I just Beat The GMAT!

To all people who manage this site, thanks a lot, finally i managed to score 740.

I have not posted many questions on this forum but have read almost every post in every section.

I had asked a question on whether i should delay my exam date from 08/08/08 and prasanna suggested i should, that was the perfect advice, i am sure i wouldn't have crossed 700 mark then.

Looking back, i believe, unless you hit or exceed you target score on GMAT Prep, you are better off delaying the exam, or you should keep your expectations accordingly.

Books i used:
Kaplan 2008
OG [all three]
Princeton
Manhattan GMAT

Manhattan GMAT is the key to SC. It is a must buy. SC was my weakness and after this book, it transformed into my strength.

Kaplan was the first book i bought and thought was pretty good. It helped me understand GMAT and gave me general idea on what questions i can expect.
Section i would recommend from this book is critical reasoning.

OGs are no doubt the best books to use. Questions given in this book give you the best idea of the difficulty level you can expect in the exam. The questions i faced in the actual exam were no difficult than the ones given in this book. Just remember, if you need to work on basics, buy other books, these books will just give you questions and minimal theory.

I bought princeton only because i was getting tired of repeating the previous books, I believe I did each book twice and verbal section, thrice. AWA templates mentioned in the book were quiet useful. However, questions in this book are easier than actual.


Tests:
GMAT Prep I: 680
GMAT Prep II: 650
GMAT Prep I: 660
GMAT Prep II: 750

Powerprep I:680
Powerprep II:670
Powerprep I:740

Manhattan I:630
Manhattan II:650

Kaplan: I gave 8 of these, scored 600 is one and that was the highest, rest all were between 550 and 590.

The only two seven hundreds were a week before the actual exam and that gave me immense confidence. Reason i put these not so nice scores i had was that no one should be disappointed by the results of any tests. Just remember only GMAT Prep results are close to actuals, rest everything varies.

There are plenty of very very good strategies mentioned on this forum and all of them actually work. You can get detailed answers to almost all questions from OG and GMAT Prep tests, just use "search"

Just one thing i realized a little later was importance of logging. Log all your errors. If you do OG, make sure you keep your answer sheets so that you can refer to mistakes you made. Do OG again and see if you are still making the same mistakes, if you are, read that topic in detail. Likewise for tests, log all your test errors, not just at a high level but in detail like in SC, break it down to SV agreement, parallelism or comparisions.

Great work Thanks for the informative post.

AMAZING SCORE !! Congrats dude .....

46V is awesome anymore tips for Verbal ? And one more thing... How were the Q and V questions in the real GMAT compared to OGs and GMATPrep ?

Thanks

Congratulations! Great score!

I am taking the test tomorrow and am very nervous that my final score will differ from my GMATPrep scores.

Did you feel the real thing was similar to GMATPrep?

great score !

Thanks.
GMAT Prep quant is a shade easier than actual, but difference is really not all that big. [Thats just my opinion.]
I scored 48 in GMAT Prep tests and 46 in actual. I didn't have to spend much time on calculations. Once you get started, calculations were pretty simple. They are actually focussed on application of concepts not really on calculations.

On Verbal, i was comfortable with SC and CR but not really RC. In fact i gave up on RC and finally prepared a plan to attack SC and CR. I realized there were going to be 3-4 RCs, i can crack the small ones and will hit 50% on the lenghty RCs, so i am better off making sure that i don't lose any points in SC and CR.

I found verbal very easy. In fact, it was perhaps the easiest than any mock test that i gave and as it turned out, 46 is the highest i have ever scored in verbal.

Going into verbal section, i was pretty fresh, confident, had some fruits in the break, chatted with the pretty exam co-ordinator and went into verbal knowing that i need to score 40+ to have any chance of breaking 700 barrier.

I believe stamina is a factor. All the tests i gave, all were timed, I wrote AWA in each of those tests.