People told me not to obsess over GMAT as a 700 is good enough. Well I scored a 700 (49 Quant, 35 Verbal) (90 percentile) in end of 2009 and applied to all colleges of my choice-- only to be waitlisted and eventually dinged. I thought my goals are not crystal clear (though they were well framed as I did have one good consulting company take a look and assure the applications looked good!). So next year, as a re-applicant, I had better goals, amazing career progress with a 50% salary raise in that year, got interviews from 5 out of 6 colleges I applied to!! Great statistics but not a single conversion till now. I seriously started doubting my profile but no one found any issue, then the Adcom came to rescue. One of the colleges where I am waitlisted, told me that they expect higher scores from east indian pool! 700 with 35 Verbal is not making their cut-off, atleast 80 percentile in each section. So I booked my GMAT date on Feb 1 for the earliest available as Feb 26th. I knew it was going to be hard as it was in earlier preparation. I should mention the first time around I enrolled in one of the renowned 99 percentile classroom courses and found the instructor was just a consultant and had no passion to teach, so I ended up working very hard last time.

This time, I knew hard work will not make the cut in this short time, so had to be smart work! I took the GMAT Prep-1 and landed at 700 again! My Achilles heel was verbal, so I focussed on it. I figured out if I just take interest in every RC I am reading, it will make the reading a bit longer but the end results great as I never had to go back and look at the passage. I tried doing that to amazing accuracy! CR again was being attentive and not thinking a lot of things together, I think people from engineering background have logic and logical diagrams easy to them! So once I knew these two were conquerable, I saw ahead my biggest enemy from my first GMAT-- sentence correction. This was the single type of question which blew away my confidence and always drove my scores down! So I read a lot of comments and suggestions on beat the gmat and from one of them which pointed to very less preparation, figured out that Aristotle was a good source of information. I went through the Manhattan GMAT SC guide, which I still have, last time but was more confused as there were so many questions to do and I got stuck in doing them, never actually finishing the book. So I did not pick it up again, instead just marched my way through the Aristotle book which I printed and made sure I went through each page, understanding and doing the questions. As I went deeper in the book, I started pin-pointing the error immediately as the book told. I did the first 3 chapters (phewwww only 3, not 26!!) and left the practise material in chapter 4 as I only wanted to practice with real GMAT questions.

Now I had verbal under control, I revised all math fundamentals from the GMAT prep material and beat the GMAT flashcards (believe me they were awesome, especially the probability ones!). Once these two done, I took the Manhattan GMAT test 5 and 6 for 690 and 720. Analyzing the answers and why I was wrong was the ONLY thing which really helped my accuracy. So my 25 days or preparation looked like this:

Feb 1- Feb 12: Verbal Focus with 2 tests (1 GMAT Prep-700 and 1 Manhattan GMAT-680)
Feb 12- Feb 19: Quant Focus and intense test analysis (1 Manhattan GMAT-690, 1 free Kaplan test-680 and 1 GMAT Prep-1 again-750)
Feb 20- Feb 25: Only test and analysis (GMAT Prep-2 twice-720,750 and one old Powerprep -640 ) and all 700+ SC, Quant and CR practise questions from gmatfix.com (I think if I found this site earlier, I could have scored a perfect 800, this is so good, something which the GMAC team should have given. This site is ONLY previous test questions, with proper explanations and different methods, I improved my SC and CR accuracy immensely-by the way, I started avoiding paper books as I knew the paper performance differs from electronic performance so I avoided OG. GMATfix (I just found out about them somedays back) had all OG questions, with awesome drills for different levels you can set them to. I avoided lower range math problems and CR too. SC I went from 700+ and then 600-700 range and this gave me enough confidence to actually aspire for 780 and more!)

I took a hotel room next to the center as I moved in new to Minneapolis and not used to driving in snow, so cut down on any anxiety during morning. During the exam, I followed the chineseburned's AWA format (hoping I will get a 5.5+ there), and then moved to take a break, an energy bar and back to math. Quantitative section, at one time, seemed to me that I will be perfect score, as even facing the toughest problem, I relaxed, refocussed and actually got to the root of what was needed. Alas I ran out of time and had to literally guess last 6 questions in 2 minutes. This makes me think if I can time my GMAT right, I can take my Quant Score to 51 very easily.

Once quant was done, and scaringly with time running out, I took the break, moved out and washed my face. Ate another energy bar, calmed myself by talking to myself and convincing that even if Quant is in lower 40s, I have already convinced colleges about my quant ability, its the verbal portion where I need to showcase my brilliance. With this attitude, I started my verbal part and seriously, I was glad to have done only official questions unlike the last time. The questions seemed familiar!! For the first time I was happy during GMAT! I answered first 2 SC and came with an easy CR, followed by an easy RC!! I loved my experience in verbal and knew I will outperform my last time.

740 was good, but now I am thinking if I have the time and the material and techniques I have acquired, should I retake it to improve my score to the coveted 99 percentile? I have talked to my business school friends and they always emphasize that how important GMAT score is for companies which come for recruitment too. As I am sure to increase my Quant Score, I am thinking. What do you folks say?

Other thoughts: I realized GMAT is not very difficult if you use the right material and dedicate enough time (I was working full-time and only devoting my evenings for the study). I changed my body clock as I got the appointment at 8AM to start going to bed at 11 and waking up at 6, this further cut my study hours in the night. I think being at your peak attention during the test is very important and training your mind and body helps. I had 25 days to do this and felt sluggish initially, but after 2 weeks, started getting up without the alarm! I also feel (and only my views) that the old powerprep test was tougher in verbal. Do let me know any other questions anyone would have. I am still thinking whether GMAT again or not......

Need to add-- While accessing questions in tests, the best explanations I found were at manhattan GMAT forums!! Those folks rock!! Their books--- I bought one more to get the 6 tests and loved the CR one this time!! So if you have time and want to prepare from the scratch, I cannot advise anything else but Manhattan GMAT books...and I loved their one sample class I attended.