Don't give up! I believe cara susanna was in a quite similar situation last year, retook the GRE in early fall, got a much improved score, some interviews, and an acceptance! 🙂 Search for her threads and GRE-related posts.
Aww, when you put it that way it sounds so *inspirational*. Haha.
Yes, I do consider myself the queen of hating the quant section. I totally feel your pain; I cried for two days after my first GRE (though my quant score was higher than yours, I will admit). It didn't help that my brother had gotten an 800 quant without even studying, ugh. Anyway, let me list the steps that I took.
When I started studying for the GRE, I couldn't even make it through the quant section on the diagnostic practice test I took. My first practice score for quant was a 350, not much higher than yours.
I bought the Kaplan Math workbook and worked my way through it. I'd started doing this my sophomore year so I had a lot of time, and I kind of just did a little at a time. After I finished, my score had gone up to a 500. I was thrilled!
Of course, if you know clinical programs, you know the mantra: 600 or bust. So though at first that 500 seemed amazing to me, like my dreams had come true, I knew I had to raise it. One of my profs advised just taking practice tests, so for a while all I did was take practice tests and then go through the answers later and figure out what I'd done wrong. The flaw in this plan is that even computer adaptive tests will start to repeat themselves if you take the same ones over and over. Still, aside from two happy happy Kaplan tests where I scored above 600 somehow, I kept scoring in the 500s. These were frustrating times; after each practice test I would go cry and wonder how stupid I was that I couldn't even get a good score on a section everyone said was so easy. Eventually it got to the point where my mom forbade me to take any more practice tests for a while.
😉 I decided to take a Kaplan course that was two hours away and stay with my brother who lived in that area, but on the week of the weekend it was supposed to occur (about a week before my real GRE was scheduled?) I got the flu. When I called to cancel, I found out the course had been cancelled, anyway. Thanks for telling me, guys.
Well, I got to the real test and not only was my quant in the 500s, my verbal was too! Verbal I had consistently been scoring in the 600s on Kaplan. I have a theory about why my verbal was lower but I won't bore you with it. So, I did break 1100, but again, you know clinical programs. I needed a 1200 at least.
Back to studying for me. I got desperate. I bought more prep books and worked through them. I considered contacting my high school math teacher and ask him to pinpoint my weaknesses. I bought a high school geometry textbook like some people recommend. I bought some software from an Indian company that claimed to be able to raise your score 200 points or so. And, then, finally, I decided to get tutoring. I know not everyone can afford that, but I really needed it--studying on my own was just not working. And, I mean, this was my future here. So, I forked over absurd amounts of money and got online tutoring through PR.
With tutoring, I started scoring above 600s on my practice tests, and my tutor said he thought I could even hit 700 or higher. Of course, when I took the real thing, it was only 580. But my verbal had improved a lot (my tutor had worked on verbal with me even though it had been my strong area, learning how to approach those analogies really helped!) So, combined it was over 1200. I was like "okay, good enough."
Next what I did was go through the Graduate Study in Psych book and find clinical programs with no GRE cutoffs, or cutoffs that I made. They do exist. However, 2/3rds of the interviews I eventually got were at schools that claimed to cutoff at a percentage that I would not have made, so I can't really explain that.
Sorry for this tl;dr post, I just wanted to say that you're not alone and it is possible to raise your score to the point where you're competitive even if you're totally failtastic at math like I am (not that I'm saying you are, of course).
Edit: Arya, I had no idea you got into a program with an 1100! Brava
😀 And it's cool that tutoring also benefitted you as well.
) but maybe I can find someone within the math department that will help me 
