My GMAT Log: Target 740+

I have been on this forum for over a month and have amassed a great deal of information since then. I had my test scheduled for the first week of March but recently decided to postpone it by a month. I have read through a lot of people's experiences on this site and I am hoping I can stay motivated by logging about mine.

Background:

I graduated a semester early and decided to use a portion of the time to study for the GMAT. I will start work in June at a well known boutique investment bank in an advisory role. I knew that work would be demanding and wanted to get the GMAT out of the way since the scores would be valid for 5 years. My target score is 740+. I am very concerned about the Quant portion. I went to a top 2 undergraduate business program with a concentration in Finance. I didn't do well in any of the Quant intensive classes and my overall GPA is nothing to write home about either. I know the application process is a holistic one but I am hoping that my GMAT score will make up for this. I started my preparation on January 5th.

Prep Materials

Before discovering this forum, I picked up the Princeton Review Cracking the GMAT book. It gave me an overall sense of what to expect on the GMAT but it is definitely not a solid strategy book. After reading the amazing reviews of the MGMAT books, I picked up the Quant set and got to work. I am decent at Quant but I tend to break under pressure and my overall confidence in my abilities goes down. I went through each Quant book twice and made flash cards. I decided to do the "In Action" problems at the end of each chapter and save the OG problems for the end. This took me three weeks. Something that I forgot to mention earlier is that I have no other commitments. I am just waiting to start work so I have all day to study (lame i know, i should be traveling the world or something). During this three week time, I was averaging about 8 hours a day. I really learned a lot through these books.

The only Verbal section I was unfamiliar with was Critical Reasoning. I had taken the SATs (a standardized test needed for admission into US colleges) four years ago and studied Sentence Correction and Reading Comprehension for that exam. While I was accustomed to these sections, they still needed some work. I picked up the Critical Reasoning Bible by Powerscore which was recommended on this forum and loved that book. It was actually fun to read and it made Critical Reasoning so much more clear. For Sentence Correction, I picked up MGMAT SC but I didn't really like the book. Still, I forced myself to go through it. Going through the Verbal material took me another week.

After getting the strategy down, I started the OG 12 as well as the supplements. My accuracy in Verbal was around 95% across all three sections. In Quant it was 90% for Problem Solving and around 80% for Data Sufficiency. I found myself making a lot of careless mistakes in Quant. With the OGs completed, I started the GMAT Club Tests. I am working my way through them. I have only finished 7 thus far. I am thinking of purchasing RC99. I have started watching Thursdays with Ron and the videos are great.

If I were to take the exam now, I would be around the 680 mark. I know that with a little more work and focus I can get to my target so I postponed my exam. I already put in 250+ hours so a few more won't hurt.

My goal for the coming week is to get a few more Club Tests done and revise Sentence Correction. I slacked on reading the answer explanations...

Wish me luck!