Don't give up...

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone at GMAT Club before I tell my story. This forum has made all the difference in turning my score around!

My background-

28 years old
Political Economy Major
3+ years work experience as an investment analyst at a Fortune 500
3.1 GPA from a reputable private university

I am a New Orleanian and made a tremendous error in judgement by taking the GMAT three times closely after the hurricane. Needless to say my mind was not in the right place. I took these exams in three different cities over the course of 3 months with the following results.

580 (30Q, 40V)
580 (36Q, 33V)
570 (32Q, 35V) *w/ a 6.0 AWA

I was at an utter loss. My future was completely up in the air and
b-school was no longer looking like a realistic possibility. So, I decided to make one last ditch effort to tackle the GMAT. After doing extensive online research I stumbled across GMAT club. The posts were incredibly informative and upon the advice of other users I purchased the following study materials:

KAPLAN 2006 - to get my feet wet with the material
KAPLAN 800
Manhattan GMAT - Sentence Correction, Geometry, Number Properties,
Word translations
Official Guide 11th ed. and Official Quant guide


I created a spreadsheet to track all of my work over the course of a 3 month period. My schedule consisted of working through the Manahttan and Kaplan books, practicing questions (timed is key!) from the OG, creating an extensive set of note cards drilling key concepts, and taking a practice test each weekend. My opinion is that GMATprep tests are hands down the closest representation of the actual test, but using tests from other sources still trains you to deal with the material in a meaningful way.

Practice Test Scores:

GMATprep 1 - 650
Kaplan 1 - 550
Manhattan 1 - 580
Kaplan 2 - 580
Manhattan 2 - 640
GMATprep 2 - 710

I felt confident and promised myself that I would learn from my past mistakes and do a better job of managing the clock. Well, I took the GMAT this morning and was blown away. I scored a 730!!!!!!!

My first thought, after deciding not to streak through the Pearson facility, was that it was a scoring error. Alas, it was not...I beat the GMAT!
I am so grateful to everyone in this community for their support.

Breakdown:

Total 730 97%
Quant 49 90%
Verbal 41 91%

Take Aways:

-manage your time well...don't let the test throw you off
-notecards are a wonderful way to drill key Q&V concepts
-practice tests are a key to gauge improvement
-don't worry about getting your practice questions right focus on mastering the concepts the GMAT likes to test
-track your progress
-put in the work...unless you are a natural standardized test taker mastering the GMAT takes a lot of hard work
-cut down on stupid mistakes (the post on this subject is excellent)

Good luck to all.