600 to a 760 in 12 weeks

How I jumped from a 600 to a 760 in 12 weeks!

Final Score: 760 (49Q 45V)

Studied over 150 hours, roughly 1 hour a day for 4 weeks, 2-3 hours a day for 8 weeks. Should have condensed this into an 8-week program but I had a ton of time and no set test date.

Resources: Manhattan Prep Strategy Guides
OG Guide
GMATClub

Journey:
I finished a MP Strategy Guide a week in chronological order, doing the practice quizzes along the way. I was given advice to do 50 practice questions a day. This became a burnout for me, and I instead panned out targeted practice quizzes for myself at the end of strategic reading.

I started Verbal practice questions really late, maybe only a month before the exam. This is where most of my improvement came from as it’s fairly easy to figure out a good method for RC, CR, and to an extent, SC (though its mostly intuition). I loved MP because the strategies for Quant and Verbal worked so well for me, but others have mixed reviews about the books.

I didn’t see much progress until I started making weekly homework for myself across all sections. I had three tutoring sessions with an MP tutor, who helped me shift my reviewing strategy: I switched from an Excel Error Log to a written one and used notecards for reminders about things like reading carefully, important equations, etc. THE WRITTEN ERROR LOG (as opposed to digital) WAS KEY FOR ME, IF YOU ARE A VISUAL LEARNER PLEASE CONSIDER. MP Tutoring was incredibly helpful because I got access to the MP interact videos and CATs. Highly recommend this if you have the means or if your company is paying for it.

As for OG Guide, I probably worked at a pace of 100 questions per week, supplemented with much tougher GMAT Club questions once I broke the 750 threshold.

Real Simulated CAT Scores (Gmat means Official Prep, MP means Manhattan Prep CAT)

Oct 27 (This was way before I started studying)
Gmat- 600

Nov 6 (After starting MP books)
Gmat-730

Dec 16
Gmat-680

Dec 26
MP- 660

Jan 3
Gmat-760

Jan 12
MP-700

Jan 18
Gmat-760


For CATs, MP tests are good for really tough quant, but I found that the GMAT Official Prep were the closest to the real thing.

Final weeks:

I studied from 8am-10am every morning, but otherwise relaxed with friends and got a ton of sleep. I did a CAT one and two weeks before the actual exam. Highly recommend getting into a sleep rhythm early on, but to each their own for test prep and test anxiety. Day of, I woke up early and ate a small breakfast, brought snacks to the testing center at 7:30 am. It went by so fast!

Breakthrough (Quant):

This came when I nailed down TIMING. I highly recommend the MP test prep pad, and read about how to divide up each page using timing benchmarks. After figuring out my strengths (rates, FDPs, algebra) and weaknesses (combinatorics), I was able to strategically skip questions and pace myself.

Breakthrough (Verbal):

This was all about anticipating answering choices for CR. Highly recommend reading this strategy in MP books.


...I know this is very general but feel free to PM for details.