So i just sat through the 4hrs of hell for the first time today

Hi guys first time poster so apologies if i ramble

So i took the GMAT today and unhappy is an understatement

Lets get the scores out the way
660
Quant 46
Verbal 36



Ok now MY GOAL

is to get into any of the top 50 schools in europe
these include in order of preferences
Insead
LBS
HKUST (i know this isnt EUR)
IE
IESE
SDA Bocconi
IMD
Imperial
Rotterdam


BACKGROUND

I finished my undergrad two years ago from one of the best universities in my country (Australia)
my Resume doesnt have BCG or Mckinsey on it nor have i done charity work in Africa
My GPA was was **** 2.1 (but I never cared during uni and had personal things going on)
I did however land a job in one of the biggest multinational FMCGs straight out of uni worked in their corporate finance division. Worked there for a year now im involved with a startup (not my own) but working for them
Extracurricular activities nothing stellar just led a few clubs at University
Cultural diversity have lived and studied in 3 different countries
Done a bit of charity work yada yada

SO OVERALL IM NOT EVEN CLOSE TO CREME DE LA CREME WHEN IT COMES TO MY PROFILE HENCE I NEED TO HIT THAT ELUSIVE 700+ GMAT TO STAND A CHANCE TO GET IN TO THESE SCHOOLS


Ok so back to my exam


QUANT

This section i found it more challenging that all the practice exams I did (only really did 3 practice exams from the GMAT prep software but more about my preparation later in this thread

I followed the quant strategy outlined by one of the posters the what if scenario how last 8 questions are irrelevant 1st 10 are very important etc

Where i went wrong here (not that i think it affected my score all that much) was i spent 10 minutes and no im not bullshitting i did actually spend 10 mins on the 2nd question because i wanted to get everything correct in questions 1-10 and yes i gave up at the end so im fairly sure i got it wrong
I spent 6 minutes on question 8 and yes i gave up again since i wasnt getting anywhere with that either

Im fairly sure i got everything else right in the first 10 questions

After the first 15 or so questions i just answered the rest depending on time remaining, overall the later part of my test i went through it strategically skipping questions which looked hard playing to my strengths etc

Ended up with a 46 which i was not expecting (I was averaging 45 in the 3 GMAT preps I did) and considering i got question 2 wrong I thought my score will be lower but i guess god was on my side today

oh how I wish he came to my aid in Verbal!

Honestly though other than the fact I took 16 mins for 2 questions (question 2 and 8) i manouvered through the rest decently and was not overly disappointed with my score

Verbal

Ok so time to talk about verbal and where do I start

I was averaging 39 (once again Ive only done practice 3 tests) but in the real test I got 36 and yes when I saw my verbal score tears may or may not have rolled down my eyes

I dont know where I went wrong I thought I did better than all the practice tests I had done even in SC (which is by far the worst more on this later)

MY PREPARATION
I studied for 3 weeks
studied = on average 20hrs a week i would say

I know this is by no means enough time and all you 750ers study for longer but considering I was averaging 45 maths 39 verbal in my practice tests I though +-20 points on a good day in the test will get me over that 700 score obv it turned out to be -20 and it wasnt a good day

As for my actual preparation I extinguished a lot of downloadable free (piratebay) resources on the net the only thing I paid for was the OGGMAT book which is pretty useless other than the fact that it has plethora of questions

HELP REQUIRED


Verbal
So my sentence correction is pretty poor

On average I always got at least 7 wrong in all of my practice exams and i daresay it got repeated in my actual GMAT but my RC and CR are generally decently accurate so I thought this would make up for the fact that i cant correct a sentence if my life depended on it but obviously in the exam my RC and CR were not as accurate as I thought they were or maybe I got 10 of the SCs wrong instead of getting 7 wrong

I dont know what happened but i feel that there is way more room for improvement in verbal for me than quant

SO HOW DO I GET MY SC SCORE UP?
I dont think any amount of studying from my side on my own is gonna do this so I daresay I will have to enrol in a course? buy a book? what should I do?!

All i need is a 40/41 in verbal and what I have in quant for that 700

1. Can you guys pls tell me what you would do in my position to get your verbal score up? keeping in mind I really only think SC is what is lacking?

2. 36 equates to 80th percentile in verbal 46 equates to 64th percentile in quant should I be focussing on getting my quant score up?
I really dont know which score I should be looking to increase? the reason I say verbal is because I always get half my SCs wrong and Ive read incremental increase in verbal increases overall gmat greater than incremental increases in quant?

3. Im planning to sit the GMAT again within the next month is this too soon? How much time does it generally take to move up 40 points?


LAST QUESTIONS I PROMISE

Circling back to the schools im looking to get into
Considering my not so stellar background and my equally unstellar (is unstellar even a word?) GMAT score

i know there is no point in even applying to INSEAD or LBS or is there??
also what about the rest?

Schools listed below one more time (even though Insead and LBS are top preferences I would honestly be happy with any of the ones listed below)
Insead
LBS
HKUST (i know this isnt EUR)
IE
IESE
SDA Bocconi
IMD
Imperial
Rotterdam

Does anyone have any personal experience getting into these schools with a 660 GMAT score or can direct me to a resource I can get this info?

If any of you read all this please know that I honestly appreciate you reading all my jargon and if given a chance I will buy you a drink!

But in all seriousness any help is greatly appreciated!