I just Beat The GMAT!

I took the GMAT on saturday. scored 690 (Q49, V 35)

I had all kinds of materials that I downloaded from scouring the internet. But the time frame was short. I had a month to prepare. After the exam, I feel that the OG is sufficient by itself and people need not invest in any other books. Also, a good grammar book and a good quant fundamentals book/donwloaded notes is sufficient. THe sad part was I did not even finish even 40% of the questions in any of the sections from the OG!ANd i started from the first Q. As everyone already says, the last few are the tough ones. So anyone doing all the questions from OG and most importantly reviewing and understanding one's mistakes is MOST critical. I failed to do that..
In the exam, the first 3 Q's in math were soo easy..and then the dificult ones began to arrive. I spent 28 mins on the first 10 Q's..and when I realised that I was on the 15th question and had only 35 mins, i FREAKED out big time!!! i started messsing questions that i knew. ANd then I saw a level 1 question. X no, increased by 20%.what is the final value. I was stunned! I presumed that I was doing so badly, that the exam was giving me a level 1 Q. I gave up hope and just went thro the rest of the section with a heavy heart. In the break, I tried to tell myself that I could not have done so bad, but it dint help! the only commentary in my head was how could I have got such a simple Q..
The Verbal section started with SC's. But I knew it was over for me. I was mentally thinking about when I should schedule my next exam and what steps I needed to do to do well on the next exam. I had 30 mins left and 5 Q's to go. I completed the exam and was soo ready to come home and schedule my next exam, when I saw 690.
The takeaway is :PLEASE DO NOT TRY TO JUDGE YOUR PERFORMANCE BASED ON THE DIFFICULTY LEVEL OF THE QUESTION!!!!! THATS NOT YOUR JOB. DO THE EXAM WITH A UN BIASED MIND, FREE OF ANY NEGATIVE FEELINGS.
I am not totally happy nor am I sad...But I again insist, please do not make the mistake I made!! Dont let the your feelings decide the direction of the exam.
Good Luck!

Congrats!

Question: I am actually focusing my prep exclusively on OG11 and OG11-review and planning to go thru GMATprep as a mock test (several times). Could you briefly compare what you seen in the Q section during your official exam vs the Q section in the OG11? It would be of big help for me.
Thank you, and once again, congratulations.

Thx GMATCHPOINT.

I feel the actual GMAT was on par with the OG. Although, I used the OG 10, but I did go to Barnes and Nobles and go through the SC from the OG - Verbal purple book. I think the Green OG MAth is good for Data sufficiency.
Frankly, the lower level questions were really easy. It was the 800 level questions that required time, they were not tricky as such!just lengthy ones and thats what I was stuck on.
In Verbal section, the passages were easier than the ones i had seen in OG. Did not get any on socialism etc. My personal weak areas are the RC and the CR, so I knew that would pull me down.
I still stand by what I said before, do OG thoroghly, but make it a point to understand ur mistakes. In the initial stages of your prep, if you do half hour worth of Q's, spend half hour on reviewing mistakes. Note down the topics of the mistakes for example : Absolute values: made a mistake by not considering negative value or SC: need ot revise the idioms. And everyday spend a few minutes just reviewing your errors.
Good luck. let me know if you have any Q's. will be glad to help!

GG04,
What concerns me is that I am still struggling with pacing. On Q, I was able to improve after training hard, but after a couple of weeks of training it seems the best I can do is 31-33 questions having to guess the remaining 4-6 questions.

What strategy would you recommend regarding timing/pacing? From your post, apparently due to the fact that you spent more time on the first 10 questions, you were able to lift your score even thought you ran out of time in the end of the Q section. The relationship time versus number-of-questions-done still very confusing to me.

Cheers!