Finished with 42-Q and 31-V for a total of 600 after about 2.5 months of studying.

Here are my practice scores:

Q V Tot Date Test
42 40 660 10/18 Princeton Review
38 44 660 10/25 Princeton Review
39 31 580 11/05 GMAT Prep #1- last 10 in both Q and V guessed
31 26 540 11/14 Kaplan 1
30 29 540 11/23 Kaplan 2
47 38 700 12/6 Gmat Prep # 2
48 36 690 12/19 Gmat Prep #1 retake after reinstall

42 31 600 12/22 Actual GMAT

I am pretty disappointed with the outcome, but hopefully can share some thoughts that might help the next MBA candidate in pursuit of a strong GMAT score.

I started my studying using the Princeton Review materials, then concetrated on the OG11. I also used Kaplan and OG10 as complementary materials.

I was most concerned with the verbal section of the GMAT even though I am a native speaker of English. I attacked the sentence correction and critical reasoning sections for the 1st month answering all of the OG 11 questions in those respective areas and using resources found on GMAT club. I then turned my focus to PS and Data Sufficiency for the next month.

After scoring 700 on the 2nd GMAT prep just two weeks out from the test I thought 650, my goal, was in the bag. However with less than a week to go, I went back to the verbal sections to review and found myself relearning what I taught myself 2 months earlier.

I feel my critical mistake was to attack each section completely independently. If I had it to do over, I would have concurrently worked on the different sections thus constantly reinforcing the different concepts each section requires.

I am certain I can improve my score, but will focus my energy on finishing my applications before the next round instead. Shooting for UColorado. I had a 3.9 undergrad, hope that helps.