I hope that people aren't getting tired of my posts, but I'm just trying to provide relevant info to prospective GMAT writers before I stop visiting. Anyway, there's one more important point I want to make. There seems to be a general theme among the international student posts that the GMAT verbal section is much easier if english is your native language. This is wrong. Sure, you will do a little better if english is your native tongue because you'll understand more words and this should translate into a few more right answers. However, GMAT verbal is not testing your understanding of words. It's about understanding what an author of a passage is trying to tell you, a how they're trying to say it. Also, it's about understanding the logical flow of an argument, and what additional statements could break this logical flow. These are skills that are not dependent upon a great understanding of english. All you have to do is look at a break-down of the demographics of GMAT writers, and you'll see that more than 70% have english as their native tongue. Not just Americans, but Canadians, Brits and Australians all have english as their native tongue. Moreover, many Europeans have a very strong grasp of the english language. All these native english speaking people's scores count towards any percentile rankings, and many of them do not do well on GMAT verbal.

That's just my final 2 cents,
Coasterby