In mid-July, I got 585 in Kaplan practice test.
Today, mid-September, I just came back with 750 (Q51, V41).
Just a week ago, my score mumbled around 690-730 and I was really panicked. Just two days before the exam I finally got score over 750, which made me relieved a lot.
Below are my past mock results.
700 8/9/17 Gmat Prep 1
730 8/28/17 Gmat Prep 2
720 9/7/17 Kaplan
755 9/7/17 London Business School
720 9/9/17 Gmat Club
690 9/11/17 Economist
720 9/12/17 Veritas
760 9/13/17 Gmat Prep 3
740 9/14/17 Gmat Prep 4
Quite a lot!
I studied around 3-4 hours a day for the 2 months.
1. Free Resources
1) EmpowerGmat:
I really appreciate the two Empowerment guys. Especially Empowerment is really good at verbal. The method that guy used to crack verbal did work in actual exam. I strongly recommend you to enrol at least 1 hour to learn what strategy he uses to attack verbal.
2) Economist
Economist was especially helpful for Reading Comprehension. After learning its 'Initial Learning' strategy, I seldom struggled with scary passages. Hence it helped me save time on RC. You can renew it after 7 days passed/used up 10% lectures. Its practice questions were also quite like actual GMAT ones.
3) Veritas
Free question bank in Veritas also equipped me with real-time exam sense. Especially its Sentence Correction questions are very good, not because of their own quality rather of its difficulty, because they are ridiculously difficult. I felt real GMAT Sentence Correction was way easier, but it worked anyway because it's true that those questions helped me beat every tricky questions!
Those are what I used most, but I agree that Official Guide is a must have. For the first month of my preparation i.e. July to August I relied on OG. I think it became the foundation on which I stacked up a few more marks in Verbal.
2. What's worked
I studied with OG for the first month. Next, I started working on actual questions & mocks.
For the last one week, I did one mock every day. I had no choice but to buy Gmat Prep 3&4. Along with questions, I re-learned the strategies to attack Verbal from EmpowerGmat and Economist. I frequently used BeattheGmat and GmatClub (sorry!) to understand why this is right/wrong.
Mock everyday & useful verbal strategies did work.
3. On the exam day
I booked my exam at 8am, followed the Empower guy's advice that your brain works the most in the morning. I can't doubt so. I revised GmatPrep mock 1 to 4, and did 5 each verbal on Veritas. I selected verbal first, because I knew that it is where I have to do the best of myself.
After then? I aced my exam!