OK Biren.
Preparation:
-I did the standard Princeton Review and Kaplan books & disks.
- Additionally, I read the Kaplan books VERBAL WORKOUT and GRE & GMAT MATH WORKOUT. I also read the Kaplan 800 GMAT.
- From my earlier attempts, I have two older 1990's versions of the ETS
Official Guide from the paper test era that I studied. They were helpul in that each contained 3 actual GMATs. (I never did acquire the latest version, it was out of stock, even on Amazon.com). From GMAC I purchased one set of three disclosed actual GMATs, and had one more real GMAT that a friend took in 1997, and of course used Powerprep software.
- I did NOT take all the practice tests available to me. I didn't do all my ETS tests because I ran out of time. I quit doing Kaplan and Princeton Review Tests a couple weeks ago.
- And for Essay practice, I found a very helpful old book in a used bookstore, Arco's "GMAT CAT Answers to the Real Essay Questions". It's from 1998, but still perfectly valid. Arco gives essay responses to every single GMAT essay question, and it appears there's been no change in that list of questions. I would not have spent much time preparing for the essays, but this was great. Read 30 or 40 samples and it's imprinted into your brain just how a good GMAT Essay would look, no need for templates or other preparation. (I'll be shocked if I don't get a 6 on my score report).
- A couple of things I did on my own that were most helpful. I made a growing practice quiz of representative math problems that I would go over every day or two. Both as a warm-up, and to be sure I didn't forget how to do such problems.
- I made a two-column list of math concepts in a notebook that I wanted to keep ready in my mind. The idea was, if I see something, I should be thinking something in reponse. For example:
---SEE THIS----------------------------THINK THIS:
X is a factor of Z....................... Z is a multiple of X
2XY = Y.................................... Y might be zero!
radical-X .................................. = X / radical-X
...you know, the basic insights upon which so many tricky GMAT questions hinge.
Criticisms:
By far the most valuable prep materials were the ETS products. It was NOT worthwhile to use the Kaplan Verbal Workout or 800 GMAT books -- they just didn't add much. The Kaplan Math Workout book was probably worthwhile, in ensuring I was covering all bases.
The Kaplan 800 GMAT: in the verbal sections it tries to give "hard" questions by giving ambigous, incorrect, and poorly written questions. Just not at all representative of actual ETS questions. Nor did the math sections offer much I hadn't seen before. Mostly this book is just an excuse to constantly have bullets saying, "The 800 GMAT Scorer does blah blah blah", regurgitating Kaplan's standard advice.
I came to have a dim view of the Princeton Review and Kaplan practice tests. Princeton and Kaplan are frankly poor test-writers, and their editorial processes and test question vetting are clearly very lame compared with those at ETS. Taking their tests mostly just got me annoyed at the mistakes they would make. It's OK to take their tests for the mental practice, I suppose, but you'll waste time on non-representative questions, wrong "correct" answers, poor and incorrect explanations, math problems that require far too much calculation than ETS would expect, etc. To be blunt, I would wager that the editorial staff and Kaplan and Princeton are not themselves partcularly high scorers.
I saw a smart 790-scorer on this board mention that he often disagreed with the logic on Kaplan and Princeton answer choice explanations. That must have been a polite way of him saying, they screwed up and he was smart enough to know it.
If doing it all over again, I'd focus more heavily on ETS materials. I'd scrounge up every actual GMAT question I could (I didn't realize until a week ago that you can buy 3 sets of 3 actual GMATS for $25 per set on MBA.com). Buy an older version of
the official guide in a used book store. I fact, I'd probably look at official GRE and SAT materials also, in order to chase down as many "official" twists and turns on math problems as possible.