Howdy. I have never been in anything remotely quant. I've been marketing for all my WE. I have taken two GMATs, and took my score from 690 to 740 in a few months (while writing my apps).
Honestly, you are in a very good position. It is so much easier to raise your quant score than it is to raise your verbal score (the English language is so much more complex and frustratingly nonsensical than mathematics).
Here is a super quick review of what I did (my advice will be the paragraph after):
Picked up the original guide and the verbal/quant supplements. I took the paper diagnostic provided in the
OG and then started studying quant and verbal. I worked through most of the quant problems before taking my first CATs, but didn't really do too much of the verbal. I read through the
entire math refresher bit that the
OG and Quant supplement both have. I had not had any math since college, and then it was just two stats courses and one calc course, so this was a very nice chance to refresh/learn some new things. I then took the two CATs before my first GMAT. I scored my 690, as I ran out of time during the quant portion of the exam, and had to race through the last five or so questions. This was because I spent around 5-10 minutes on one stupid question. Discouraged, I slowly started studying for take 2 (which would be two weeks before my first app was due). I focused entirely on quant, and picked up a box of Kaplan flash cards. I took out all but about 50 cards, which were the cards with concepts I was shaky on. I worked through these while watching TV/taking the train/etc. until I had the concepts down pat and the cards pretty much memorized. I then went through ALL of the quant questions provided in the
OG and Quant supplement. If there was a concept I didn't understand, I made sure I understood the answer after working on it. After going through all of the quant problems, I began going through the last 25 or so in each section (still a good chunk of problems) over and over. This is because the
OG is organized with the harder concepts toward the end. I also took a few opportunities at this point to run through large groupings of problems to focus on speed. I also took the two official CATs twice, in the four weeks preceding the test. All this worked paid off test day when I got a 740 (despite missing my first, easy, quant question).
So, here is my advice for you quant studiers:Do
not waste your time with problems that are intentionally more difficult than those found on the actual GMAT. It is completely illogical but I see a lot of folks doing it. You don't need to be a mechanic to pass a driving test.
The original guides/actual questions should always be your foundation. It is pretty much a guarantee that you will
not see something in the actual GMAT that you haven't already seen in some manner on the
OG questions. Because of this, if you decide to get some other study materials, such as Manhattan or Kaplan, and your motivation is that you think you need more/harder questions, then you should rethink that. If you have memorized ALL of the
OG questions, then I guess you may need more material in that sense, but honestly if you have memorized them all then you should have no issue with the GMAT.
That being said, if you are looking to non-official tools for help in the method/strategy of taking the test, then that is a decent idea.
Finally, and this is something so few people do, when you take the CATs, treat them as seriously as the actual GMAT. That means that you should take them at the same time, same day of the week, as the actual test. You should have exactly as much food/sleep/caffeine as you expect to have during the test. This made a big difference for me between my 1st and 2nd tests.
Ok, I kind of went off topic there, but I like talking about the GMAT.