Some background: I'm not American, though have been living here for the past 5 years. English is not my native language. I did my undergrad in Europe (in Econ and Linguistics) and then grad school in the U.S. (Econ). GPAs 4.0 and 3.7. Am pretty good with both math (coming out of a very good school system) and verbal (degree in linguistics definitely helps!).
Started studying for GMAT 2 months ago. Scheduled the test almost immediately (I'm sort of running out of time here -- have about 1.5 months to write my essays and do other admissions stuff).
Study aides:
> Princeton Review GMAT overview (whatever is the most recent edition)
> OG 12th edition
> OG Math and OG Verbal, both second editions (never even opened the verbal one, though)
> Kaplan math overview (panicked last weekend and bought it -- shouldn't have; by then I already knew everything the book has to offer)
Tests taken:
> both official GMAT tests
> 6 MGMAT tests
I concentrated my efforts almost entirely on math. I went through the Princeton Review book, read everything about math and verbal, especially the test-taking strategies that they suggest, and did all of their intermediate and advanced exercises. A couple of weeks after I started studying, I took the two official GMAT tests, and scored >700 on both. I don't have the results with me now, but they were pretty close to what I got on the actual GMAT.
That was both encouraging and demotivating (had hard time getting myself to study, since 710 was pretty much my target score, and I scored above on both trial tests). However, right around that time I found this web site, and panicked a bit. It sounded like the questions on the real GMAT seem to be more difficult than the trial ones.
The following weekend I tried taking the MGMAT test just to see and compare. That drove my panic further -- the questions were much more difficult than what I've been working with. I think it took me something like 3 hours to finish the math part. I didn't even start the verbal on the first MGMAT. That was VERY discouraging, let me tell you! Though I think I still scored something like 43 or 45 on the math part of the test, but I totally failed on the time requirement.
So I started working with the MGMAT materials, reviewing every single question from the first test that I took, and simultaneously working my way through the OG Math book, starting from the last question in each section and working to the front (since the questions in the back tend to be more difficult).
From then on, I spent 2-3 hours each weekday studying math (mostly doing problems and reviewing the problem sets I already went through). On weekends, I took at least one trial test, both the math and the verbal parts. The following day, I made sure to review all problems from the math part of the test, and the problems that I got wrong form verbal. I took one MGMAT test with essays; figured out that writing essays before math does nothing for me in terms of stamina -- it actually sort of "warms up" my brain for the math part. So that was the single test that involved essays. All the other times I just did math and verbal.
I scored between 720 and 750 on all MGMAT tests, with results similar to my actual GMAT results. However, as weeks went by, my timing definitely got better on math (on verbal, I tend to finish up to 30 minutes early, so timing was not an issue there).
During the last week of the prep, I again went through the OG math questions that I got wrong/didn't know how to solve in the past, reviewed some basic concepts, reviewed MGMAT questions etc. I felt pretty prepared going into the test, but also worried because I didn't know what to expect (there doesn't seem to be a consensus on what's closest to the actual GMAT).
I took the weekend easy, studying 2-3 hours a day, but mostly resting and relaxing. I took Friday off work and took my final MGMAT test then, with very good timing and good results in both verbal and math.
My test was at 8 a.m., so I got up at 5:30, reviewed the materials again, had my usual breakfast and took off. I recommend following your regular morning routine on the day of the test: no need to surprise your body with anything new and unusual.
Everything went well at the test center; people were friendly, and there were no glitches. Wrote my essays, nothing to write home about, pretty boring stuff. We'll see how they came out. I hope they cut me some slack, since I'm not a native speaker
) Went into math, started off OK. I was hurrying a bit, until I realized that the questions were not nearly as difficult as MGMAT, and it would usually take me under a minute to solve them. So was moving at a pretty leisurely pace. Double-checking my answers, etc. (not a luxury I was ever able to afford with MGMAT). That hurrying in the beginning, I think, cost me some points. I also slowed down quite a bit in the middle, so had to guess on the last question, was running out of time. Had just one permutations question (yes! I'm not great with permutations/probability) -- and got it wrong, as I now realize But otherwise, the questions were definitely more similar to the GMAT trial tests than to MGMAT. In any case, I got through it feeling pretty well about it. Ran out for a quick snack, and then back to verbal. Had three reading passages, one very long (had to scroll down the screen), the other two OK. To my surprise, I was more tired than usual during verbal, and had a bit of a hard time concentrating. Some questions seemed difficult, though you can never tell with verbal. But generally, nothing out of the ordinary.
So, that's about it. Was pretty happy about the results (target score was 710), though I think I can do even better. I don't need to, so won't worry. I'm quite proud of my verbal score, quite good for a non-native speaker.
Otherwise, I'm looking forward to getting rid of all my GMAT books. Anyone know of a place where I could donate them or something? I would happily trash/recycle them, but that's probably not socially responsible
Wow, this is a long post. Sorry, people! Hope you found it helpful. Let me know if you have any questions!
Good luck, and maybe I'll meet some of you in business school down the road!
750 on both GMATPreps you mentioned 
