Hello everyone. I've been a lurker here for the last couple of months. I would like to thank everyone for their help. Your posts have been extremely helpful.
I took this week off from work, intending to study 6-7 hours a day. Didn't happen. Was sleeping in until 10:30 most days. Working out and playing ball from 11:30 - 1:00. Ended up reading Harry POtter #7 all day Tuesday and studied for only about an hour. Then my sister had her baby Thursday, so I was in the hospital from about noon - 10pm. I did get some studying done at the starbucks in the hospital lobby. I went back and did the last 50 DS questions from the
OG. All I did Friday was read some sample essays. And that was it. Just chilled the rest of the night.
The test was just about what I expected. I did run out of time in quant. Still 5 questions to go with about 6 mins left. I really thought I was blowing it at this point. I got a fair amount of coordinate geometry questions. Data sufficency was suprisingly uncomplicated. Or maybe I was actually just well prepared! Had about 50 seconds when I got to the last quant section. Verbal was pretty straight-forward, save for a few tough weaken-the-argument questions. Answered the final verbal question with about 1 minutes, 20 secs to spare. I thought I was going to end up with a 660-680 (really thought I blew quant). I was pleasantly suprised when the 720 popped up.
My advise is to definitely take the breaks. After the AWA, I had a protein bar and some water. Then I splashed my face with cold water. Went to the bathroom and did some stretching after quant as well.
Overall, I studied on and off for about 3 months. Then I turned it up in July. I did 2-3 hours every 4 days out of the work week. 4-5 hours on weekends.
Oh, make sure you keep working out. Doesn't matter if you play basketball or tennis, lift weight, run, etc. Just be active. Believe me, it'll help.
Study materials -
OG 11, Kaplan GMAT Premier edition, Kaplan Math workbook, Princeton Review Cracking the GMAT
Here are my practice tests in chronological order:
GMATPrep 1 6/20/07- 640 (Q38, v39)
Kaplan CD-ROM CAT ! - 560 (I was like WTF??)
Kaplan CD-ROM CAT 2 - 620
Princeton CAT 1 (online) 7/17/07- 640 (Q45, V34) - I don't know what happened to my verbal. Bad day, I guess.
Princeton CAT 2 (online) 7/18/07- 710 (Q45, V43)
GMATPrep 2 7/19/07 - 660 (Q42, V39)
Kaplan CD-ROM CAT 3 - 580 - Borders was loud that day, Babies crying around me!
GMATPrep 1 (reinstall) 7/23/07 - 700 (Q41, V45)
GMATPrep 2 (reinstall) 7/25/07 - 700 (Q43, V42)
Test Day: 720 (Q43, V46) AWA 5.5