700 on first attempt from a 590 diagnostic in 2 months

Hello All,

I thought I would share my GMAT experience with you. I signed up for the Manhattan GMAT class in July and took their diagnostic test before I started. I scored a 590 (Q40,V32, IR 4). I was applying to several M7 schools so my goal was to be 700+, my work was cut out for me. I started studying daily but was very time constrained due to my hectic work schedule and volunteer activities. I was able to get a solid hour in a day during the week and averaged 3-4 hours per day on the weekend. After studying for 4 weeks, I took the second CAT exam and to my horror I scored another 590 (Q38, V34, IR 3). It demoralized me, I remember studying pretty hard for Quant but received many probability and combination type problems (areas that we haven't studied yet in the course work) and bombing on the questions. At this point I was definitely questioning my abilities, my job is in analytics and I constantly deal with statistics and complex quantitative problems- I just could not understand why I performed so poorly on the Quant sections.

I did not give up on the GMAT though, I limited my hours at work from the usual 12 hours back down to the 9-10 hour range to give my chance to absorb the studying material. I studied for another 3 weeks and took my CAT 3 and scored a 650 (Q45, V34, IR4). I was happy to see improvement but I had only 2 weeks to improve my score by at least 50 points before I took the actual GMAT. I scheduled for 4 days of vacation before the GMAT to do nothing but study, although I still got pulled into several projects i was able to get a solid 8 hours of studying for the exam. I had a lot riding on this one GMAT- in order to be able to apply to the schools I wanted to in Round 1 I had to hit a homerun on the first attempt.

Gameday- One thing I have always been good at in my life is performing well under pressure, whether it be a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu match or an exam in school- I knew I would be more focused for the real deal. Once I arrived at the GMAT testing facility I was ready to get this thing over with and close this small chapter of my life. The essay went fine and the IR felt much easier for the real exam than the Manhattan CAT. I started off on Quant performing well but was flustered by a problem or too (I knew how to solve in practice but was having a memory gap for the exam). The Quant questions felt very easy and my mind was thinking I was doing bad because of the adaptive nature of the exam. One thing I didn't do during the Quant section was pay attention to the timing, I missed horribly on this part and had 9 minutes left on the exam by the time I hit the last question. At this point I was convinced that I was going to have to retake the exam after believing I did horrible on the quant. My main objective now was to get a good verbal score to get solid practice before I took the exam over again. Verbal went very well, I was always strong in critical reasoning and reading comprehension but was weak in sentence correction. On this exam I did better on the sentence corrections than I had in my Manhattan CATS so I felt good about improving my Verbal score. Once I submitted my final verbal section and went through which schools I was going to send my GMAT to I saw my score 700 (Q48, V37, IR7, AWA5).

The relief I felt when I saw the score was indescribable. At that second, I knew I would never have to retake the exam again, I had crossed into the acceptable range for all of the schools I was applying to. I knew I could have my weekends back, I knew that I wouldn't have to open another GMAT book up unless I just wanted to stimulate my mind with studying. That feeling is/was awesome. If the GMAT was an easy test then it wouldn't be fun to get a great score on it. Some people may say that they scored 740+ after studying a week but I believe that is exceptional rare for anybody on earth, the GMAT is a test of work ethic for most people. Will you put in the time to succeed or will you just think about it? Will you dream about scoring a 750 or instead will you spend that time actually studying to achieve that score? The GMAT is beatable, you just have to be the tiger that earns his strips.

Recap
Manhattan CAT 1 590 (Q40, V32) 7/4/2014
Manhattan CAT 2 590 (Q38, V34) 8/9/2014
Manhattan CAT 3 650 (Q45, V34) 8/24/2014
GMAT Practice Exam 650 (Q46, V33) 8/30/2014
Actual GMAT 700 (Q48, V37, IR7, AWA 5) 9/5/2014