My journey started about 3 months back. I have been thinking about taking the exam for long but work and family pressures did not allow me much time. Then this summer I decided it is now or never. I knew I want to apply only to 1-year programs. I think, IMD and INSEAD are the only ones I would consider. I am from a very competitive pool of applicants(IT/Indian), so I was targeting 750+ to be sure.
I started with downloading GMAT Prep and took the first test. I scored 670. Don't remember the break-up. It reconfirmed what I already knew. I was good in quant but SC was killing me. Then I bought Official Guide and ran through it without knowing how to use it. That was a mistake. I found most of the quant very simple and did not realize that it was the last 50 questions which one should concentrate on. Similarly for verbal, I did not realize that I have to look for GMAT standard formats and concepts which are tested. Then I found this forum and it was a tremendous help in guiding me.
I also bought Kaplan GMAT guide. I found the tests very hard. I decided not to take these tests very close to my exam date. It can really be discouraging. I also did about 800 questions from 1000 SC. I helped me improve my SC. Another thing which helped me here was the Manhattan sentence correction guide. It is really good source for preparing SC. I did not prepare much for RC because I am an avid reader and read on varied subjects. So, it was not much of a problem. I was not good at CR at the start, but going through OG and Kaplan helped in this.
Test Scores:
Kaplan test 1- 640
Kaplan Test 2 - 560
Kaplan Test 3 - 640
Kaplan Test 4 - 610
In the last test, I got a message that the questions left are not enough to accurately assess the score. So, I lost interest.
Manhattan Free Test- 700(Q47, V39)
Manhattan 1- 720(Q47, V41)
Manhattan 2- 680(Q47,V36)
Manhattan 3- 720(Q47,V42)
Manhattan 4 - 710(Q48, V38)
Manhattan 5 - 730(Q 48, V41)
Manhattan 6 - 730(Q 50, V 40)
Princeton Free Test - 710
I found Manhattan test a good representation of the actual test.
GMAT Prep 1- 670
GMAT Prep 2-730(Q50, V40)
GMAT Prep 1(second time)- 740(Q48,V44)
GMAT Prep 2(second time)- 760(Q50,V42)
Exam Experience:
I reached the examination centre well in time and was surprised that I was the only one to take the exam that day. It took me some time to settle down and when I started I found that the keyboard was QWERTY. I live in Europe and I am used to AZERTY keyboard. Anyway, I started my argument essay and found that I always typed Q instead of A. Luckily, I had some time to correct my mistakes. But just as I was to submit the essay, there was an error and computer shut down. I reported the incident. When the system was started again, the test started from the same point. I hope I was fine. After the second essay, I took a break. The quant section was very much like the OG questions. I got stuck on one questions for some time but was able to make up for it. Beware that you time your test in a god way; It is good to check the progress every 20 minutes. Keep in mind that time shown is the time left. That means when clock shows 20 and you are on 31st question, that means you have 20 minutes to do 7 questions. I know it is obvious but you can easily be confused sometimes.
Verbal was also very similar to OG. But SC was again the problem for me. I knew I made a few mistakes there. When the score came up, I was a bit disappointed. But I do not plan to take the exam again. I hope it will be enough for my target schools.