540 Quant? Me? What did I do wrong?

[MRamity]

Hi guys, I just took the test yesterday and I bombed the Quant section with a 540. The worst part is that I studied for 2 months. However, even on my practice tests, I was never able to finish the tests in time. On test day, I only got up to question 18.

The result was very surprising since I've aced Calc, Diff Eq, and Stats in college. The excuse that I'm making is that I'm the type of person that likes to think about all the answer choices and not rush it. Did anyone on this site have a similar experience and improved your score? How did you do it? Are there books besides Barron's and Nova that can help?

I've rescheduled for next month, strictly focusing on Quant. The new strategy I'm using is to answer question in less than 1min 30sec. Can anyone give me advice on how else I can improve my speed? I've also read about the "Big Book." What is this and can someone share it with me?

Thanks.

[fromcttoupenn]

Two months are more than enough even for a person coming from a non math background. Since you've taken up some courses on calculus, you must be having strong basics in maths. I would advice you to figure out what went wrong in the test before you start preparing again. You need to take practice tests from some reliable sources like kaplan,powerprep etc. How were your scores in the practice tests? If they were high, you seriously messed up on that day.
If you work in the right direction, it'll not take you more than 10 days to ace that section. Also, I would like to say that please DO NOT complicate things by making strategies and take every question as it comes without thinking about how much time to spend on each question.
If you receive your score card early, have a look at the diagnostic report to see the problem

Big Book contains real 27 GRE tests issued by the ETS. However, it is not very useful for quants because of its old format.

Good luck!

[gradschule]

I am from the arts faculty but I got 710 so I am sure you can do it too. =) Try to time yourself, when I practiced for quant I made sure I did a question in 1min +. I think for most of the questions on GRE, they have an easy way to solve it. You just have to be able to see it.

Do Nova and Barrons. "Big Book" is only good for Verbal.

[MRamity]

Thanks for your responses upenn and gradschule. When I did the practice tests, I was only able to finish 18-20 questions. However, once I removed the time limit, I was able to solve all of the questions and solve them correctly. This leads me to believe I should follow a regiment like gradschule's.

[bahri]

try to give more time and care to first 15 question if you bomb them youll be killed. i got 790 quant but i got out of time so guessed last 6 questions inorder to finish on time. finish test on time at least guess them if no time left to solve.