My experience achieving 750

Hello!

I will not describe my experience in a very detailed way, since I do not remember all the comings and goings myself.

About 1 year ago I was finishing my masters and beginning to plan for a PhD abroad. It was them I first heard about GMAT. As an introduction to it, I bought Princeton Review book. It helped me to understand what is GMAT and a few nice strategies to tackle it.

I'm not bad at math, but I noticed that the concepts of math needed for GMAT were those I had not studied for more than 10 years. So, I needed to review them. I studied for a few months, and then decided to take a practice exam. The score was really awful.

I scheduled an exam. Two days before the exam (Jan/20) I decided to take a mock exam with Princeton Review, and I got only 590 (39Q, 32V). If that exam was accurate, I really would have a long road ahead.

But then came my first real exam, and my score was 680 (46Q, 37V). So, I did much better at the real exam than at the mock exam two days before. A score of 680 was not perfect, but it was not that bad since I had not studied that much. So, I began to plan to take the exam again close to the end of 2016, and take the time to study.

Most schools accept both the GRE and the GMAT. So, before trying the GMAT a second time, I decided to try the GRE too. In June, I got 161Q/165V at GRE. It is hard to compare GRE to GMAT, but even with a score equivalent to a 680 Gmat, I sure felt more secure by then.

When I went back to studying to GMAT, it seemed that my skill with problem solving was much better, but I struggled a lot with data sufficiency. So, I studied focusing on Quant, since that's the most important aspect of the GMAT score. It's a lot of study for a few points, but that's the way it is.

Manhattan GMAT books were very useful to review the math I needed in depth.
Gmatprepnow.com was a great way to review the quant and verbal concepts I needed in a more superficial way, and also as a guide to use the Official Guide to GMAT to study.
When I was close to the exam, I wanted some heavier load of study. So, I got Gmatclub question bank. It was very useful, since I could select the kind of question I wanted. I could practice only with 700 level questions, for example, the kind of question the official guide is lacking.
I did not study very much for the verbal section, most of my preparation for that came from Gmatprepnow.

Then came my second exam, in which I scored 750 (49Q, 42V). That score was much higher than any mock test I did along the way. For some reason, I do much better at a real test than at a practice one.

These were my results in mock tests:

London Business School site:
Dec/19/15 - 500-550 (23-27Q; 38-40V)
Aug/31/16 - 640-690 (39-42Q; 40-44V)

Princeton Review:
Jan/20/16 - 590 (39Q; 32V)
July/14/15 - 690 (41Q; 45V)

Veritas:
Sep/5/16 - 680 (46Q; 38V)
Sep/13/16 - 670 (47Q; 35V)
Oct/3/16 - 680 (45Q; 39V)
Oct/10/16 - 690 (50Q; 35V)

Manhattan:
Oct/4/16 - 720 (44Q; 45V)

GMATPrep
Around Aug/16 710 (48Q; 40V)