Feeling low :(

Hi guys,

This is going to be a rather long post so bare with me. I'm feeling quite depressed with this whole gmat. I've been studying for 5 months and the best quant score I can do on a practice tests has been a 35

I really don't know how to feel here. I study everyday but it just seems hopeless. The thing about me is that I have avoided math in my life like a plague. I mean I know the basics like addition, subtraction, very simple algebra and so on, but for the most part I was horrible at the subject. I think the extent of my algebra skills was knowing the FOIL method lol I'm not sure how I was able to graduate high school with the scores I got but maybe it is because there are cracks in the system. Every standardized test I took in math I bombed, not because I didn't get the material, but because I refused to learn it. I was intimidated..... Math always intimidated me and I wanted to have nothing to do with it. Don't even ask how I didn't on the SAT, I guessed at every question....When I got into college I realized I wasn't going to get through the cracks, so I actually buckled down and studied for my math and economic classes, and guess what, I did well. It wasn't the easiest subject for me but I got my B's and my A's in those classes. It was at this point in my life that I started to not be scared of the subject. I actually started to kind of enjoy the subject Luckily for me, the math classes in college required no previous knowledge of other math classes.

So a few months ago I decided to give the GMAT a shot since I really want to go to B school. I asked my friend if I could borrow his Kaplan book to see what the test was about. When I took a look at the math and the math reference in the book, I had no idea about anything but except for the most basic things (and even some of the basics I had no idea about). I decided that I needed help so I enrolled in a PR prep course. During the course, I kid you not, I started learning for the first time what a prime number was, what a digit and a unit in a number are, how ratio's work. It is during these months of studying where I learned what a radius in a circle is, that the length of an interior angle and an exterior angle of a triangle is 180 degrees, etc... Stuff that I guess people learn when they are younger, I was learning for the first time. On my very first PR CAT, I think I scored about a 17 or 19 in quant. When we were assigned problems in the OG, I literally couldn't do maybe 85 to 90% of the problems.

Well fast forward 5 months and I know so much more than before! My hit rate on doing problems in the OG in sets of 10 are maybe 75 to 80%. In the beginning I couldn't do the most basic DS questions, now that is perhaps my strong point. Out of the 150 questions for DS, I maybe got 95 to 100 of them right. On the verbal side, the SC was a killer, I got more than half wrong. Now, I have about an 85-90% hit rate in the OG for SC.

I feel like there are still gaps in my knowledge, which is why I just bought the MGMAT series of books. I feel like all the other books are just tips and strategies, but this is an in depth coverage of all the math topics. Obviously I know a lot more than I did before, but I just cant understand why I can't break a 35 in quant on my practice CATs. Granted, I don't take them too often, but do I need to perhaps start practicing taking tests on a computer? Would that make a difference? I know when the clock is on, I make a lot of stupid mistakes...

Sorry for babbling guys, I'm just feeling really depressed at the moment