Thank you all for your help and advice.
The biggest pieces that I can pass on from my own experience are the following:
Preparation:
1. The best practice tests were the mba.com practice tests. They gave the exact experience and very similar question types. Those tests most closely mirrored the test experience I had. That is not to say that you should not take as many practice tests as your brain can handle, but remember that the feel you get from these are what you should expect.
2. Start early in preparation. I took 45 days to prep. The bulk was just reading at the beginning. I read the whole Kaplan book. Then I took 10+ practice tests and used this site and another to supplement my studying. But you need time to pace yourself and to learn the techniques that will help you beat the GMAT.
During the test:
3. Don't flip when you feel that you are getting your butt kicked. Remember the fact that if you are getting questions that seem ridiculously hard, then you are doing well. Find your way back to the balance between time and precision that you found in taking all those practice tests and relax. If you look at a problem that is not in the first 10 and your brain may explode... eliminate 1-2 choices then guess and move on.
Anyway, thanks again to all that helped me. Be encouraged, I found the actual experience of the test easier than many of my practice tests. I scored 30 points higher on the actual test than I did on any practice test. So there was some luck for sure, but also I was not stressed. See a movie before hand. I saw Wall-E and the movie ended about 40 minutes before I was in the room taking the test. Do what you need to do to relax, then kick butt.
The biggest pieces that I can pass on from my own experience are the following:
Preparation:
1. The best practice tests were the mba.com practice tests. They gave the exact experience and very similar question types. Those tests most closely mirrored the test experience I had. That is not to say that you should not take as many practice tests as your brain can handle, but remember that the feel you get from these are what you should expect.
2. Start early in preparation. I took 45 days to prep. The bulk was just reading at the beginning. I read the whole Kaplan book. Then I took 10+ practice tests and used this site and another to supplement my studying. But you need time to pace yourself and to learn the techniques that will help you beat the GMAT.
During the test:
3. Don't flip when you feel that you are getting your butt kicked. Remember the fact that if you are getting questions that seem ridiculously hard, then you are doing well. Find your way back to the balance between time and precision that you found in taking all those practice tests and relax. If you look at a problem that is not in the first 10 and your brain may explode... eliminate 1-2 choices then guess and move on.
Anyway, thanks again to all that helped me. Be encouraged, I found the actual experience of the test easier than many of my practice tests. I scored 30 points higher on the actual test than I did on any practice test. So there was some luck for sure, but also I was not stressed. See a movie before hand. I saw Wall-E and the movie ended about 40 minutes before I was in the room taking the test. Do what you need to do to relax, then kick butt.
