Wow I'm SO happy GMAT is done and over with!!! I spent about 3 months studying, averaging about 20hrs per week. When I first started out I was thinking that anything over 650 would be a longshot so I'm absolutely thrilled with my final result of 730!
Pre Test Day:
My study plan was roughly based on the 60 Day guide from beatthegmat. I followed the entire quant section to a tee, followed most of it for verbal too though I was missing some of the books so I had to improvise a bit. Once I hit the "practice practice practice" days I pretty much devised my own plan - did a lot of quant review as I noticed that my quant scores were always well below my verbal in mock tests. I made sure to throw in regular verbal review so that my scores wouldn't slip. Overall I do recommend the 60 Day Guide, especially if you're not taking a course and it's your first time studying for GMAT.
Books used:
OG 12 - essential (obviously)
Kaplan GMAT Premier 2011 - This book was okay for intro to quant concepts, but to be honest if I had to do it again I wouldn't buy this book.I didn't find it too useful for verbal.
Manhattan Sentence Correction - fabulous book! Definitely lives up to the hype.
PowerScore Critical Reasoning bible - I read through this whole book but I don't think it really helped me. I pretty much just used common sense in CR and that was enough. I guess if I had been struggling with it I would've read it more "in-depthly" and then I'm pretty sure it would've helped as it is pretty thorough.
Veritas Prep Reading Comprehension - I ordered this book not realising it was mostly just practice problems so I didn't really end up using it.
Manahattan Number Properties
Manhattan Equations, Inequalities & Vics - bought the last two closer to the end when I realised I was struggling with those areas. They were very very helpful.
OG Verbal guide
OG Quant guide
If I had to do it over I wouldn't have bought the Kaplan Premier book. I would've bought the Kaplan Math Workbook, gone through it, assessed what areas I'm weak in and then bought the appropriate Manhattan guides. I think this would've improved my score as the Manhattan math guides really do make things very clear. I also obviously wouldn't have bought the 2 books I didn't use.
For all the Manhattan guides I used the Kindle editions. I just read them on my computer through the "Kindle for PC" application. They are $10 each, you get them immediately and learning by reading on the computer is beneficial since you'll be writing your GMAT on a computer. I really recommend them!
Mock test scores:
Kaplan #1 - 550 Q30 V33
GMAT Prep #1 - 690 Q48 V37 (this was after doing lots of quant studying but before doing any verbal studying at all, I was pretty surprised at the score!)
Kaplan #2 - 560 Q37 V31
Kaplan #3 - 580 Q36 V34
GMAT Prep #1 (repeat) - 720 Q48 V41
GMAT Prep (old edition) #1 - 710 Q48 V41
Kaplan #4 - 660 Q39 V40
GMAT Prep #2 - 720 Q48 V41
Kaplan #1 (repeat) - 620 Q38 V36
Notice some patterns here?? I obviously suck at Kaplan tests! And my Q/V scores on GMAT Prep seem pretty consistent (Q48/V41) despite lots of studying!
Test Day:
Seeing my scores in the mock tests I was expecting a score in the high 600's on the actual test. I often get nervous during tests and my brain often ceases to function while nervous! So I was trying to keep things realistic and not have too high expectations. Really though I was hoping for a 700 even and was thinking that anything higher would've been a real surprise!
AWA felt really really good. I was thinking after I wrote it that I probably scored a 5.5, though it turns out I only got 5.0. I'm hoping this won't be too big of a problem on my applications. Anyway the fact that it felt good made me pretty confident for the start of the test.
Quant - this is the part I cringe about when I think back to test day. I started out feeling good. I didn't get the first question. It was a word problem that confused me a bit, but I decided to give it 2min and move on. Next question wasn't very clear either but I still didn't let it phase me. Then this kept repeating, over and over and over. I think I guessed on more than half of the first 12 questions! My brain just wasn't working! I have no idea what happened. I just really couldn't make myself THINK! Anyway I managed to keep myself from panicking too much. I took some deep breaths decided that the best plan would be to get myself back on time. So I somehow managed to do that probably because by this time the questions that were coming up were low level super easy. This did the trick. After answering a few of the easy questions fairly quickly and confidently my brain seemed to have switched back on. I finished the rest of the section with a good feeling. I took my break, walked back to my locker to have a snack the whole time thinking "What the HELL was that???!!! I can't believe how much I screwed that up!" I was really irritated with myself but made sure to keep a cool head for verbal since that is my strong point. I figured I was still in the running for over 650.
Verbal came along and it went amazingly well! I kept on pace, was focused and everything felt good. The pacing was important - in most of my mock tests I would finish the verbal section early (sometimes with as much as 10min left). I attribute my higher than usual score to the fact that I slowed myself down in the real test. At the end of the section I started having to guess a bit and was feeling confused on some questions that made me a bit nervous but I forced myself to stay positive by assuming that the questions were actually harder I was doing well.
Then I went through the whole silly just-there-to-make-you-sweat questionnaire at the end, asked for my score, twiddled my thumbs thinking "c'mon 650+!" and up came my 730!!! I was absolutely astonished! My verbal was 42 (95%) and quant 47 (77%). I was shocked that I scored 47 in quant with the huge mess up at the start of the section. I sat there grinning at the camera waiting for the proctor to come get me, then kept grinning for the rest of the day
Post Test Day:
I'm now just so glad that it's all over! I worked so hard at it and it was completely worth it. I'm so happy all the hard work paid off. Although I am really bummed about my quant score which prevented me from getting the 80-80 split. I know that top schools really want that. I'm hoping that the fact that my undergrad is in Computer science, with a minor in math and really high (90%) math average will undo the damage by my quant section screw up.
I'm going to enjoy the next few weeks and not think about all this too much over the holidays, then once January comes I'll start my applications. I'm definitely applying to INSEAD (my dream school!) and UBC, and also considering any of: IE, RSM, York, and Mc Gill.
Corny moral of the story: anything's possible if you just put your mind to it and work hard at it.
(That 47 in quant is going to haunt me though.)
and this was despite lots of studying. I don't know how I could've gotten over this. I never figured it out...
