Hello all,
This forum has been very useful for me and I felt I should share my experience. It's not really an awe inspiring score but I felt it was good enough given my 2 months of half-assed studying while working fulltime for 4 years. I found out after the first week of studying that I really didn't have the motivation most of you seem to have to study this stuff for months... I just wanted to get it over with and did pretty much 0 studying the last two weeks before my exam.
Anyway here is what worked for me
1. The GMAT prep exams. This sounds too simple to be true but honestly I think there is no supplementary material that comes even close to the quality of the questions in these exams. GMAT is not about doing the toughest problems -- it's about intelligently solving problems with a time limit. So in that sense these tests REALLY help a lot because you get an understanding of the GMAT test maker's sneakiness and you start to get a feeling for the time limit. In addition, reading material off a computer screen, which is similar to reading off a light bulb, also helps and takes some time getting used to. I wish I could have done more, I only did 2000, 2006 and 2012 GMAT preps once each. If you have the time I suggest doing these over and over again with a few days break so you won't simply memorize problems. The 2000 ones are nice in that the answers have explanations... either way if you don't get a question just Google it and you will mostly likely end up at gmatclub forums. Lastly, do these in 1047x768 screen resolution because that's the crappy resolution the test centers use.
2. GMAT official book. Actually I would suggest not buying the book because I rarely used it... Instead I used the official GMAT mobile app which has 800 questions from the official book in a mobile app for iOS and Android. Basically it's a TIMED quiz which is great because again you read stuff off a computer screen and work within a time limit. I actually used my iPod as a "tablet" ... even did the reading comprehension questions off it so
The nice thing is you emulate test conditions by doing these quizzes and you get instant feedback including full explanations for answers. I don't think I would done the GMAT at all if it wasn't for this app because as I said before I just don't have the motivation like most of you seem to have
I think overall I did around 50% of the questions in this app and felt it was totally worth it.
3. Supplementary books
a)
GMAT club tests and math notes -- I didn't use the tests extensively but I thought they were helpful
b) GMAT math prep course book -- good for finding concise information quickly, the section on Trigonometry was very good
c)
MGMAT -- I'll be honest, these are a bit overrated... do not waste time doing their questions, instead read the theory. The only ones I found truly useful were the sentence correction books and a few on Math... the rest were not so good because the question style is too different from the actual exam.
d) Princeton Probability book -- this was truly a great book, so good that I am never going to sell it. I only read the theory and did a few questions to be honest but what I did made 100% sense to me. If you are feeling iffy about probability questions, get this book and your fears will disappear.
4. AWA
Just used the template available on the forums here.
5. Sleep and food
You absolutely need to get some sleep before the GMAT. It is folly to think otherwise... take this from the guy who had 5 hours of sleep the night before, you can imagine how fun it was doing the verbal section
For food, I kept crackers, a few cut apples and water. Find whatever works best for your body. Basically think of your body as an engine, when you give a stressful test it burns an insane amount of fuel and needs replenishment... especially over a 4 hour period.
Also be careful of the time, I overspend 1.5 min of my break time before the verbal section and catching up wasn't fun.
That's pretty much it. I probably could have done a bit better on verbal if I had studied a bit more but the motivation is just not there. Hope this helps someone.
EDIT: oh forgot to mention one interesting thing, I wrote my first essay with great zeal and even had 5 full minutes to proof read it BUT guess what? I forgot to click next!!!!!!!!! so there you have it, do not forget to click next
and more importantly get some sleep so these kind of stupid things don't happen during your test.