710 49q / 37v

Wow, I just got out of the test a couple of hours ago and I am so relieved.

First I'll talk about my study prep, then I'll talk about test day.

Thank you HongHu for all your great explainations!

My prep:
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I decided to apply this fall 05, back in summer 04, so I took my time and studied slowly for about 9 months. My verbal scores ranged from 83%-98%, most of the problems I got wrong were SC. I tried to learn sentence correction (prep books, grammer books, etc), but I couldn't improve, so I decided that my verbal scores were good enough, so I forgot about stupid SC.

Here are the books that I used:

1. Princeton Review with CD: I went through the problems. The backsolving techniques were ok. The scores on the CD were pretty indicative of my scores

2. Kapalan GMAT math review: I think this got my most of my info. I went through all the problems 3 times. This book doesn't give you all the techniques, but if gives you a lot of info

3. Barron's GMAT: I liked this one. I think the questions are harder than normal GMAT questions

4. Princeton Review Verbal: I didn't need help with RC or CR, and i was hoping that it would help me with SC, but it didn't

5. Official Guide: I did all the Quant problem, marked the ones I screwed up, then did them over. This is where I really learned all the different question types and techniques.


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The test day:

I got to the prometric place. The people were really nice and helped calm me down. The test room way crowded and noisy (people walking on the floors above, squeaky chairs). I used the crappy head-phones that they gave me (I've been practicing with my one good ones, but they didn't let me use them), and I was distrubed by the noise.

The essays:
I the the $20 graded essays twice and got 6's all around. So these were pretty easy for me. Issue was an easier one, which was good since that was what I was weaker on

The Quant:
Seriously, I don't know how I got 90% on this. I felt totally out of the zone. I thought I got questions 2..5 wrong, but I guess not. I studied sooo much for probabilty, but alas, not even one prob question. I thought I screwed up a lot in the beginning because question 2 and 6 were both add up salaries and figure out the average.

I'll be happy to answer any questions.