I surprised myself this past Friday. I honestly thought I was ready for this test. I hope my story is helpful. (I am not trying to make excuses.) I just want to give back to a forum I found helpful aside from my own personal experience. Here's my story.

Background info:
- I studied for over 4 months following both Manhattan GMAT and Kaplan study plans to the letter, along with practice questions from the official guides versions 10-12.
- 2 weeks prior to the exam I took the 6 CAT exams on Manhattan GMAT and the 2 CAT exams from KAPLAN's CD.
- 1 week before I took the 2 GMAT Prep CAT exams.
- My scores ranged from 650 on my first CAT to 680 all the way up to 740.

About myself:
- B.Sc. & M.S. in Mechanical Engineering. Graduated Magna Cum Laude from a top tier engineering school.
- I work at a Fortune 500 company in a business development / strategic planning role.

Story:
I arrived at the test on Friday morning fully rested. I actually scheduled a one week vacation prior to the exam to get work out of my system. I felt ready as can be to tackle the exam and confident that I would do well.

After the test center had repeated issues with getting the palm reader to work I was finally allowed to take the exam a full 45 minutes later then my actual scheduled appointment. At this point I wasn't sweaty, I wasn't tired, I wasn't nervous and I was ready to rock!

Essay 1: Nailed it.
Essay 2: Nailed it.

Break: I feel great. Confident, ready to move on to the next section. Again the test center had issues with the palm reader.

Quant. Section: I started out ok. I felt I got the first few questions right, but then it hits me the test goes from the expected to the unexpected. My experience boils down to this one trend. It seemed as though I could get to the answer of each problem, but the answer choices were no longer in the same form as they were during my studies. I get the feeling that the GMAT has started to introduce answer forms as a new way to trick the test taker; one more step between answer to answer choice. (i.e. I had one of those sum of consecutive odd numbers from 29 to 100 type questions, where normally you would take the median and multiply it by the number of terms, but the answer choices were in some crazy format) Still I thought I did ok. I assumed that those tricky questions where part of the CAT feature. ("lose a few battles to win the war") Boy was I wrong. Call it "too many careless mistakes", but I went from an average of 49 on the quant. section during my study period to a 39 on the real deal.


Break: I feel ok. Ready to move on to the next section. Again the test center had issues with the palm reader.

Verbal: Well I just did poorly. Its as if I picked every wrong answer on purpose. I ended up with a 30 on the verbal section. My average prior was a 40.

Conclusion:
I don't think nerves got the best of me, and I don't think I could've prepared any better, but I definitely want to hear what this forum has to say. I can tell you that professional background and academic background are irrelevant for taking the GMAT and one should focus more on strategy then theory. I will admit to one MAJOR mistake. I took the exam too late! Because even if I wanted to retake the exam I can't enroll for the upcoming semester. Deadlines are May 15th.

I agree and I probably will in 30 days from now

I assure you that this was the case. It completely threw me off in the quantitative section (another mistake... I plan on training myself to remain composed). There is no exaggeration in this story. Plus when you think about it, would you put it past the GMAT to attempt this sort of thing? Remember though it might have easily been a few test questions that don't really count.

I actually spent some time going through the official guide questions trying to find anything similar to what I saw on the test, and I could not find a single question. (Little things like fractions rather then decimals is something I expected.)

I want to make it clear that the standard training programs, Manhattan GMAT and Kaplan were great resources I am no way advocating against them. In fact I highly recommend them.

Lesson 1: Be prepared for the unexpected.
Lesson 2: Remain composed at all times.
Lesson 3: Good strategy / Good process.
Lesson 4: Plan your test dates 60 days prior to application deadlines (if your life allows it.)
Lesson 5: An answer to a question can be rephrased in multiple ways. Think about the number of ways they can be rephrased as your going through your practice questions.

Like your quote says: "A smart guy learns from his mistakes. But, a wise guy learns from others' mistakes."

Yes. I am going to retake it in 30-45 days.

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That's weird, can you give an example of the crazy format the answer choices were in?

Sure. This wasn't the worst case, but for the question of finding the sum of consecutive odd integers in a particular range the answer choices were olin the form of powers. So it gave 79^2-11^2+18^2. The expactation was that either you approximate each of the answer choices to get something close to your calc OR that you know the property of N^2 is the sum of N consecutive odd integers.

Like I said. It wasn't difficult, just tricky. It through me off and it occured more than once. (Lesson Learned.)

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see , the trickier the better, be prepared this time , and if it is so tricky, then your percentile score will anyway reflect it.

it cannot be the case that the GMAT was tough only for you and the rest of the test takers got simpler questions. so better try to find out why your test scores were so high, or why precisely your GMAT score was low.

if you want to practice really tricky questions, go for gmatclub quant tests and if you want to practice even more, the best resource in the world is INDIAN CAT EXAM prep material. i can guarantee nothing can be trickier than that.
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What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy.

you don't need that for an exam like GMAT. CAT is way too difficult , but in case you just want a taste of it ,Google 'CAT India practice questions'
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What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy.

When you did your practice exams, did you complete both essays?

I'm finding that my test scores, particularly my verbal, are much lower on the practice tests that I complete the essays.