I just Beat The GMAT!

Verbal - 45 (98%)
Quant - 49 (87%)
Total - 760 (99%)

Studied for three weeks about three hours a day, five days a week (work in IBD, barely have time to sleep let alone study). I used Kaplan books and took one actual CAT after the first week and got a 710; did not take another full practice test before the exam. The two main takeaways from my studying experience for those on accelerated timeframes:

"¢ Most important - Take the diagnostic exam seriously before you start studying; you can save an enormous amount of time if you figure out what you need to work on before you start studying. Too many people just study everything and spend months rehashing topics that they are fairly strong in without devoting the proper attention to the ones in which they are lacking. Targeted studying is efficient studying.
"¢ If you are a native English speaker with fairly strong grammar / basic language proficiency, I would honestly not study verbal at all outside of familiarizing yourself with annoying technical things (e.g. who vs. whom usage)

If you have all the time in the world, then study to your heart's content; although, diminishing returns will occur pretty quickly and I firmly believe that if you study too much, you'll actually start experiencing negative returns at some point. I don't consider myself to be a genius at all. The last math class I took was BC Calc in high school and I was an Econ / Finance major at a strong liberal arts school in the Southeast.

Develop a plan, figure out what you need to study, and do it.

very interesting... wish i could have done what you did the first time around... great job though!

Native English speakers have an innate advantage on the verbal; 16 years of reinforcement through classwork and writing was my real preparation. As that is not very valuable advice for those who have learned English as a second language, my suggestions would depend on your individual strength with the language:

"¢ I believe SC is the most difficult for non-native English speakers as even for someone who has studied the language their whole life, some of the more difficult SC questions required me to reread the sentence and choices multiple times. Technical grammar and syntax knowledge is obviously key, but is difficult to reinforce in a short cram session. I was fortunately given a $1500 Kaplan full course (online teaching program + all books) for free through a friend who worked for Kaplan. Kaplan has some decent strategies for approaching SC based on certain patterns on which the GMAT often utilizes. Things like not ending a sentence with a preposition, making sure the verb matches a plural or singular subject, etc. are quick technical issues that can often be identified easily. It sounds simplistic, but as you answer more questions correct, the test often includes more and more subclauses that make identifying problems difficult.

"¢ RC is really dependent on your comfort with English. It is much more forgiving than SC if you are weak with technical syntax issues, but generally understand the language well. I think it is very difficult to prepare for RC on a macro level; that said, Kaplan enumerates a variety of strategies for identifying which paragraph / section will likely hold the answer to any given question type along with some other tips. Many of the questions follow a similar structure although they are based on completely different passages. I would review the strategies and practice quickly identifying the location of answers, but still I think it is very difficult to prepare for this. As the test went on, I found that answers that were clearly wrong disappeared, and it became a game of choosing which was best out of some very similar responses. Very difficult, but you do the best you can.

"¢ CR is somewhere between SC and RC in terms of knowing the technical aspects while maintaining strong general understanding of what is being said. There are definitely trends to these questions and strategies for approaching them. The GMAT tends to structure the answers to "what would most strengthen / weaken / etc" is a somewhat formulaic manner, but like everything else, as you progress in the exam, the distinction between right and wrong becomes increasingly blurred even to me.

I apologize for the long-winded and not very specific response, but it is difficult to prepare for the verbal. If I were going to tackle the verbal with a directed course of study, I would go SC > CR > RC in terms of priority. Understanding proper sentence structure and grammar will help with the critical reasoning, and the critical reasoning will better help with understanding what is being asked in the reading comprehension. Focus on the strategies listed in your study materials and memorize all of them before even doing a question. This will help you identify trends that can be reinforced as you practice questions. The GMAT can only ask the same type of question so many times (even if the passage / sentence is totally different), and being familiar with the issues the verbal GMAT often explores will be helpful.

I still think the online class is a waste of time at Kaplan as it goes way too slow and the time could be better spent studying on your own, but they do explain the strategies for verbal with some more context which may be helpful for some.

In terms of difficulty versus Kaplan verbal questions, I am not the best to ask since I really did not do many verbal practice questions. I found the GMAT to be more ambiguous (more than one answer often seemed equally correct) which could be interpreted as more difficult. I think the SC was easier than Kaplan, CR was about the same, but RC was substantially harder. My last RC question was so absurd I think it bordered on being almost unanswerable as the questions were incredibly vague and some of the answers very similar.