on study plans (ignore when it talks about Sentence Correction as its no longer applicable) to get a sense of how to go about structuring your prep and then tailor it to your needs. I will however highlight some key things to watch out for when structuring your prep:

General

1. General strategy should be (a) learn the topic (mixture of official guide, YouTube; links to some high quality free resources which I came across, in my debrief) (b) practice the questions from official guide / review guides (c) practice from forum quiz (applying filter of questions from official guides only) (d) mock exams (e) reviewing which topics are weak and dialing deeper into those
2. Practice questions always under timed conditions (judging by your scores I think you are in a position to do so - you can ignore time only if you are starting on a totally new topic).
3. For a given topic, build competency progressively. Start with easy questions, then medium then hard.
4. Give one mock exam (official ONLY) per week. Practice Exam 1-2 can be resat ~6 times in total before you start seeing significant repeat questions while Practice Exam 3-6 (which you have to purchase) can be sat only twice each, giving you a total of 12 unique official tests.
   
   1. Now what I will suggest next is not ideal, but for what its worth, in my experience, I have noticed that the official practice exams are very representative of the real exam. So even if you attempt these multiple times, despite doing repeat questions, as long as you can fully understand the problem, it will help you with the real exam. 
5.  When trying to understand a question, come to this forum. Every official question (from official guide, review guides and even the practice exams) have been asked, discussed and answered on the forum here. Just copy paste the first sentence of the question on google and usually a gmatclub link appears. On the rare occasion if its not there, just ask the question here and the community is extremely responsive, it will get answered pretty soon!
6. Maintain an error log. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. While prep may feel "slow" but it will hugely speed up your learning overall.

Quant

1. The official answer explanations were not satisfactory for me. Moreover, answers to the practice exams is not provided. Hence, utilize this forum, its a great resource. Even if you get a problem correct, reviewing how others have answered it really helps a lot. You can pick up several tricks to commonly asked problems.
2. GMAT Club quant book is a must read in my opinon
3. Questions from previous official guides are still applicable.
4. In my experience, arithmetic has got a stronger focus in GMAT FE Quant, so be very comfortable with ratio, percentage, weighted average concepts.

Verbal

1. Stick to official resources ONLY. I reiterate this point for verbal specifically, since it is very important that you stick to the source. Questions from previous official guides are still applicable. External test prep providers try to mimick the official, but will never get it 100% right. It's best if you stick to the official resources and there are plenty of questions available in this forum alone (which you can access easily using forum quiz).
2. When reviewing answers, dont just understand why the correct option is correct, but also try understand why the incorrect options are incorrect. While this may seem slow at first, it would be extremely effective since you will start spotting the patterns in GMAT's questions. Refer to this debrief by a V51 (max verbal score) which goes into it deeper. Key is quality of review and prep over quantity of questions solved for verbal.
3. Can move to LSAT questions to practice harder RC & CR questions. Only do this if you are already comfortable with the GMAT and want to elevate the difficulty.
4. GMATNinja is an absolute Godsent. Explore their playlists in their GMATNinja Channel on YouTube for Quant, DI & Verbal (which I think is their expertise).

DI (I haven't mastered this section either but some pointers)

1. Begin prep here once you are comfortably getting 70-80%+ in medium difficulty questions for quant & verbal. 
2. Practice official materials only. Can practice Data Sufficiency questions from old official guides and other sections from Integrated Reasoning IF you are running out of official questions since DI is a new section.
3. Data Sufficiency has more of a statistics / overlapping sets / Rates (speed-time-work) focus (in my experience). So be sure to be very comfortable with those topics.

Hope the above helps you reflect, assess and refine your approach going forward. You are more than capable of achieving your target score. Just need to structure your prep efficiently with the right tools and environment for success.

Preparation for GMAT can be a very isolating affair, so do look after yourself and don't give up on activities that help you unwind (sports, gym, movies, friends, family, cooking, gaming, etc..). Ultimately remember, its just one step of a larger process, and this journey is not a sprint, but a marathon, so approach it in that spirit - in time things will work out, whether it is the score and then eventual admit to your dream program or otherwise. In the end, sincere, dilligent effort is all that is required.

GMATNinja / Bunuel / bb / MartyTargetTestPrep your inputs may also be invaluable to help our friend.

Note: Ignore the hyperlink to the Official Guide which is automatically applied in this post. When I refer to the Official Guide, it should refer to the GMAT Focus Edition not the 2022 version to which it is taking you by default...
 ­