760 (49Q 90% 44V 97%) Actual Test: I've SEEN this question!!
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29 Jun 2006, 18:35
This is my first post, I apologize in advance for any conventions I may be breaking.
My experience is as follows:
Prep:
1 week, 3 hours every day. I teach SAT courses for the Princeton Review, so standardized test taking is in my blood, I mainly needed to gear up to the specifics of the GMAT. The studying I did started with the Barron's book, but after one practice test I realized it was horrible and too easy. I proceeded to the Princeton Review book, which was better but too easy again. I found and took the two tests that mba.com offers, and these are VERY IMPORTANT in my esteem. They were the only things close to the test and at the difficultly level that I needed. Kaplan's new GMAT 800 book is all right for the sentence completions although there are times I wonder about things in the book. (Typos etc. ) My strategy throughout was to focus on what I was doing wrong and spend as much time fixing it as possible. It seems that my errors would stem about 1/3 from misreading the question/answer choices, 1/3 from time issues, and 1/3 from other reasons.
My practice run scores were (in chronological order)
Barrons: Missed four problems total, no score. (Too Easy!)
Princeton Hard Bins: About 80% right
mba.com Practice test 1: 750 (Missed 9 on each section)
mba.com Practice test 2: 770 (Missed 7 on each section)
Kaplan Practice test: 710 (contained questions from GMAT 800 that I had seen before)
Actual Test:
Everything was pretty normal, except I had to drive 200 miles to get to the testing site. I overdid my break before the Quant by 30 seconds... beware of that. The interesting thing about the test was that one of my verbal questions I had seen before. When I first saw it I was sure that it was only similar, but after the third read I realized it was word for word the same question that I had seen on one of the mba.com practice tests. (with the same answer choices!) Moral of the story: the mba.com software is incredibly useful. Not only did I get the most benifit out of those two practice tests, but they accurately predicted my score and contain ACTUAL questions.
Final: 760 (99%)
Q: 49 (90%)
V: 44 (97%)
*Odd that I did better on the Verbal, math is definitely my strong area.