GMATPrep 780, Actual Score Today....720

So after about 5 months of preparation I finished my marathon today.

Since it was only 10 hours ago, I have no AWA score.

My Quant score was a 46, 75 percentile
My Verbal score was a 44, 97 percentile

Overall a 720 with 94 percentile. I am content, but not excited.

My preparation:

1) Reading Cracking the GMAT
2) All the Manhattan Guides
3) All the problems in the 11th Official Guide, except some reading comprehension
4) All the math problems in the 11th Quantitative Review (Green Book)
5) A few practice sets from the 1000 series
6) A couple sample GMATclub tests.
7) One sample GMATPrep test without the AWA section.

English is my first language, I wrote a couple sample essays, that was enough for me in regard to AWA.

As far as the quantitative section, anyone with a target score of 700 plus should do the following:
1) Focus on the more difficult questions
2) Complete these questions on a timed basis
3) Find as many different sources as possible

I took the practice test, and scored a 780. I had to rush at the end of the quantitative section, but following this good result I relaxed my preparation.

During the test, today, I looked up with 9 minutes to go and I think I had something like 11 questions remaining.

With 1 minute left I had 4 questions.

So I had probably 3 random guesses at the end.

The report doesn't tell me whether I missed questions at the end, but I am pretty sure that is were I missed them.

Anyone who has not taken the test, or who has not done well on the beginning needs to realize that on complex Data Sufficiency questions, the stem alone can take a few seconds to read and understand.

After my work I see the quantitative section in this way. If you are successful on the first 8 or so questions, the rest of your test will be mainly difficult questions. So there is no use practicing easy questions, you will face a higher difficult on the GMAT.

I guess that GMAC does not publish many of the higher difficult questions. If they publish 400 quantitative questions, I would go as far to guess that maybe 50 of them are the highest difficulty. The questions I faced after about question #13 seemed to require 3 or more steps to arrive at the correct answer.

Does anyone else who scored well feel like that did not see many difficult questions in the OG's?

For me the verbal section was not too difficult. I am currently a teacher in China and I have correct English writing assignments for a few friends. With the difference in languages there are many errors with idioms and with plural/singular verbs and subjects. So this gave me practice.

For non-native speakers, I highly recommend you read The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier. It is interesting and it helps you to understand many of the possible errors in reasoning you will face on the GMAT. Plus it is written with some complex vocabulary that will help you develop your writing skills.