GMAT 720 + AWA 6

Guys, first of all let me thank all the members of gmatclub who provided excellent guidance for the test. The information, advice and tips you guys provide are all awesome. I was not an active participant on the club but I found very useful information and tips for preparation. More than anything else the success stories posted here were very inspiring to me. If not for those success stories, I couldn’t have entered the test room with so much of confidence. Once again thanks to you all.

Here is my story:

I started considering GMAT in mid ‘05 but it was not until Feb’06 that I started serious preparation for the test. I followed the wise men’s advice and planned for a 10 week preparation (It proved just appropriate).

KAPLAN:
I started my preparation with Kaplan book. Refreshed my basics in quant and learned useful tips for the verbal section and completed all the exercises.
The real acceleration to the preparation came with the Kaplan CD. Completed the diagnostic test with 630. The Kaplan CD is very good in providing analysis of performance. From the analysis, I found my weak areas – RC, SC and CR (in that order).
RC:
Thanks to gmatclub, for the RC1000. I didn’t do any of the other 1000 series though. I worked on 80-90 passages from RC1000 (I selected the science topics). That boosted my confidence on RC. Did each passage with timing. I started with 10 min per passage and by the time I completed 80-90 passages, the time reduced to 7 min per passage. My suggestion to GMAT aspirants is while you are practicing RC, try to develop an interest in the topic you are reading. It takes atleast 10-15 passages before you develop this interest. Kaplan says – read the first paragraph thoroughly and glance through the details in other paragraphs. But this approach didn’t work for me. I allocated 3-4 minutes to read the whole passage thoroughly and after that, answering 3-4 questions takes just about 3 minutes. See what works for you.
SC:
Kaplan Grammar Power explains the basics in very “understandableâ€