My GMAT journey started on the 4th August with some questions from the Official Guide. I had some planned holidays from 9th to 23rd August so I decided that in those 5 days it was a good idea to start getting into the mood of GMAT.
When I come back I started studying in a "proper way" with Gmat Ninja playlist, Gmat club videos/lives and Gmat club questions.
After a week I tried my first mock and I got 675; a great result but with bad quant.
So I kept focussing on Quant primarly with mocks varying from 645 (time panic for a strategy change) to 695.
I booked the official exam for the 1st October, tried it and... 575; my world fell apart and I couldn't find the reason for such a low result for my standards. I decided to take some days for myself to reflect on what to do, considering that deadlines were approaching and I decided to change the order from DI (my best section so far)/Quant/Verbal to Quant/DI/Verbal---> I felt like that given the pressure for the exam it was better to start with a section with "less reasoning".
That's basically what I changed and I could jump from 575 to today result of 695 and I still cannot explain the reason for that 575...
*Section Analysis*
QUANT: the section where you can improve the most, by far, in my opinion. There are a lot of free useful resources and if you want to pay (I didn't, just basing my comment on free trial), I think that TTP is a great one. I cannot thank enough Aditya Kumar for his live playlist on Youtube channel of GmatClub--> incredibile value
I also watched every video from the playlist of Gmat Ninja--> they can help for learning something from every topic
DI: I heard this is the most hated section (and avg proves it), but actually, coming from a business major, it didn't feel that hard for me and I didn't study anything particular. Just a lot of practice with question banks of Gmat Club
Verbal: My worst section (25th percentile on my first official exam); not being a native english speaker, it always felt like a 50/50 for me in like 40/50% of questions, so my scores vary a lot (the worst one when it counted...)
I tried some gmat club youtube lives and a lot of questions from question bank, but I did not feel a big improvement.
*Final consideration+today exam*
How I was feeling? Worse than on my first try. Back on 1st October I wasn't feeling the pressure, I would have never thought scoring under 635 (and I did 60 points less), so today I was feeling the pressure and fear of failure. But when the exam started, I was locked in. Spent more time than usual on some easy quant (and realized that I missed one exactly 10 seconds after the timer was over... a little regret) and I wasn't really confident with DI either.
Time for the break. How I was feeling? Worse, again, my 2 best sections were done and I wasn't feeling that great (I don't know why, I still don't know the exact score but they should be around 84 and 83) but I was still confident I could do something good with verbal (even though I don't like it at all), so I ate a banana, a couple of sweets and drunk a coke.
Back to verbal, usual feelings, but when I clicked "complete review", 695 appeared and I could barely hold my tears.
Again, I'd like to thank all the Gmat Club team, for the platform and for youtube videos (again, big props to Aditya Kumar, best quant teacher ever)