Hi, there. Orion here to respond to your post.
I’m sorry to hear that your testing experience didn’t go as hoped. Given the time and effort you’ve already put into your prep, I can imagine that this is a disappointing outcome.
As I mentioned in a previous response to one of your posts, diagnosis – like in the medical sciences – is something of an art. You should see identifiable diagnostic signs in around 3/4 of the questions. The remaining 1/4 will have subtler cues, and some will only reveal themselves in the solving. Diagnosis is meant to be a flexible tool as opposed to a magic bullet. If after ten seconds, you’re not sure what type of problem you’re dealing with, my advice would be to start solving continuously and to focus on doing what you can until the diagnosis becomes more apparent. And, of course, there are always the structure diagnoses (i.e., real numbers/choose one, real numbers/choose many, variables/choose one, variables choose many), which should be applicable in the vast majority of cases.
As far as I know, Stellar is the only GRE test prep system that includes diagnostic considerations in its recommended approach to problems. So while it’s possible that a competitor program might work better for you, it probably won’t be because it can help you solve this particular problem concerning diagnosis. At the end of the day, we’re trying to train flexible and adaptive problem solving – and this is because the test itself is unpredictable.
In any event, regardless of whether you choose to remain with Achievable or decide to take a different tack, it will be important to run a post mortem on your most recent experience. Were there any other factors that could have impacted your performance? If any of these are under your control, what could you do differently moving forward to mitigate their impact? If used appropriately, we can learn more and more quickly from our mistakes than from our successes. For my part, I’m happy to do what I can to help.
So while your recent experience might sting right now, you’re not out of the race yet. Take a few days off and re-evaluate your situation in light of your current options. I trust you’ll find that there are still many potential ways forward. Hang in there!