My prep methods

Prep time:
I worked on this for 4 months. there were some downtimes because of work and family. My work is very involved and very tiring. besides my wife works sfits at times and I have to take care of the baby (22 mnths) in the evening. so, My only good time to study was very early in the morning and some weekends. My weekday early monnings when I used to wake up at 4:30, start at 5 am and study till 7 am before going to work were lot more prodyuctive than weekends. weekends have been good for taking full length practise tests only. there were many family chores to take care of on weekends and sometimes my wife has to work weekends leaving me with the total responsibility to take care of the baby. I took one entire week off from work to focus. I think, that helped me a lot

Materials used:

kaplan 2002 : good to introduce u to questions types and some strategies. that where its utility ends.

kaplan 800: nice to challenge your brain but not absolutely critical, I think

PR 2002: if u have the kaplan, I wouldn't bother buying this. their test CD is a disgrace. questions repeat between tests.

OG 10th and 11th ed: absolutely the bible. i would recommend both if you have sufficient time and if not then at least the 11th ed. It gives you a lot of idea about the tone of the questions, how the test preparers think and such. I solved OGs in blocks of 40 question of the same type and timed them. within a block of 40, I used Ursula's excel worksheet to keep track of time for blacks of 10 questions within those 40 questions. I made a cross if i was not sure or if i was slow or if i found the question very clever. later on, I checked my answers and for the ones that I had made a comment and for the ones that I got wrong, I studied them in and out. after that, on a seperate folder, i maintained a list of "lessons learnt from mistakes". This helped me a lot in the last week of prep in going over my weaknesses and how I could make sure that same mistakes never happened again. absolutely invaluable.

Deltacourse: for probablity and counting methods. was helpful. by the time I was done, I felt (but probably not really) an expert on such questions. In real exam , I only got one probality question. would recommend.

MGMAT books: I bought the books for SC, the number properties and ineqality/VICs. absolutely gem. they were amazingly succint and through at the same time. I can't praise them enough. If i had to do it all over again, i would buy all their books. In particular, no GMAT taker should be without their SC book. very reasonable at amzon.com.

1000 docs: did some of them but ran out of time to finsish them all.

practise tests:

PR 2002 : 660
PR 2002 : 690 (stopped after this beacuse the questions repeat themselves in the CATs)
kaplan 2002: 590
MGMAT CAT 1 : 640
MGMAT CAT 2 : 670
MGMAT CAT 3 : 680 (u can add 30-50 points to ur mgamat scores, they are pretty tough)

Gmatprep 1: 710
gmatprep 2: 730
gmat prep reinstall: 750
gmatprep reinstall 2: 710 (I was too tired for this particular practise test)

overall, my gmat prep tests as you can see, were very representative both in difficulty level and in terms of score. i think, most of the people had similar experience. i never busted the 50 scaled score in quant but hovered between 46-49. My verbal scaled always hovered above 90 percentile.

Gmat club: the only form i consistently visted and gained a lot from in terms of tips, study material etc. I want to thank you all the umpteenth time and still feel like thanking you all more.

AWA : no practise, just browsed through the AWA section in OG the night before the d-day. individual starategy may vary depending on your own evaluation of your ability to write impromptu. I felt good about AWA after I gained some pointers from this club and the AWA section in OG.

I have tons of material in electronic format that I collected from this website and others which I will be more than happy to share. Let me know if you need anything in particular. Also, If someone wants to buy my books and materials, we can negotiate a package deal which will be very attractive for the buyer. let me know by email.