Seeing all the great achievers (700+) on the forum, I'm a little embarrassed to share my story. Nevertheless, I'll do it given the fact that I got some answers from this site.
I had been thinking to take the GMAT for the last one year but I never prepared for it properly and thus never took the test. I may have studied for like 2-3 days a few times but that was it for the whole one year. On September 4th, I decided to take the test in 13 days and my target was the average, 50 percentile or 550. This is my schedule that I followed to prepare for the test:
Sept 05: Math Review + Problem Solving Sample Questions [6 hour 40 minutes]
Sept 06: Reading Comprehension Sample Questions [3 Hour 30 Minutes]
Sept 07: Critical Reasoning Sample Questions [3 Hours]
Sept 08: Data Sufficiency Sample Questions [2 Hour 40 Minutes]
Sept 09: Sentence Correction Sample Questions [2 Hour 5 Minutes]
Sept 10: Read Issues and Arguments Samples [1 Hour 15 Minutes]
Sept 11: Registered for GMAT (Test Date: Sept 18) + Full Length Test (Kaplan-CAT1) + Sample Questions Review [4 Hour 50 Minutes]
Sept 12: Full Length Test (Barrons-PT1) + Full Length Test (Kaplan-CAT2) [5 Hours]
Sept 13: Full Length Test (Barrons-CAT1) (Quantitative Only) [1 Hour 30 Minutes]
Sept 14: Full Length Test (GMATPrep-1) [2 Hour 30 Minutes]
Sept 15: Full Length Test (Kaplan-CAT3) [2 Hour 40 Minutes]
Sept 16: Full Length Test (Barrons-CAT2) [2 Hours]
Sept 17: Full Length Test (GMATPrep-2) [2 Hours]
I didn't practice AWA while taking those tests. My score ranged between 520 and 590 and my average score from all those tests was 537. I was a little concerned since it was a little below my target.
Today, I took the GMAT and this is what I must say (from my facebook status): The very basic idea of taking the gmat is far more stressful than taking the test itself except for the last thirty minutes of the test when the brain denies to respond after being tortured for three and a half hours.
A couple of times I fell behind in terms of average time allocated to each problem for being over concerned about each question during the test... something I didn't experience while taking practice tests. Nevertheless, I managed to complete everything on time.
Finally, I got my score. It was 620 (Q:44,V:31). To be very honest, I didn't expect anything above 600. I'm also expecting 5 for AWA section. I'm just glad I'm done with it and I'm not planning to take it ever again.
Edit: AWA = 5.5