dear community,

first of all thanks a lot for all your endless posts and help. even though I have not really been active on this forum I've been reading a lot of posts for my prep and now it is time to give something back.

thanks to your help I managed to score 710 (q:47, v:40) and 6.0 on the AWA with around 15 days of study, 6h a day. much has been said about study strategies so I will focus only on the stuff that I didn't know or expect before the exam:

1) Living in Austria, I am used to the German keybord which swaps "Z" and "Y" compared to the US standard keybord. Fortunately I am also used to the other format but for people who are not used to the English keybord, start practicing early for the exam as it is a pain in the a... if you keep hitting z instead of y for your essays.

2) I arrived early in the test center and was allowed to take my test the time I arrived. I didn't know that and was surprised that I could start immediately. It might help though, if you have a tight schedule on test day.

3) Maybe a weird thought but I managed to highly praise Stanford University in my Issue essay and Standford is one of my target unis. I have no clue whether that will help me or not but give it a thought....

Finally, don't be scared and don't panic if a few questions seem to be too tough on the actual gmat, take every questions as if nothing happened and you'll be as good as gold!


Good luck to you all and thanks a lot again for all the support!

Chris