A bit of background about myself: graduated 4 years ago with an engineering degree, and since then until a lost my job (tough market) in late October, was trading energy products. Earlier this month, I thought that it might be wise to buy an option by taking Gmat, hoping to catch early Jan'15 deadline at US Schools and/or Insead.
Since the time is limited (3.5 weeks in total, although I have the luxury of not working) and guessing that my weakness is verbal, I started to study just verbal section for the 1st 10 days. However a few CATs test prove that quant section needs real improvement as well.
Mgmat CAT#1 (free) 10 Nov : 640 (Q44 V34)
Mgmat CAT#2 11 Nov : 620 (Q40 V35)
Mgmat CAT#3 13 Nov : 650 (Q42 V37)
the quant section started to improve gradually, learning mainly from Kaplan &
Mgmat.
Veritas CAT #1 (free) 16 Nov : 710 (Q49 V37)
Kaplan CAT#1 (free) 16 Nov : 760 (Q97% V96%)- guess an outlier because some problems are quite similar to the ones in the book
GMAT Prep #1 17 Nov : 750 (Q50 V41 IR 4) - this gave me huge moral booster
Mgmat CAT#4 18 Nov : 670 (Q45 V36)
Mgmat CAT#5 19 Nov : 690 (Q49 V34)
Mgmat CAT#6 21 Nov : 700 (Q46 V39)
GMAT Prep #2 25 Nov : 730 (Q49 V40 IR 7)
Actual GMAT 27 Nov : 750 (Q 51 V39 IR 8)
During the actual test, i found that quant problems are generally a bit easier than in
Mgmat CAT in the way that they require less manual calculation (prone to careless mistake, i.e. testing negative/positive sign), and less likely to require testing of all the options to arrive with the answer (time consuming), while verbal sections are of roughly similar difficulty and logic especially on CR and RC. SC section's logic is perhaps more similar to that of Kaplan's Gmat 800. Other lessons learnt are that Gmat Prep test should have been done much earlier to familiarise one's self with the format and that more practice with AWA and IR should be done to get someone used to the full length exam time. As I was not accustomed to the full length time (only did the IR twice and once with full AWA+IR), i lost concentration by the time of last 10 questions of verbal sections. Overall i'm pretty pleased with my Gmat experience and would like to say huge thanks to all of you for all the the supports and advices given in this forum.
All the best for your Gmat preparation and Business School Application.
Cheers!