540 to 700, Q 47 (65%), V 40 (91%)

I took the GMAT one month ago and got a 700. I cancelled the score because I wanted to re-take it and get a higher quant score. So I took it again today and got a 690, with the same quant score, so I cancelled it today too. So now I'll just re-instate my 700 from last month. Here's an overview of how I studied:

I started studying 8 months ago and have studied about 2 hours a day, with some gaps and days off here and there. I recommend doing it over 3 or 4 months for 2 hours a day instead, you'd probably get the same score because you won't be burnt out. First I took a practice CAT from magoosh, and got a 540 (Q36, V28). Then I commenced studying the material.

Materials I used:
-Manhattan quant and verbal, all 9 books
-Official Guide 2015 and 2017, as well as the specific versions for quant and verbal.
-EZ solutions books for quant (not recommended)
-Manhattan "advanced" quant book
-GMAT 800 quant section
-Critical reasoning bible

First I studied all 9 of the manhattan books. I alternated quant and verbal every other day. That took about 3 months. Then I studied the EZ solutions quant books. And for the last 3 or 4 months I've been studying Official Guide books, both 2015 and 2017, as well as Manhattan's Advanced Quant, and GMAT 800 for quant, and the CR bible. I've also been taking CAT's from various websites each week. As for the books, the Official Guide books are the most important, but you'll need more material than that. I recommend the 9 manhattan gmat books. The GMAT 800 quant and manhattan advanced quant books were good for more difficult quant. Although I thought the gmat 800 quant questions were easier than the real gmat questions. The manhattan advanced quant questions were harder than the real gmat.

Here is list of my practice CAT scores and percentiles:

Cat 1: 540 (Q 38%, V 50%). Magoosh 1
Cat 2: 590 (Q 38%, V 75%). Magoosh 2
Cat 3: 660 (Q 66%, V 75%). Magoosh 3
Cat 4: 660 (Q 63%, V 81%). veritas
Cat 5: 690 (Q 78%, V 79%). GMAT PREP 1
Cat 6: 670 (Q 56%, V 85%). mgmat 1
Cat 7: 630 (Q 63%, V 66%). princeton
Cat 8: 690 (Q 68%, V 85%). kaplan
Cat 9: 680 (Q 82%, V 76%). economist
Cat 10: 650 (Q 72%, V 75%). gmat pill
Cat 11: 640 (Q 49%, V 81%). mgmat 2
Cat 12: 640 (Q 51%, V 81%). mgmat 3
Cat 13: 660 (Q 58%, V 81%). mgmat 4
Cat 14: 730 (Q 73%, V 96%). GMAT PREP 2 (Slightly inflated because I recognized a few questions)
Cat 15: 730 (Q 74%, V 96%). mgmat 5. (This one is inflated because I spent a little extra time on some of the quant questions)
Cat 16: 690 (Q 66%, V 85%). mgmat 6

I've taken these 16 CAT's over the last 8 months, with most of them within the past 3 months.

Hopefully you can learn a few things from my experience. I've studied for the past 8 months, but my CAT scores haven't really improved much over the past 4 months. I got a 690 on the GMAT PREP CAT four months ago, and I got a 690 on the actual GMAT today. So the lesson is: you might as well study over a shorter period of time. I think over the past 8 months I have forgotten a lot of what I studied at the beginning, so a lot of it has just been re-studying the same stuff, which eventually caused me to get burnt out.

I expected to get around 730 or 740 today, and I was disappointed to get a 690, because I probably could have gotten a 690 four months ago and saved a ton of time and effort. But overall I went from a 540 practice CAT to a 700 official score, so I am happy in general.

You will notice that most of my practice CAT scores are lower than my real gmat scores. The manhattan CAT scores are particularly low. So don't be discouraged if your practice scores are not higher.

I don't want you to read this and think that it's easy to go from a 540 practice CAT to a 700 official score. It wasn't easy for me, I've been studying really hard for the past 8 months. But I do want you to know that you can drastically improve your score if you study a lot.

Don't study or do anything difficult or stressful the day before the test or the day of the test. Your mind should be relaxed, rested, and focused. Don't study for more than an hour or two on any day, because your performance will definitely decrease. It will not just plateau, but actually decrease. I didn't believe that until I experienced it several times.

As you can tell, my problem wasn't that I didn't study more. I was always studying too much. I think I would have done better if I had studied less. But most people are probably the opposite and need to put a little more time into it.

Good luck studying, I really enjoyed studying for the GMAT, I hope you do too.