I just Beat The GMAT!

Just got back from the test center and feeling ecstatic. I went into the test fairly confident that I could get a 700 or 710...maybe even a 720...so it was a pleasant surprise seeing 730 on the computer monitor.

I definitely have to thank Eric and this forum. I am so glad that I discovered this forum very early into my studying (I studied 2 months). This forum has amazing resources and I used most of them. Eric's note cards (I used most of the Quant and SC cards) were priceless. I've always considered myself fairly good at math, but hadn't taken a single math course since HS AP Calculus (that was 4 years ago)... so my quant skills were a quite rusty as I started studying. Eric's notecards got me back on track faster than I could have done myself.

That said, I never really did get the hang of the sentence correction problems. I usually scored nearly perfect on reading comprehension and critical thinking, but would be lucky to get 2/3 of sentence correction problems correct.

I know this is already a long post, but for those who are interested I would like to share some tips that I learned.

-Getting easy quant problems does not mean that you screwed up earlier problems. Don't let it fluster you. I was never concerned about getting easy problems. Actually it made me happy since I knew how to answer them.

-Next, I took a totally different approach to timing. It seems that many people still feel that starting off a section well if crucial to a good score. I am not convinced of this. Instead, if you take too much time in the beginning you make timing an issue during the rest of the test and that added pressure can induce stupid mistakes, at least for me. Stupid mistakes were enemy number one for me over the last two months. After review old tests and practice sets I realized that I had many more stupid mistakes when I felt I was in a time crunch. So, my strategy on the GMAT, which I employed on my last GMATPrep as well, was to breeze through the first questions quite quickly, not double checking answers or working out data sufficiency problems (like one of Eric's note cards suggests for early problems). The result is having plenty of "pad" time to use on the tougher problems later on. For both quant and verbal at about half way through the sections I would have enough time for 2 minutes a question plus a few minutes to spare. This made me feel comfortable enough to stop looking at the clock and just work the problems. This strategy may not work for everyone but was definitely important for me.

Other study materials I used included the OG, Kaplan 800 (math section) and the Manhattan GMAT SC guide. In addition, I utilized the idiom spreadsheet posted by another member (this was also priceless) and the AWA guide on the wiki (I didn't study AWA until the night before however).

My practice test results were:
GMAT Prep 1: 680 (Q-42 V-41)
MGMAT 1: 660 (Q40, V40)
MGMAT 2: 650 (Q40 V39)
Free Princeton Review: 620 (Q39 V37)
GMAT Prep 1 again (HD crashed so I reinstalled): 700 (Q44 V41)
MGMAT 3: 690 (Q45 V39)
GMAT Prep 2: 700 (Q47 V38)
GMAT: 730 (Q48 V41)

MGMAT tests are much harder than GMAT Prep and the real GMAT but if you can learn to understand the questions you will be well prepared for the GMAT since they test exactly the same concepts. In fact, I saw a PS question on the test today that I got wrong on a MGMAT test. It was a permutation problem worded in a way I never saw in the OG material, but was nearly identical to an MGMAT question. I felt fortunate that I remembered how to solve it.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone on this forum. It was a great help.
I am an undergrad planning to apply to MBA programs w/o full time work experience...similar to Jelt...so I will update everyone in the admissions success stories if I make it through the admissions process.