My Comeback:


Two months back I gave GMAT. Got a score of 560 Q46V21.
Supremely disappointed, I wrote this post.
low-gmat-score-retaking-your-inputs-required-99475.html

After a few weeks of sulking, I decided to give it another try.
Created a new username, gmatretake, and started again.
I dont know why I took a new id!

On 30th I wrote GMAT again and scored a 710.
Q47V41
a 92%ile in Verbal from 23%ile.. I loved it!


A quick debrief:

Retest Preparation:
I spend about 14 hours a day in office, so obviously I get very less time to prepare.
I probably prepared for about 3 weeks for about 2 hours a day.

Verbal was my weak point so put all my efforts in that area.
I dont think there was anything new to learn in Quant. I might have wanted more practice. Especially with DS.
So, the strategy was to learn more things in Verbal and keep Quant in touch through tests.


Books/Prep:
For SC, I purchased the Manhattan GMAT SC.
The author explains the things beautifully and even if its just the OG12 that they ask to solve, the topic-wise segregation helps a lot.
The book has a lot of information. We need everything. But I somehow didnt have the energy to go through the "Advanced" topics.

For CR, Powerscore CR is the best.
My advice to others: Its ok not to follow the author's steps. But make sure to read through the all explanations.
Solve every question in the middle of every chapter used for concept-introduction and at the end of every chapter as part of the exercise.
Read why the wrong options are wrong even if you have got the answer right!

I also purchased the Official GMAT Verbal Review to get more questions on Verbal.

For DS, questions posted in the GMAT club forum.

For RC and PS, no particular book or prep as such. I did not prepare for these using books. Just did them from the tests I took.


Tests:
Kaplan CD Companion:
Beautiful! It kicks the #%$ with respect to time!
I never could complete the SC and CR tests from it. But I still loved it.
It forces you to think faster.

Manhattan GMAT 6 Online Tests :
Came free along with the SC book. Worth every penny spent on the book.
Verbal questions are good. Quant questions are very lengthy I thought.
After the third test I started skipping the Quant section because it was killing my confidence.

GMAT Prep:
Needless to say. They were also retake.
But fine, I didnt remember any question from my last attempt!

I dont remember the scores I took in all the tests, but I scored 710 and 690 in GmatPrep..
(Because my score went down the second time, I didnt even dare to reset the tests and take them again..)


One day before GMAT:
I hadnt touched AWA.
So I went through ChineseBurned guide from this forum.
Wrote the templates a couple of times. Could do nothing else that day.
I guess I was extremely nervous to touch any any book.


On the day of GMAT:
I had the test at 4pm.
Went through the essay templates, SC audio revision by Arora and the math formulas. And thats it, i couldnt move a muscle!!
I was very anxious and that was killing me.
Watched the local news to relax.
And just before leaving, to raise the spirits, watched Haiti Song - wavin' flag by young canadian artists.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB7L1BIDELc


Test:

AWA:
Went normal.

1st Break:
Drank some water and half of the energy bar I had taken. (it was not written as an energy bar! May be I had picked up a wrong thing at the store!!)

Quant:
I got a continuous stream of DS question from Q3 to something like Q15. It was very shocking and I hated it!!
Somehow I sailed through and the last 8 questions were terrorizing. Not because they were tough, but because they were dead easy.
Simple expressions on fractions and percentages.
And I was running out of time. So the last few I had to solve-guess-solve-guess.


2nd Break:
Still in shock of receiving the easiest problems and still unable to complete, I took the next break.
Drank some water.
Took the so-called-energy-bar and asked myself "Do I really deserve this break, this bar?" and kept the energy bar back as it was.
To punish myself, I went back within 3 minutes!

Verbal:
Was as expected. One thing I have observed is that, unlike in Quant, in Verbal, we can never know whether the difficulty is increasing or decreasing. So you never really can guess whether you did the previous question right.
In one word, I was driving through it, BLIND!!

The Big Question: Do you want to report the scores?
I took a minute and a half to decide if I really wanted the scores.
Because of the last few quant questions, time crunch, blind verbal performance, there were a lot of things running through my mind.
"Will I ever break the 7-barrier?" ,
"Math:Bad, Verbal :I have never been good, So this is a bad performance!" ,
"How good is an impression on AdComs if they see two low scores on the sheet?" ,
"Is GMAT for me?"...
All sorts of questions-- bad,bad questions.

Anyway, with 13 seconds remaining, I clicked on REPORT. And boom!!!



Cheers!