740 and loving it! Thank you Gmat Club and e-gmat

Just finished the test. I'll post a debrief when I get home. For now, wanted to share the news with the community. Thank you so much for your support and resources everyone, especially e-GMAT guys.

Detailed Debrief:

As I promised, here is a detailed debrief of my GMAT journey. (This is going to be a long one!)

Background: I am a computer engineer from Mumbai, 27, with over 5 years of good industry and management experience.

Motivation: I have been grappling with the idea of an MBA for quite some time now. And everything aligned, from personal circumstances to professional experience, for me to decide to do this now. I decided to apply for the 2015 intake in June (Yes, it was pretty late. I would not advice leaving it that late to make that call)

GMAT Prep:

I figured, after going through a lot of posts in this forum and talking to a few friends who had attempted the GMAT, that about 10-12 weeks would be an ideal study time. Which mean I would need to take the GMAT around the first-second week of September. Please not here that the round 1 deadlines for my first choice schools (Tuck and Fuqua) are in October. So I am cutting it pretty thin. Hence the don't leave it so late to make that call advice above.

Plan:

I planned my 10-12 weeks and took down a date. From early July, it got me to second week of September. Since I knew I HAD TO get it done right in the first shot, the pressure was on!

The first thing I did was, inform my Manager that I need two weeks off in September. I had the luxury of doing this since both my Manager and my VP are very supportive. I understand a lot of people might not have that option, in which case unplanned sick leaves would work just as well.

The second thing I did, after the approval for the leave was acquired, was take a date. I think this was the single biggest motivating factor for me. Putting a date down on the end goal is something that is absolutely necessary, as it keeps me on my toes throughout. And I used that to my advantage here. Some people want to get fairly comfortable with their course material before setting a date, and that is perfectly acceptable.

I decided to split my 10 week study time into 7-3. 5 weeks to go through base material and concepts on all topics and practice OG questions as I go along. 3 weeks to do intense practice and give mocks and the final push. Good strategy? Not really. But I was naive and new then.

Initial Struggles:

I decided to purchase the Manhattan GMAT mocks. I had read good reviews about the mocks and hence thought I should go ahead. The first mock I took put me at 660 (Q45, V35). I thought this was a decent beginning.

For Quant, I decided to use the Manhattan Strategy Guides. Let me tell you, these 5 guides along with the GMAT Club practice questions and OG questions are pretty much all you need! The guides have amazing explanations for everything and good strategies to tackle some problems.

Verbal, was another matter altogether. I got through the SC Manhattan guide, but understood ZILCH. I realized Verbal was going to be a struggle. Which is when I came across some reviews of the e-GMAT course. I attended a free webinar that Rajat hosts every weekend, and really liked his explanations. Decided to purchase the Verbal Online course and concentrate on ONLY that for Verbal. Trust me, you don't want to burden yourself with too many resources. Stick to one trusted resource and do EVERYTHING that way. It helps to avoid confusion.

My struggle started because I still did not have clear direction. I spent the first 2-3 weeks going through the Quant material and solving questions, and got over-confident. Just for kicks, I decided to give a GMATPrep mock in the last week of July, 3 weeks into my preparation. A 690 (49-35) made me realize that although Quant was at the level I wanted, but Verbal was going no where. Another mock the next week, this time a Manhattan, knocked me back! 640! Quant went down to 42! This was a shocker! And it really had me depressed for a day. But I realized I still had 5 weeks to go and I might be able to recover from this after all!

Revised Strategy:
With about 5 weeks left, I decided to go all out. This included no late nights in office, dedicated 2-3 hours of effort every day and not getting discouraged. Trust me, it takes good mental strength to tell yourself you can climb this mountain in 5 weeks, but, at the risk of sounding too full of my self, I will say I have good mental strength in the face of adversity.

The next 2-3 weeks were intense Verbal workouts. For Quant, I was confident I will get there. Number Properties and Probability were proving to be a nuisance for me, but some strategies and practice would be good enough. Verbal however was something that hurt. I pride myself on being good in English, at least better than average. And it was a shock to realize that I was wrong. That HAD to be corrected. I did intense Verbal work for over 2 weeks and that started to bear fruit. My mock scores were rising in Verbal, Quant kept going up and down but that did not bother me.
These were my subsequent Manhattan scores, taken one week apart:

CAT3: 670 (Q43,V38) This one was good for Verbal. Saw progress and that made me work harder.
CAT4: 670 (Q45,V36) This one again shook a bit. Verbal was not supposed to go down. I realized I screwed up SC in this. And those were all silly mistakes. Sought to correct them next time.
CAT5: 670 (Q42,V39) Finally Verbal was looking good. I made good judgments on most questions and the thinking was correct for all. But the overall score was beginning to bother me a bit. It had hit a plateau and that was not going to do for me. Concentrated on both Quant and Verbal this next week. By this time, my 2 week vacation had begun.
CAT6: 700 (Q45, V40) FINALLY! The elusive 700 had been breached. This was the score I had been waiting for. The Verbal score made me extremely pleased! The hard work showed here and this made me realize I was at a place where I could hope to score 720+ if I put in good effort over the remaining 10 days.

Last week:

Decided to take one-two tests in the last week. I had worked well on the concepts and knew I would be able to tackle most questions, now it was all about stamina building.

GMATPrep 2: 760 (Q48, V44) OK. What just happened here! I did NOT expect this. Admittedly, I had worked hard on Verbal over the past 4 weeks, but this was still way over my expectation. This gave me a good feeling about my preparation and more than anything else, it was a confidence booster. Although the quant score fell, 48 was low for me, I knew I had to work on the NP and Probability piece.

In the last few days, I went over all mistakes I had made on the mocks and realized most of them were silly mistakes, especially in quant, which could be avoided. Practiced some more Quant from the GMATClub tests and went through explanations. Most of the explanations that Bunuel posts are amazing. If not the exact question, they will help you solve a good amount of questions on the topics.

For Verbal, I ended up solving the SC and CR from VR2 guide. I knew I was in decent shape as I was able to solve almost all questions in under 1.5 minutes, and accuracy was above 90%.

I though of taking a test the day before, but was a bit too exhausted. So instead just went through concepts again. The flash cards uploaded on the forums are great help in last day revision for quant. For verbal, just went through some SC topics that were tricky, like -ing and -ed modifiers, parallelism and comparisons on the last day.

Test Day tips:

1. Get VERY good sleep. This can NOT be stressed enough. I was a little exhausted since I did not get sleep, and this showed in the last few Verbal questions. I am sure I marked at least two incorrectly, and that 740 COULD have been a 750.
2. I arrived an hour early, and the center graciously took me in. In fact, my exam started 30 minutes before schedule. Guess they are not that strict on starting times.
3. Carry food and water. You will need it.
4. Even if you have timed yourself in the mocks and feel like the pressure is manageable, trust me, it gets to you on test day. It is a big day, you have paid a hefty sum to be there, and that plays on the back of your mind.
5. Utilize the breaks, but don't over-utilize them. I went 40 seconds over the 8 minutes in both breaks. This sucked! I just did not time it well. It is different at home, as you don't have to go through the palm scanning and passport verification every time. That takes up a full minute at least. Hence, time your breaks properly. I could manage as I generally finish well within the 75 minutes.
6. DO NOT PANIC! For a while in Verbal, I though I was just not getting it. My third RC was extremely difficult. Which was good and bad. Good because I knew I was scoring well, bad because there were still 15 questions to go. I had to nail that RC. I took 5 minutes to read it. FIVE! But I wanted to be sure. And guess what, this was the RC that had 4 questions. I was nervous as hell by the time I got through. And more so because I got a couple easy SC questions after this. But, I shook it off and got on.
7. Patience! This is key. Especially towards the end. You are tempted to just get done with it and move on. Trust me, the lat 5 Verbal questions are the LONGEST of your life. Plus, after you are done, the demographic screens go ON AND ON! I was like, JUST SHOW ME MY SCORE ALREADY!
8. Celebrate! I almost whooped when I saw my score. It had REALLY exceeded expectations. Verbal 41 was brilliant. Quant 49, although lesser than what I wanted, was still a great score. I left quickly and went and celebrated. More than two months of diligent planning, unrelenting effort and multiple sacrifices had paid off!

This was my journey. Now, I am looking forward to the next phase, the dreaded applications! I will keep you posted on the interview debriefs from Tuck and Fuqua and the rest of my journey elsewhere on the forums.