I did not really have a long time here at gmatclub as I was rather in a hurry to write the GMAT as fast as possible. I had 5 weeks of preparation time, mainly over the Christmas vacation.
My background is the following: native German, living in London since 1 year now, degree in mathematics and economics (combined study), age 30, 5 yrs of professional experience in Financial IT.
I started with the Printon review, and afterwards used various parts of OG (10th edition), Kaplan, Kaplan 800.
If you want to benchmark against my scores:
I took approx. 70%-80% of the questions from OG 10th edition: PS 94%, DS 92%, RC 82%, CR 93%, SC 78%
Kaplan Paper test 700
Kaplan CAT 3: 550
Kaplan CAT 4: 640
Powerprep: 690
I took several single CAT sessions from Powerprep which put me into 50-51 for quant and 31-34 for verbal.
My test experience:
Pearson Vue: Excellent testing conditions despite many takers for the theoretical driving test coming and going (Reading, UK). I was there early (thank god the tube was able to cope with the drivers' strikes quite well!) and could also start before my scheduled appointment. The note boards were all right and there were two times 10 minutes break (not 5 minutes). The GUI was slightly different from Powerprep. But no worries. I never had to scroll for the RCs which could be annoying. Otherwise quite similar functions.
AWA: Quite all right. I took it easy and wrote 3 paragraphs in each essay. Finished on time.
Quant: I have to admit that I consider myself better than what the score shows. I hoped for a 51+ before the exam. I thought I had really tough questions, some of them harder than anything I have seen in OG. I lost some time in the beginning as there were lots of calculations needed (or I didn't see an easier way?!). I speeded up in the middle where I might have missed one or two questions for being too quick. Finally I had 8 minutes left for the last question as the previous questions were getting easier and easier and did not need the time I thought I would. The last one was rally tough. I used all the time, but not sure whether I got it right. I am not even sure whether I could solve it now in 30 minutes.
Verbal: I am very happy with the score. Verbal was the part where I struggled most during my preparations. But I think I was really able to increase the score by the preparation mainly with OG. I had 4 RCs which I really hated and which costed me valuable time. Nevertheless they were not too long. However I had some problems understanding a text about corals in detail. I had to guess a bit as time was running away. SC were not too easy and some of them were quite long. The CRs were quite ok, although the challenge is for me sometimes to understand all the words used in there. So I had to pick an answer although I did not fully understand the meaning just because I thought the rest makes no sense.
I finished just in time by having answered much quicker in the 3rd quarter of the test.
I was quite happy to see the score, although you might understand that as a math graduate I am a bit disapointed about the quant part
Final recommendation: If you are good in quant: Try to do hard questions before the test (which I havn't done enough). You will gain from this experience. However, If you are not too good in verbal (as I was), focus on verbal and do all the OG questions. You might see similar structures on test day.
Best regards and good luck to you all, Martin
BTW: Has somebody applied for IMD and is willing to share some experience?