GMAT Strategy

Hello, first of all this is a great forum helping the GMAT test takers to succeed!

Ok here is my story; I have recently graduated from Imperial College London with a degree in Electrical Engineering(2:1) and I am currently in the process of looking for a job; which I am finding hard in the moment considering the current economic climate. My results werent the best, I must admit, because of my lack of motivation in studying various modules of my course which comes to the point that I didnt enjoy a large part of my degree.

Nevertheless I would like to study an M.B.A in the near future probably at a good B-school in USA. I know that the GMAT scores are valid for 5 years and I definitely want to do this before I am 30.. (I will be 24 in about a week). Therefore I assumed that it would be good to take the GMAT test in early 2010 to get over with it and apply for an MBA a few years later starting in 2013 -2015 so that I hopefully have some good 3-4 years work experience..

Is that a good idea to take the test now?

Regarding my preparation, I bought the official GMAT review 12th edition and the KAPLAN verbal workbook but didnt open them yet. The first thing I did was to take the GMATprep test from MBA.com to see Where I am currently standing and how much I can improve.

Yesterday I did the Quantitative section only and scored a 48 and today both the Q and V and scored Q44 and V35 = 660 score without having any prior GMAT experience apart from looking into a couple of questions in the forum. My weak section in the Q was mostly the DS section together with some silly mistakes here and there. At the Verbal I was not particularly bad in any areas with my strong point being the SC despite the fact that English is not my native language.

I would like to achieve a high score in the range of 700 - 720 to counterbalance my very mediocre degree results and I believe I would be able to do it with hard work. I don't think I will go to any tutorials but I will be mostly studying by myself or occasionaly if possible together with some other test taker.

Where can I find essential information regarding self study?

Thanks a lot and talk to you later!!

I would like to know this too, since I just took it last night without any knowledge of the GMAT at all and got a 640 and I want to improve to 750.

For reference I got a 2230 on my SAT