From 157Q on practice exams to 167Q on the real test
This post is mostly to help quell stress/nerves for people who are in a position where their practice exam scores are markedly lower than their target scores. Last week, I took four full practice exams and scored between 157-161Q on all of them. The last practice exam I took was on Thursday (today is Monday), and I fully crashed out because for my goals, I need at least a 167Q or higher. I stressed out the whole day on Thursday wondering if I should pay the rescheduling fee, because I thought there was absolutely no way I could raise my score by 6-10 points in three days.
I ended up getting convinced by my husband that it wouldn't be a big deal to take the test, do poorly, and have to retake it, so I didn't reschedule. And over Friday and Saturday, I watched every video in this playlist and focused exclusively on test-taking strategies. Yesterday, I did no studying whatsoever, spent the day at a national park. Slept early, drank some water, had a snack, and briefly reviewed some key concepts/strategies this morning before the test. Lo and behold, everything worked out. It's not a perfect score of course, but it's enough for me.
That all to say, if you have a solid math foundation (which I feel like I did) and are scoring poorly on the quant section in practice exams, it's probably going to be fine and the low score is probably due to a lack of understanding of how the test works, not a lack of knowledge. There is no need to stress out, and if you have more than the two days that I did to learn test-taking strategies, you will probably end up okay.
And even if the test goes poorly, it's not the end of the world! People retake all the time.
Can't say anything for the verbal section since the programs I'm aiming for don't care about anything outside quant and I'm a professional writer in my daily life, so I just relied on what I already knew.
EDIT: Realized I had linked a single video instead of the entire playlist! Oopsies