Thank you for the wishes and encouraging words
I really owe a lot to the GMAT club, without which my 710 just wudn have been possible. It gave me a whole classroom experience with so many enthusiastic people readily sharing their views and problems.
Now a bit about my Gmat experience -
Had my 1st shot in march - landed up with a 660 (q47 v34). After a few PM exchanges with Paul from
Accepted.com, decided to give it another shot - to get into the 700s.
I took home the brownie points of identifying my weak areas through my 1st experience. Well SC was glaring right at my face
Thus started my 2.5 month long preparation !
decided to work on my touchy spots from the basics - brought these two books which proved to be extremely useful
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Elements of Style by Strunk and White ( trust me its an excellent book)
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Probability made Nice and Easy (one of my strong points became prob & comb)
Once I was done with the Elements of Style - went on to the bible of GMAT SC - Manhattan SC guide - man was this useful !!
Washed my hands off quants for the 1st one month and attacked the SC 1000 series. My results had dramatically improved - for once I exactly knew WHY i was choosing an answer for an SC !
I was maintaining a strike rate of ~ 22/25 !!
Once I was through with ~ 300 of the SC 1000 series , became actively involved in the club forum. I used the forum for my Quants prepz. Every alternate day I made it a point to solve 25-30 problems raised in the Forum. This pretty much covered all the quants basics, not to mention those toughies with inherent traps some ppl threw at times
It was now time for the challenges -oh ya .. brought the entire 25 package !Now this was really helpful. I learnt
not to go by the scores in challenges - mine varied from consistent 95% to a consistent 65%

Challenges trained me to approach a given problem through all possible loop holes - especially useful for DS questions. It mainly gave me the confidence to attack any kinda problem that might crop up in the Q session.
After this, it was pretty much the same show - took some practice tests -
prep1 - 710 (4got the break up)
prep1 - 760 (q50 v44) - surprisingly there was just one repeat q in quants
Manhattan - 730 (q45 v44) - yes Q45 !! i found manhattan Q to be way more difficult than the challenges
prep2 - 750 (q50 v40)
took a couplla paper based tests - found the Q to be way below par, hence took only the verbal sessions - was making ~ 43-44
GMAT:
had a 3:00pm appointment ..things went on fine but for the 'extended' break which cost me a minute in the Q session
That incident really got into me and I took a good 5 minutes on my 3rd question !
No - not because I didn know how to solve, but somehow I was working with '10,000' when the q clearly said '8000' !! I knew this wasnt gonna help ..so took a 10 second brk ..a few deep breaths and resumed again !
The Q session appeared to be ridiculously easy but studded with a just a few gem of a thought provoking questions !!!
Didn have time for my last 7 questions as usual - but that has always been the case with me - I knew if i had had a decent strike rate in the 30 questions i attempted - i wud sure cross 48
The verbal - oh well - I have no idea what went wrong, i was confident with all my choices and finished it with 2 minutes to spare !!! (it had never happened before) nyway ..bygones
Walked out with a 710 - oh well a very decent score if only my practice exams hadn hyped me up !
Materials I used :
- elements of style
- probability made nice and easy
- OG11 (didn use it much ..had exhausted it for my 1st attempt)
- PR (not a very useful book when ur looking for the challenge - too basic)
- Manhattan SC (i really know my sentences now)
- truck load of self-confidence and belief in myself
Profile/Plans:
Planning to apply only within the top 10. (not sure of my chances with a < 750 score)
Long term plans - to set up a sports academy back home.
Banking heavily on my very strong extracurriculars (professional International sportsperson) to boost my uniqueness.
Oh ya .. omnipresent Indian male with an engineering backgrnd + a few yrs of experience