from 640 to 720 (47Q , 41V) in 1 month

Hi everyone!

I just got home and I am still feeling so darn happy!

I am not a natural at math at all yet continued to increase my knowledge. My strengths laid in CR in which I got almost everysingle one correct from the beginning.

To start of my story, I began my studies around the first of april. I bought the official guide 11th Edition, Gmat 800 and veritasprep (all books).
I started by doing one of the two test from the gmatprep software and got a 480 at april 2. I was first saddened by this score yet after a while I understood that that just meant that I had a lot of things to learn and to improve upon. I studied some math and took my second software test and got a 520 at april 9th, now in hindsight it was pretty stupid of me to take the other test at this time ... well well.

I felt like I needed to brush up my math skills and as such that was all that I focused on for a really long time .. I mainly used the math problems from OG11 and the three or four math books from veritas, I kept an simple selfmade error log and always tried to review my wrong answers. April 18th I felt like giving one of the two tests provided by the Gmatprep software another try and got a 610, the increase was almost only from math and a little from RC.

Around this time I felt the need to purchase more tests and bought some from Veritasprep. I liked the way you could review errors in this software and also the fact that you could trace all previously done tests in a simple to follow diagram.
My score on the different preps were as follows:

Total Score / Percentile Quant Score / Percentile Verbal Score / Percentile
May 16 580 / 56 38 / 46 32 / 64
May 24 590 / 59 39 / 48 33 / 67
May 31 590 / 59 39 / 48 33 / 67
June 5 620 / 69 42 / 57 33 / 67
June 16 590 / 59 38 / 46 33 / 67
July 5 600 / 62 43 / 61 30 / 56
July 17 620 / 69 44 / 63 31 / 59

As you probably can tell I did not increase my verbal at all during this time .. SC was my biggest weakness and even after purchasing the SC book from Manhattan GMAT and reviewing it over and over again from June 5thish I still felt like it was just to hard.

At the end of July 17 I had around 1 month left till my first GMAT exam (August 2sth) and I felt terrible ..
I looked around for material and came over Empowergmat, which at the time gave a free trial of a couple of days (I believe). I chose to try the product and felt like I finally understood how to approach the math a lot more clearly than before and also how to view SC and RC problems. I do not know if this is due to their approach being so different from Veritasprep or if it is more the fact that I never purchased any video products from veritasprep but I do know the knowledge I learned from Empowergmat really helped me perform better at my tests.

at July 25 I retook one of the practice exams from the Gmatprep software and got a 640, later at Aug 02 I retook the other one and got a 720 (I did however recognize quite a lot of problems so this was very inflated!).

I continued to watch all content avalible on the empowergmat website while still trying to do the OG11 and some of the Gmat800problems.
August 21sth approached quicker than expected and sadly enough I did not perform as well as I would of hoped, I got a 640 with a 44Q and 36 (I think) V. My Quant was in the ballpark of what I would have estimated but for some reason my Verbal was way lower than expected.

I booked another test for Sept 21st and was determined to increase my score, the only problem was that my school and part time job now started again and this made me have less avalible hours. I also have a son who I take care of each other day .. even less time.
Despite this I kept going and did a lot more training for RC and SR, both of which I learnet the teori from Empowergmat and applied it to problems from Gmat800 & OG11.
I almost only did RC and SR, atleast 3 passages a day and 20 SR questions. I got to the point that I would get around 1/20 RC questions and about 2/10 SR questions wrong.

Yesterday (sept 20) I relaxed the whole day and did nothing, just chilled with my son and his mother. We went and bought some groceries and watched a movie, The interview .. lol.
I made sure to sleep a lot yesterday and drink plenty of water + take vitamins to try and beat my cold that had been slowly kreeping up for a couple of weeks.

Now was the day of reckoning.. The Gmat would be assasinated!
I woke up around 7, ate some oatmeal with my son and later took him to daycare.
My heart was pounding hard and I started to get a headache, but this subsued when I began my meditation ritual on the buss.
I went home again and fixed my hair, put on some nice clothes and made sure I looked good inorder to make me feel more confident.

I arrived at the test 30 minutes early and began the test rightaway, AWA and IR went away easy enough (not sure how great I did but didn't really matter that much to me at the time .. I wanted to get a high Q & V score!). I took the first short break and ate a proteinbar, some almonds and drank some vitaminwater. It was now time for the math section .. Weirdly enough I didn't feel like it was so hard.. I think I got lucky and that the computer gave me questions for which I had a good understanding of. I also got a few questions that I dumped since I had been instructed by Empowergmat to do so.

I took my second break with another proteinbar and almonds + water, the problem now was that the computer had lost contact with the server... I began to feel my heart pounding since I saw the seconds decreasing .. After 10 minutes or so the problem was fixed and I got the minutes back, but I still felt a bit stressed.
I began tackling the questions and felt like I was doing great at the beginning, until the first RC passage arrived.. RC was one of my strengths yet this passage felt weird and the answers didn't really seem to fit. I am not sure how I actually did on this one passage but I kept going and am pretty sure I got all of the other RC passages correct (or almost). SR was one of my weaknesses yet i pushed through and felt like I got some hard questions towards the end.

I ended with 20 minutes left in the verbal section and once again felt my heart pounding like crazy as I felt in the last information regarding school etc.
I clicked the button and closed my eyes .. opened the and saw the score of 720!!
I was so close to burst out laughing, yet kept it cool and just did a few victory moves with my arms!

I had increased my score from 640 to 720 in just a month and a total of 4/5 months of preparation, I was and still am extremely pleased!

I would like to thank Veritasprep for their books as they gave me plenty of problems to train with, and also Empowergmat as it was through them and their modules I believe that I managed to crack the GMAT!