My GMAT experience

Like a few others I have been a silent consumer on this forum. However I took my GMAT yesterday and decided to break the silence with my first posting.

I got 720 (Q49 and V39) and I am quite happy with my score, even though I still have a feeling that I could have scored a little bit more, especially in verbal where there is more scope. At any rate here my reflections:

[b]Preparation material:[/b]

1. Of all the preparation material I found the questions in OG and paper tests to be most representative of the actual test especially in verbal section. I highly recommend paper tests to get a better feel for actual GMAT. Power Prep tests will give the visuals of the real thing. They are also quite representative of the actual tests unless you studied OG thoroughly.
2. I used Kaplan 2005 with CD and found Quantitative to be of good quality, but verbal was too tough for me and finally didn’t seem to represent actual GMAT. My scored in Kaplan ranged from 590 to 700. I scored 590 four days before the actual test.
3. Discussions on this forum which are invaluable. Challenges are really good to benchmark your quantitative skills.

[b]Duration of preparation:[/b]

I have been planning to take the test for a while but it is only the last month that I spent on serious preparation. Lat 10 days were most important and I took either a full test or some practice test everyday. I scheduled the exam on a Monday so I could take full advantage of the weekend. I scheduled the tests about 10 days ago, when I was feeling reasonably comfortable. The other reason was that I felt that I have postponed taking actual thing for too long and finally decided to be done with it

[b]General comments:[/b]

It is good to practice by simulating real test conditions as much as possible, just so you won’t have any doubts about, for example, whether you can take a break and draw the grid during the 5 minute break. The last test I took was Power Prep Test2 and took the full test including AWA. Attitude is quite important in the test. I found that, in the real test, it is quite easy to get into the mode of guessing your score based on the difficulty of questions while you still have questions to answer!!! Take one question at a time and take it easy.

I concur with the opinion of previous posters that GMAT approach is to give you one correct answer and four incorrect where as some of the guides force you to choose between two reasonable answers, especially in verbal. I found it very useful to eliminate answers in the verbal section using a grid. At the beginning of my preparation I used to go through options endlessly. This is not recommending guesswork but to quickly eliminate wrong choices.

This has been one of the high-quality forums that I have been part of. People are knowledgeable and responsive - many thanks to you all!!!

If any of you have questions I’ll be happy to answer!!!