Surely all the best for the app season.

And yes, please tell us how you score a 45 on the verbal without prep! That's incredible.

It's not that I didn't prep for verbal at all, I did before the first attempt. Not nearly so much as the math because I don't need to. Before the second time around I practiced verbal a little bit, at most an hour or two in the three days before I took the test.

IMO almost no one can get a verbal score that high without some talent for dealing with English verbal reasoning the way the GMAT wants you to, the same way that I think almost no one can get a super high quant score without the same sort of talent for math. That said it's definitely possible to get a better than average score on either section even if it doesn't come naturally to you.

For CR I always read the question stem first to set my brain on the right path for what to look for while I'm reading, followed by the problem itself, then start eliminating answers.

For SC I read the sentence first and always look at answer choices vertically. You have to know which ways of putting the phrase together are wrong in the context of the sentence and then you can easily eliminate 2 or 3 answer choices quickly. I hate to admit I can do this often by what "sounds" right and wrong, but that's only because English is my first language and it comes naturally to me, so I've internalized a lot of the rules to the point where I don't have to think about it for more than a second or two. If this isn't true for you then you must drill the rules.

For RC I read the question stem of the first question before I start on the passage, then I read the entire passage. If it's a long or particularly difficult passage I'll make a paragraph map with short notes. If it's short or isn't too hard to understand I'll just read it once and answer the questions. If you're not good at RC, you should probably make a map every time. If I need to refer back briefly to the relevant part of a paragraph to answer the question I will, but if you ever have to read a big portion of the passage again it means you didn't understand it well enough the first time.

The reason I scheduled the GMAT again for today is because last weekend I got a 41 on the quant section (which is good for me) on a GMAT Prep practice test (not a repeat), but unfortunately test day stress tends to slow me down, which is murder for me on the quant section. Also it just feels to me like the quant section in GMAT prep is easier than the real GMAT, but I'm sure that's just my perception because I find that section so difficult. At this point I'd have to pay someone that is talented at it to drill the "right way" to do it into me through lengthy practice so that I do it the best way by rote, because the explanations in the back of the official guide don't do much at all to help me arrive at the best way to solve quant problems.