GMAT Strategy

I recently realized that since I'm getting older (recently turned 29), this is probably my last chance to go get an MBA before my wife and I start a family. Signing up for a GMAT prep class and the exam is my way of forcing me to make a decision about it once and for all. Having not taken an admission exam since the SAT's in high school (which I aced), this has been a humbling and nerve wrecking experience. I have taken many CATs for professional certification purposes over the last few years so I do understand the demoralizing nature of those exams. With that said, here's what my prep has looked like so far over the last 7 weeks or so.

I signed up for the Princeton Review prep course because it's offered through my employer in mid-March. Since then, I've used exclusively the Princeton Review: Cracking the GMAT manual, OG 12, Princeton review's online resources, and GMATPrep/PowerPrep. I only did the AWAs for the Princeton Review CATs since they're graded. I'm definitely not worried about those since I have a strong writing background.

3/15 PR CAT #1: 640 (V39/Q39) AWA 4/4

4/3 PR CAT #2: 610 (V33/Q42) AWA 5/6 - This one was particularly demoralizing since I thought I had learned a lot from the two weeks of class.

4/11 PR CAT #3: 690 (V41/Q44) AWA 5/3

4/17 GMATPrep CAT #1: 710 (V39/Q48)

4/26 PR CAT #4: 670 (V40/Q43) AWA 5/6

5/1 GMATPrep CAT #2: 720 (V40/Q48)

5/2 PowerPrep CAT #1: 710 (V41/Q47)

5/8 PR CAT #5: 640 (V39/Q39) AWA 6/6 - While this score was pretty low, it actually gave me some good confidence. I took this at the library with tons of distractions (kids playing video games next to me, people giggling while watching videos, no bathroom breaks, and a buggy wifi connection). I was literally shaking with frustration while trying to plug my ears with my hands. I figure my worst case scenario will give me this level of scoring.

5/9 PowerPrep CAT #2: 730 (I think V39/Q50) - This one was a piece of cake. While my wife distracted me on the verbal section forcing me to guess on the last 10 or so due to time constraints, the quant portion was really confidence inspiring and I knocked it out with tons of time to spare.

I typically run out of time on Quant and have tons left on the Verbal portion so in my last few tests, I was focusing on speeding up the pace on Quant and not letting myself get stuck on a problem that I couldn't answer in a reasonable amount of time. Verbal, just taking more time is really helping my CR and RC.

Since my test is on Friday, I'm going to spend the rest of the week relaxing and going through a number of OG problems each night. My focus on Quant this week is Exponents/Factorials/Probability/Combinations/Permutations and my focus on Verbal this week is strictly Sentence Correction. I have a really poor grammar foundation and while I'm an avid writer, I'm more of a creative writer so I have never developed a strong grammatical foundation. I have a good ear for language but that only gets me about 60% there for sentence correction. While I'm a native English speaker, idioms tend to trip me up big time. I don't think I have enough time to learn the grammer rules exactly but I want to get better at taking a methodical approach to breaking apart sentences. I have the Manhattan Sentence Correction guide that a friend gave me so I think I'll try to flip through that this week as well.

I'm also trying to get mentally ready to be relaxed (as much as possible) for the day of the exam. When should I time my caffeine intake? My exam is at 11:30 am. I'm a daily caffeine user so I think cycling off it at this point would do more harm than good. Any test day or last minute prep tips you guys have would be awesome as well!

Oh and I also recently found the BeattheGMAT flash cards which are fantastic. Hopefully I can go through those a few times before Friday as well.