740 - i've done that!

740!!!

I do not deserve it! I don't, I don't, I don't.
I am sure they will send me a note saying that there there was a bug in the software that made my score 200 points up from what it had to be. That's when I will seriously consider suicide


The long story:

I'm an Eastern European male, 29, software engineering background. I have never been really smart at anything related to math. Have been a lot better in verbal though.
I have been studying for 3 month + ~10 days. Almost every day, 2-3 hours. On week-ends around 3-8 hours. I did some of it during my business trips - which was twice as hard. Sometimes - after a few beers.. Can you imagine how obsessed I was?

I used:

• OG10 and OG12. These are the essential. I did them, then did the error log a couple of times. Redoing a log helped me a lot (and really was the most boring thing).
• GMAT Prep - did that a couple of times each of the two tests.
• Kaplan 800. Don't remember, was too long ago. I'd skip it.
• Kaplan 2009. Good but verbal is too easy.
• Princeton. 2005 edition or something like that. Too easy!
• OG Quant Review. These were too easy and also had a lot of the Qs from OG10! Do them only if you're a beginner.

Overall exam experience:
I hoped to get the same or very very similar Qs to OG. The reason is that my memory works much better than my "smart" part of the brain:)
As a result, there was only ONE similar to GMAT Prep. All the others - I had to come up with a solution (as opposed to kind of looking for a matching solution that I keep in my memory).
I'm sure I did A LOT of them wrong. Did one absolute guess in Quant. Did 4-5 guesses in Verbal, since I ended up with 1 minute and 3 Qs unsolved
The Qs - both Verbal and Quant were unexpectedly hard. I did not expect that and was absolutely sure I'm below 700, if not below 600. I was "clicking through" by the end of the exam never even hoping to get above 700.
I really really considered cancelling my score.

Still I tried really hard to solve most of the questions. I was not sure in 70% of them. Got depressed by the end of the exam.
And then ..... SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY! OMG I'M SO HAPPY I'M OVER IT!!!

This is what I scored on the mock tests:

• May-XX: GMATPrep1 (first time) 700
• May-29: GMATPrep1 (second time) 710 Q50 V35
• May-30: GMATPrep2 (first time) 690 Q49 V34
• Jun-2: GMATPrep2 (second time) 730 with a couple of questions answered incorrectly on purpose

How good I was before the test:

• Quant: Generally I did around 80% accuracy on OG12. And around 95% accuracy on simpler stuff such as Verbal review.
• Verbal: Around 70-75% accuracy on OG12.
• It was not always stable though, every now and then I found some questions on the net and did them with like 55% accuracy.

P.S.
Some of the people here advise to get yourself to LOVE GMAT, I will never understand that

P.P.S.
I guess the best strategy is to train a lot, and then have a good attitude on the test.
Think of each question as you most important one but keeping in mind 2 mins and never get stuck.

Good Luck! And thanks for you support on this forum, it helped me a great deal.