From 680 to 710, all done!

Took the GMAT for the first time at the end of January, scored a 680 - Q39, V 42. I spent a lot of time the past two months working on the quant scores, and retested today with a 710 - Q42 V46.

Ultimately, I felt as if I didn't do as well as I could have on the quant, I fell prey to some quirky questions I hadn't seen much of before (namely the first two which had me "catching up" the whole time). I guess it's all part of the game though, even if you feel confident in what you know, there are enough question types out there to trip you up with a twist here and there.

I plan on applying to Northwestern and Chicago. I'm glad to see my score in the mean range, I think my profile will be strong, I just didn't want something like the GMAT to be a restrictive factor in my application. Only danger there now is whether or not the quant score is still too weak compared to the overall picture.

My advice to you verbally inclined people out there who struggle with the math - buy the MGMAT topic books, and focus on the OG materials. Kaplan and Princeton Review were a waste of time and money. Keep at it, and get the fundamentals down as well as you can before even worrying about permutations, probability, etc etc. Algebra, inequalities, and number properties were far more important than all the fancy stuff Kaplan will tell you to practice.

My advice to those of you who are Quant inclined but struggle with Verbal - read more! Spend your time online on GMAT Club practicing proper English and grammar! I can't tell you how frustrating it is to browse these forums and see so many people who are obviously skilled at math, but can't get their point across concisely, and show glaring grammar errors. A lot of sentence correction is just recognizing appropriate style, and you will only get familiar with this if you spend the time to practice proper english, and read every day.

Hope this helps, good luck. Looking forward to talking with some of you in the B-School App forums.