Here goes my debrief for my preparation...Again, extremely long, but might be useful for some...Feel free to drop a comment here or shoot me a PM if you have any comments / questions...
My tryst with GMAT began in 2008. I decided to take the GMAT although I had no plans to apply to B-schools that year. I prepared for about 30 days when, out of the blue, I was offered an irresistible opportunity to lead a project in Chicago. So I was off to Chicago with all GMAT related thoughts left way back in India. Incidentally, in 2008 also I had taken my GMAT date as 16th September and I chose the same this year just to create a sense of nostalgia for myself!!
Study Material
I began my preparation this year in early July. Since I had researched a bit in 2008, I was not at a complete loss for a start. I was confident about Quants and knew that my focus had to be on Verbal since I am not a native English speaker. Considering the resources at hand and my focus areas, I decided to solve the below books -
1. Kaplan Premier
2. Kaplan Verbal
3. OG 12th Edition
4. Manhattan SC
5. Kaplan 800 / Kaplan Advanced
A quick word about all the books now -
Kaplan Premier - A very good book for people wanting to develop strategies for different types of questions. Although the quality of the book and the questions is good, I cannot say it was very helpful for me because it did not provide me with as many practice questions for Verbal as I would have liked.
Kaplan Verbal - An excellent resource for Verbal. I will certainly rate it on par with Manhattan SC.
OG 12th Edition - A must solve book for GMAT. It has plenty of good quality questions. However, I disagree with some opinions in other threads in which people have compared the level of difficulty of the tough GMAT questions to the last say 40 questions on the OG in each section. Those who have read my test-day debrief know that I got an extremely difficult Verbal section. Now if I compare this with OG, in the last 40 in RC I got only 4 wrong, in the last 40 of SC I got only 2 wrong and in the last 40 of CR I got only 1 wrong. Nevertheless, this book should not be missed by anyone preparing for the GMAT.
Manhattan SC - The best book for sentence correction without a doubt. A must read in my opinion.
Kaplan 800 / Kaplan Advanced - The trashiest of all books that I read. The structure of the book is poor and the quality of questions is definitely not up to the mark. I started this book with great hopes but was sorely disappointed. Quants especially was extremely silly. I would not advise anyone to read this book at all.
Apart from the above books, I also got the opportunity to read the books by Tata McGraw Hill, Princeton Review and Manhattan CR guide. The first two are a definite not-to-be-read while the third one is an average book. I was interested in reading the Power Score bible for CR but I couldn't get a hold of this book anywhere...
Study Plan
Well now this is an area where I really cannot share any worthwhile experience or give any advice because I never created a study plan. My job is a very time-intensive one. I used to get barely 1 to 2 hours a day to study. That too would not be daily. Weekends were similarly busy and I could only get a max of 3 hours over the entire weekend. Quite often there used to be a string of 4-5 days when I wouldn't have touched any study material at all. My only aim was to ensure that I did not lose touch with the GMAT altogether.
Test Plan
Now this is something that I think I did right and also a point where I hit a roadblock. I was initially planning to take the Kaplan CATs and the GMATPrep CATs. However things changed and I ended up taking the MGMAT CATs as well. First I will list all the scores and then elaborate on the issue I faced.
Kaplan 1 - 640 (After solving Kaplan Premier)
Kaplan 2 - 650 (After solving Kaplan Verbal)
GMATPrep 1 - 770 (After solving OG12)
Kaplan 3 - 680 (After solving Manhattan SC)
MGMAT 1 - 750 (3 weeks before GMAT)
MGMAT 2 - 740 (2 weeks before GMAT)
MGMAT 3 - 730 (2 weeks before GMAT)
MGMAT 4 - 780 (Weekend before GMAT)
GMATPrep 2 - 740 (Weekend before GMAT)
In all the above tests, the breakups were similar - Quants in the range of 49-51 and Verbal in the range of 41-46.
Now, the main problem with Kaplan CATs is that many of their questions repeat over from their study material. In my opinion, this is a very serious drawback because answering repeat questions in CATs falsely makes you believe that you have answered a question correctly. It could've been possible that had the question been an unknown one, you could've answered this one incorrectly, become more anxious and screwed up more questions to follow. The GMAT is as much about your ability to stay calm as it is about your quantitative or verbal abilities and Kaplan doesn't help in this aspect. The second major problem with Kaplan is that their scoring system is screwed up. It definitely gives a lower score for the same breakup of Quants and Verbal than the actual GMAT, GMATPrep or even the MGMAT. For people who think that getting lower scores in practice CATs is OK if they are finally pleasantly surprised by their GMAT score, Kaplan scoring will be fine. However, I am certainly not one of those people. I was really pissed on seeing the Kaplan scores although I was doing reasonably well in the tests.
The above reasons were primarily what drove me towards searching for alternative to Kaplan. Although it was only 3 weeks to my GMAT, I decided on investing the $70 to purchase the MGMAT CATs and their questions banks. The Manhattan question banks in my opinion are fairly simple. However they do give you good options to time them. Some of the questions are really good. The MGMAT CATs are of a very high quality. Now I have seen a lot of people complain about the level of difficulty of Quants in MGMAT CATs being unreasonably high. After giving the GMAT, I can safely say that yes, the level of difficulty of MGMAT Quants is slightly higher than that in GMAT, however it is far more accurate than Kaplan. The verbal sections on the MGMAT are however very lame and not at all representative of the type or difficulty of questions coming on the actual GMAT.
GMATPrep as expected turned out to be the most accurate indicator of the final score on GMAT. The overall feel of the test is identical to the actual GMAT and that helps further. The only bad part about these tests is that there are no explanations for answers. However most of them can be found on the BTG forums. That said, I would advise everyone to take the 2nd test two weeks before your actual GMAT to get a true picture of where you stand. This will also give you sufficient time to postpone the GMAT if you think you need some more prep time.
I also got a chance to solve a few Princeton, Barrons and Tata McGraw Hill CATs. Stay miles away from these if you are looking at scoring anything 700+.
Finally Beat The GMAT. Well, I never knew such a wonderful forum existed. Believe me, I was kicking myself for not having researched well enough and not having discovered this brilliant website earlier. I joined the website only a month before my GMAT. This was the time when I was researching alternatives to Kaplan. I tried to be as active as possible and came across wonderful questions and discussions which undoubtedly helped me a lot. One word of caution...If you are too active on BTG forums and solve all the questions on all forums, chances are very high that you will see repeat questions when solving CATs since those would have been discussed here. As I've said earlier, this should be avoided at all costs to truly ensure that the practice CAT is a close simulation of GMAT..
So finally, the takeaway points in my opinion are -
1. Know your weaknesses, accept them and be prepared to work towards them.
2. Have a decent study material set at hand to focus on your weaknesses.
3. Give lots of practice tests. Do not underestimate the stamina and concentration required for 3.5 hours. I can happily admit that I lacked this before. I would start getting very restless after about 2 hours. I could develop my concentration only after giving so many tests. The longer you have been out of school or college, the more this rule is applicable to you...
4. Have a realistic target. For this it is very helpful to have a fair idea of the schools that you will be applying to. Remember, the GMAT score is only one part of your application. If a 720 suffices, a 700 will also suffice for your app. In the practice CATs, if you are hitting the range of score that you want to achieve, don't stress yourself too much to go 20 or 40 points further.
5. Finally believe in yourself to achieve what you aim for. If you don't believe in yourself, no one will!
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