Done and Dusted - 730(96) (q51(99) & v38(86))

It was an unusual day.

I tried to sleep at 12, but I would have spent at least 5 hours and 500 calories moving from one corner of the bed to the other, every two minutes.

8 AM - Got up. Watched India - Pak world cup cricket final and started to the exam center with a heavy heart at around 10.30 am with India messing up the first half. Reached exam center at 10.50 and waited in the car calling up everyone to get some second hand commentary on the game. I went in to the exam center as soon as the game finished. Btw, India won in case you are interested in the result.

I finished the essays and the issue essay turned out to be the one I was reading in the car. I did reasonably well and finished both essays with only abt 10 seconds to spare. Took a break, had a coke and walked right in for the quants.

Quants was a ripper. It was really difficult. I was stuck in a question for about 13 minutes. It was a slope, equaltion of line question. I messed up x and y intercept and got an answer that was not a given choice. I attempted again and got another answer that did not match the choices. I was sure that I was using the right formula and I didnt want to get one of the first 10 wrong. Eventually I guessed and moved on. But I knew 13 minutes is a lot of time to make up. At one point, I had 21 questions to go with 30 mins remaining. It was a night mare.

But I knew I can work out problems faster if I have to. I was helped by a couple of silly problems that read what is x1/y1 divided by x2/y1. A couple of data sufficiency problems were even more simple. I thought these must be the questions that dont count towards ur score because they were followed by pretty difficult ones. In the end, I had to guess the last one with about 10 seconds to go. I knew it was decent because the level of difficulty of some of these questions. I guessed a score a Q49.

Verbal was actually easy. I was cruising for the most part... But, for a lot of sentence correction questions, I could not choose between 2 choices. There were some difficult RCs too. But I finished on time and was not under as much pressure as I was in quants. I expected a V-40 or 42.

I guessed the score will be around 720-740 and when I saw the score I was happy. It was a Q-51 and V-38. And a total of 730. I would have liked the verbal to be 40+. But no complaints now.

Collected my score sheet and started my car. Daniel Powter welcomed me with a "You had a bad day". With a smirk in my face, I told him "Not today, buddy" and quickly hit the fast forward button.

I have two days to finish my essays to submit my application for NYU. So I am looking forward to a couple more sleepless nights.

Preparation:

All I did was OG 10 SC, OG 11 PS and DS.

I tried to do atleast 30 problems from GMATClub everyday. The rest was just CATs and more CATs.

For the sake of comparison, here are my scores

Princeton - 740(46 ad 47) and 740(46 and 47)
Arco - 680 and 740
MGMAT - 680, 680, 710, 740, 750
PowerPrep - 700
GMAT Prep - 710, 770, 740(1-retake).
Verbal Sets - Did about 10-12 score varied between (29-37)

Again, if you are already in the 650+ range, I think it is enough to just practice and learn some finer points from folks here in GMATClub.

Last but not least, thanks for a lot of folks here... pelihu(he gave me all his materials for free), bmwhype(the SC guru), startupaddict(the inspiration behind the hard work), beckee(helped me with Arco materials),kryzak(the motivator), asaf(helped me with AWA materials), sumande(quant guru), nervousgmat(helped many people not just me), paul & praet(for obvious reasons), rhyme(the RC dude), GMATBlackbelt(the fighter) and aviroop(for all the entertainment).

Special mention to ywilfred. He is a quant god. I learnt a lot from the way he approaches these problems. I suggest people to go through the quant stickies. They are excellent resources for quants.

Really sorry if I missed anyone.

A warning: Quite a few in that list would receive my essays tomorrow for a review. I am going to write three essays in 3 hours. So, there will be a lot of room for correction

PS: I didnt proof-read the post. Just way too tired right now. Sorry if this is not in a human-readable form.