Thanks Everyone! Done with GMAT today

Very rarely post on forums, but this one has been an amazing help. Just writing to thank everybody that has ever posted test answers or offered advice on this forum. People have been amazingly forthcoming and helpful, please keep up the great spirit of community here.

It's also great not having to worry about tenses and ambiguous references in sentences when I write. Past few days when reading papers have just been unconsciously scrutinising it for SC mistakes. I think that some people would understand how I feel.

Took the test today, got exactly my target score of 750, a little bittersweet. Any higher and would have been pretty happy, any lower, would have been slightly disappointed. Overall can't complain at all (and in fact, would be quite insensitive to do so). Obviously the test score could have been better (isn't that always the case?! Could also have been lower), but a higher score would probably not improve chances of B school by much, which is the larger end. GMAT is just a number to get out of the way, and BSchool is just one possible stop in life.

Prep-wise, I had very little time due to work, life and sheer lazing about. Spent about 12 hours (2 weekends) 2 months ago, and another 12 hours over the past few days.

Biggest take-away, especially for people who are good at Quant - stick to the game plan. Even though I had told myself nothing more than 4 minutes for any one question (after reading debriefs), I still spent a murderous 8 minutes on a question that I couldn't answer in the end and this was only halfway through the test! Had a brainlock.

Pride before fall. Managed to fly through the rest, but the last 5 questions were on the hard side, had insufficient time to get them. Made a few good 'blink' choices. Managed a 50 in Q in the end. Rationalise it this way - if the question is that hard and you're in the top band, it is probably an experimental question anyway.

Verbal did worse than expected and lower than usual. Haven't seen a detailed breakdown yet, (not sure if we will get one in the final posting) but I guess it would be mainly due to the SC component. Ah well. Good days and bad days.

Time management is an issue - you don't have to allot the same amount of time to every question. For me, I gave myself more leeway on my weak points of DS, Absolute value and SC questions, because I knew I would be able to make it up on the rest. This is a better way to target your own strengths and weaknesses and not stress about time per question. I think now that GMAT SC is really a different sort of English not quite spoken or written by normal people. Just follow the rules.

Prep - All said and done, I can only concur with the rest of the posters that the only worthwhile books were the Orange, Green and Purple books, along with the Manhattan SC, as well as GMATPrep software. The Verbal Bible is also quite handy. Everything else gives you marginal returns. In fact, why don't you just do them twice, so that you get the hang of the questions and the pattern recognition. Why would you want to waste time doing anything else if you haven't mastered the ACTUAL test questions? If you do nothing else, only do the three books. I only did about 1/3 of the questions in the three books for SC, DS and PS and gave the rest of the sections a miss. This is the main part of my strategy I would change - My sister's Kaplan book, the Manhattan CAT (did 1), the tough math problem question set, and the other books I flipped through at the book store, probably diminishing returns. Stick to the OG.

As you go along you should make up a summary sheet no longer than 10 lines long on what your most common mistakes or blind spots are. This is the only thing you should look at on the day. That said, I still failed to follow my own advice on the sets question that would have saved me a lot of grief above.

Prep wise I wasted a bit too much time trying to do the CAT simulations on Manhattan and GMATPrep. If you are short on time, just do the two GMATPreps and call it a day. No explanations and no question specificity make it purely a familiarisation tool and not a teaching aid. Takes way too long to get through. Besides, you already know how to use a computer. Just remember that you need to be strict on timing, which is the only other thing that CAT teaches you.

Testwise: Don't drink too much water - needing to pee short-circuits the brain, and you have no time to head to the rest-room.

A jam sandwich is pretty good in between the breaks. Watch the time.

Once again, thanks much guys.

Part 1 down, time for part 2.

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