How important is it to master Quadratics?

[jackson.b.allan]

If you are targeting 700+ (or min 80th percentile on quant), how crucial is it to master quadratics? They do seem to be rearing their head in other questions, where you break down a word problem or geometry problem, only to end up with a quadratic to solve to get the final answer.

I'm struggling with Quadratics at around 40% accuracy, and no consistency across difficulty levels. How important is it to nail down this area, in the grand scheme of the test?

[RonPurewal]

Anything that's a core topic in Algebra I (as taught in a U.S. high school) is going to be expected of you.

Also, in general, it's best not to think of algebra and arithmetic as "topic areas". Those are more like "languages" in which the problems are written, so, yes, they may appear in problems about basically any topic.
(Important distinction, because GMAC generally doesn't write problems that cross topic-area boundaries.)