i gave my gmat on the 18th of december and scored a 690. i had a horrendous experience on the 13th of november. i managed only a 610 back then.

My Gmat story actally began in March 2008 and i have paid for the GMAT at least ' times (if you consider the number of times i have pushed my gmat date forward) i dont know how many times you guys have done it, but one piece of advice from me; please block a date only when you are absolutely sure you are going to appear. a no show on test day just fills G?AC coffers, nothing else!

i have been a passive member for a long time on gmatclub and i feel i should have contributed so much more. the gmatexperiences threadwas my favourite, and i always wondered when the time would come to write my own experience.

i got a very long vacation from my office( 5 weeks continuous) and got down to prapping very seriously. i used a few books for Indian CAT exam. they are golddust for quant. if you want to get a solid foundation in maths then you cant go wrong with this prep. beware though, some sections tested on the CAT never appear on the GMAT. on the whole CAT prep will be more than sufficient. i scored 49 on my 1st gmat and 48 on my second. so a big thanks to the math forum moderators. especially bunuel for his detailed e^xplanations. Manhattan GMAT also helped me massively for math. their 6 cat tests are a must for any serious GMAT taker.

i was always very confident in English, but GMAT english frustrated me to the very end. i never truly got a handle on CR and RC. sentence correction strangely came very very easily to me. so anyway i dont think i am qualified to give you any advice on verbal.

my GMAT test prep CAT scores are as follows/

GMATPREP 1 and 2: 650 each......without any prep

then i took a break of a month from the cats and focussed on fundamentals.
then i paid for manhattan series CATs
MGMAT1: -680
MGMAT2: 690
MGMAT3: 660
MGMAT4: 670
MGMAT5: 730
MGMAT6: 720

then i reinnstalled GMATPREP on my PC and scored 740 both times.
so as you see i was very confident of a 700, at least, on my actual attempt.

the test day was a nightmare that would have been a perfect script for a bollywood movie.
the day before my test a hurricane (Phyaan) hit the western coast of india with massive damage to the coastline. i took the test in Pune, a city 200 miles inand but was lashed by high speed ainds and rain.
there was lightning and unfortunately a bolt struck a tree near my test center and the tree promptly crashed on a electric transformer. what resulted was a power outage for 9 hours at the test center. i waited for the restoration of electricity for 9 hours, but i had to reschedule the test. when took it the next day i was pleasantly surprised by how tough the quant seemed and by how awesome verbal was!
the results though were shocking: 610, Q49, V25.

not even on my worst day had i scored below 35 during prep!!!!!!!!!!
but there it was; staring and mocking me!
round 1 definitely GMAT!

what followed was a onth of pure misery. a mountain of work at the office did not help either, for there was no wway i could ask for more vacation. i had next to no prep for my second attempt, but strangely i was very calm before walking into the center.
the second gmat experience was the same. math seemed tough, verbal seemed a cakewalk. i breezed thru the test and after an interminable wait i got a 690. Q48, V37

not bad, i certainly expected more. but verbal was back to normalcy, resulting in a balanced score!
but now i am done with the gmat. finally, wohooooooooooooooooooooooooo!