440-630. Good enough, I suppose

Whats up ya'll.
Thought I'd share my story, since I've been reading yours for awhile.
There is not a great ending to this one, but good enough I supposed.
All 3 times, I felt like I could have and should have done better. But whatever.
The first time I got a 440. And this was after some pretty intensive review of Math. I did not study for the verbal at all.
"I did not realize I was this dumb" was my reaction.
So I took a GMAT prep class at my local university which was useless.
And studied, did lots of practice questions, and took it again. 520. I was scoring 570 consistently on practice tests so this was not satisfying.
"One more time..." I thought as I left the test center and went straight to the liquor store.
So I enrolled in Kaplan's on-site course, knowing that it was not going to provide me the personal attention I needed.
Their on-line database of quizzes, workshops, and practice questions though are AWESOME. And if you enroll, you can have access to them for awhile, as long as you call and ask for an extension.
So I did that, and got some help from my cousin here and there.
I was scoring 660 on practice tests by that point. And rarely did I ever put forth any real effort on the verbal section. One time I scored 80th percentile in Math, and I thought that absolutely best case scenario would be 700 on test day.
So I took it a 3rd time, and fell back into my old bad habits on the math section, and bombed it comletely. The last two times I let that effect how I did on the verbal section because I gave up, knowing math had gone awful. But this time I figured my only shot to make up for it on verbal, which I did: 84th percentile. Hey be quiet you Wharton dorks, it was sufficient for me. But yes, 48th% on quant. Very unfortunate since I figured after all this practice I should have easily been in the 60's.

Overall my score was (cue drumroll)
630...72%percentile. (end drumroll)
I almost want to take it again...but it feels good to put it behind me.

If I were to completely start over I think I would have gotten a tutor right away, signed up for kaplan right away, etc. It was a miserable experience and I never want to do it again. If nothing else, I really did improve my standardized test-taking ability.

Advice? Practice questions and most importantly, review them.
440-630 is a modest improvement I think. I probably got what I deserved but could have done better. Couldn't we all though?
I'll get into the schools I'm applying to probably. My background is French / English. I want to go to Puerto Rico and learn Spanish. Also applying to UB (where I live), and some tasty scholarships available there, as well as BYU (was hoping to get a high score and get in there, but we'll see. Maybe.)
Remember, nerds, its WHO you know, not WHAT you know.
But yeah you're right, some intelligence will get you far. I guess I'm thankful that in this day us dummies don't have to bag groceries bc we have Obama and unemployment. But yeah, I wish I had more smarts.

Anyway, seriously, thank you all for creating this online community; it was nice to have a place to come and be encouraged that it IS possible to improve.
And for anyone considering taking the test, do it. I avoided math my whole life, and I'm paying for it now. But I am enjoying learning and am looking forward to getting the MBA and making some serious money.

Good luck with your studies and if you want to buy any of my books, I accumulated many during the course of my study and would be glad to redistribute them.

Josh Pierce