I just came back home, shared the news with my wife, had lunch and now I am typing this in my laptop.

This is my first post here. This forum has been an intergral part of my prep, the single most important web resource for me. My hearfelt thanks to everyone... (groping for more words here)

Yes, I am happy with my score. I am generally not good at scoring in tests(though I do not consider myself as a bad student! ).
This is my highest including all practice. Little bit dissapointed with my quant score but thrilled to bits on my verbal. (I have never crossed 38 in any test all through my prep.)

I found the Quant section very very tough. Generally I am on top in the quant section in terms of timing. Even scoring(percentile wise) has always been better than verbal. But today I was very uncomfortable, gasping for breath... I was always 4-5 mins behind after question 10. Luckily, got some dollies around 28-32 which helped me come back on par. After quant I was more or less reconciled to 600s and a (possible) retake.

I felt verbal was easy, relatively. Easier that the Gmatprep tests. So at the back of my mind I was thinking that, perhaps, I am making too many mistakes. Also got a couple of scares during this section. Firstly, around question 15 the system went blank apparently due to power failure. They had to manually switch on backup and the admin came, rebooted the m/c and assured me that the test will start from where I had left. It did. I had never read about this eventuality so was unprepared. (I am surprised that GMAC gives accredition to centres withouth UPS.) The second scare came at around Q25. Loud banging followed by the sound of a drilling machine started and persisted. I waved and waved at the camera but nobody came. Lost a few seconds but somehow pulled myself into the test. Even after all these distractions I finished well. I had 5 mins for the last question.

I have nothing new to say about prep that has not been said already. Track performace, excel sheets, timing, identify weakness, learn to cut your losses, do AWA during tests etc..etc..
I used PR, Kaplan and OG and OG and more OG. (the release of OG12 gave me a scare late in my prep, but I decided not to buy).

My scores: (in order, latest first)

GmatPrep 730 (50,38) 1 week before test.
GmatPrep 710 (failed to note down) 2 weeks before test.
PR CAT 3 610 (43,31)
PR CAT 2 650 (50,31)
KAP CAT 1 600 (39,33)
PR CAT 1 600 (40,33)

If anything it was very clear that my verbal needed drastic improvement. So the last 20 days I focussed exclusively on verbal. Particularly SC. May be this explains the percieved difficulty in quant today.

This was my first attempt. I spent about 2 months in preparation. 1-2 hrs per day. weekend tests. I should mention that I had done some prep earlier but I had to re-schedule due to inadequate prep...

thats it for now. feeling sleepy. will be happy to continue being a part of this forum...

later..