680 (Q-50, V-31) : Lack of concentration towards the end...!

After a month of flipping through the pages of OG, Kaplan and Princeton, here is my result of the D-day, that happened to be today:

Q - 50 (95%), V- 31 (62%) total: 680 (90%).

The 4 hours of gruelling experience

AWA - went smooth as expected, I always find it easier to counter an argument in both analysis of an issue and argument. SO followed the same strategy, structured the essay same as that suggested by kaplan. 4 paragraphs 4-5 lines each.

took the 5 minute break

Quant - Quant had never been a problem for me, becasue of my enggineering background. The first question was the simplest i had ever encountered during my preparations, for a moment i was completely taken off, as my expectation was a question of average difficulty, cross cheked my answer 4 times, to be 100% sure that i dint miss any finer catch in the problem. Everything was going on smoothly when at around question no. 25, i came across some weird problems, had never encountered those in kaplan, or princeton or even OG. It was more of a analytical reasoning question than quant.... by the time i had reached ~30 , i started seeing some amazingly difficult questions, which involved huge calculations etc. I was feeling happier with each of the new questions, because the level of difficulty of questions made me feel i am doing pretty well.

took the last break,

Verbal - started with a simple SC, followed by 1 CR, both went fine, then a 60 line RC followed by 4 questions, again SC and then a whole bunch of CR's one after the other.... then some simple SC, it was then i felt i am not performing well... as the SC's that i was getting were very simple, started getting tensed, concentration flattered from time, to a pretty girl sitting behind me... to just a thought of the end result to the university to apply for, it couldn't have been worse when at this time i got another RC, debating historians and anthropologists. THough a small one, but even after reading it twice i couldn't make any head or tale of the contents... somehow started answering the questions, not sure of the answer of any of those... i moved on... then the questions that i faced were all of average difficulty, i tried to hold on to my nerves, somhow managed to go through, but the worst was yet to come.... question no 36-40 an RC of around 130 lines...!!!!! and i had hardly 7-8 minutes left....!!!! and the result is obvious in the score in verbal... 31

GMAT verbal was more or less the same level of difficulty as kaplan (may be slightly easier), but quant was bit difficult.


In retrospect what i feel now, is i spoiled my verbal section because of lack of practice..... i just used to go through Kaplan and OG reading them as a novel.... and dint concentrate on what i am doing wrong...

As per my preparations, i studued kaplan verbal workbook. and OG, took some practice tests, where the score varied from 700 to 750. Did a couple of kaplan 800 score tests: an advice to the 'wud be' test takers: dont rely on 800test scores, i found them to be very easy as compared to the actual GMAT.

But anyway its over now, and now applications... an another demon

Thank you all for the valuable inputs that i received from this forum.
~Alok