Dec 15 - 770 I'm sooo done with GMAT

Quantitative 49 / Verbal 48 / Total 770

edit dec 19: I just got my official score report and only 5.0 on the AWA wtf haha. If there was any place I was sure I would get a high score, it was the AWA. I was pretty sure those were 6s. I guess getting a high composite score is much better than AWA, so I will take it.

Score progression:

660 McGraw HIll CD
680 McGraw Hill
710 GmatPrep 1
690 McGraw Hill
730 GmatPrep 2
770 GmatPrep Reinstall (I distinctly remember at least 10 old Qs per section)
760 GmatPrep Reinstall (probably even more, 15?)

Materials:
The first text of any type that I bought was McGraw Hill, I bought it with doing no research and only because it said it had 12 tests in it, I thought the more tests the better. I can't say it's a terrible text as others have (it gets 1 star on amazon, consistently), but it has a few too many typos, and what it tells you will appear on 800-level questions was simply wrong for me, eg it stresses that nCk and nPk, quadratic formula, etc will appear, which I certainly never used on my test. Good thing I bought a different text in time (see below).

After taking a few practice tests with this and trying to memorize the quadratic formula, I did some research and bough the OG11. I got this from amazon with only about 5 weeks left until D-day. I finished the whole book, marking each question which I wasn't sure about, and then later on re-took every single question that I had marked. This whole process took probably 3-4 weeks. My correct rate overall during the first pass was only around 80%, I've heard of far higher here. I did time myself though, I always did 31 questions at a time and gave myself 50-55 minutes.

I also bought Kaplan 800 at the recommendation of a friend, I can't say for sure if this helped a lot. The Verbal was particularly confusing and didn't make sense to me, if you are not doing well on Verbal, I would not recommend this book, it will only confuse you. You have to learn 600 level before you can learn 800 level.

Thoughts: By some measures, my math NEVER improved. I consistently got 9-12 questions wrong on every single math section I took. If you do a search on my posts, you will see I have some fundamental lacking of advanced concepts like Sets, Probability, and fast algebra and have a hard time understanding it even when the math masters here explain it. Still I worked on this quite a bit, perhaps I moved my average 3-4 questions from my first practice test to my last. Still, I would estimate that a good 1/3 of ALL math questions I am not 100% sure of. Not very good considering the amount of formulas and tricks I put to memory. And, I NEVER improved my speed, I always ended with about 1-3 minutes left for my last math question, it was extremely challenging to me

That said, something hit me when I got 770 on a GMATprep reinstall. The thing that hit me was that I was still getting the same math scores, but I was getting a huge final score boost by being nearly flawless in verbal, even though the first time I got 770 was boosted by seeing many old questions. Even though my verbal scores were pretty good already, around 41, I decided that taking extra time to make absolutely sure I read the question correctly would give me a 3-4 question boost. I honestly think this is where I made up all the difference between expecting a 720 and getting a 770. I was previously breezing through verbal, finishing with 10-15 extra minutes, and being happy with my 41. It hit me that on these 10 questions I got wrong, what if I spent another 1 minute with each of those? Couldn't I turn 3 or 4 of them right?

Also, as illogical as it is, the scoring is a percentile game. GMAC, according to plain jane fundamental statistical theory, gives higher composite scores to those with more unusually high verbal scores. Why? Because it's simply rarer. Even though you would think GMAT should weigh Math higher, considering all the math heads taking this test, a high Verbal is what really boosts your composite score. Thoughts on this? Yes, no?

Anyway, final advice:

Are you finishing verbal with time to spare, unless you are getting 48s, my advice is to slow down. getting 3-4 more questions right in verbal was a huge boost to my score.

I think it is impossible to learn the entire "Unified Theory of GMAT Grammar". I would never ever get 100% right, not in a million years, I simply disagree with some of the GMAT's grammar and diction choices, I don't even understand them. But what I did was modifiy my personal grammar rules to match GMATs as closely as I could, without confusing myself by trying to learn wierd grammar rules I didn't agree with.

I don't want to repeat the great advice many others have said, the above regarding Verbal is probably all I can contribute to this.

Also, NEVER EVER CANCEL YOUR SCORE. I estimated to myself that I had bombed my math and done okay on verbal, and in the end was waiting for a 720 to appear on the screen. I would have fully accepted a 670, I would have simply thought my guesses ended up being wrong and I should have studied harder. There was this guy next to me who kept asking the proctor what happens if he cancels, can he see his score first, does he get a refund. NEVER CANCEL.