Hi
funsogu,
I really hope you're right! I just have to wait the 20 days or so for the verdict as
pushpitkc mentioned. In the meanwhile, I'm continuing with quant and verbal drills in case a retake is needed. Targeting the first round of applications for Columbia, fingers crossed.
How I prepped in 1.5 months:
Resources: Gmat Club,
Official Guide (+ paid for additional CATs), Kaplan Prep Plus, 7 day-trial of Economist GMAT Tutor and Veritasprep (but I soon realized Veritas' Verbal questions aren't really similar to the
OG questions).
1. Used
GMAT OG to refresh Math basics, then went straight to the Diagnostic Test to zoom in on weaknesses since there wasn't much time, plus I'm working full-time
2. Did a study plan: 10 days Quant and 10 days Verbal, committing at least 3 hours daily, and at least 2 CATs per weekend. The remaining time was for drills and unforeseen events e.g. client dinners / work travel, which ended up eating quite a few days into the study plan.
3. For Quant, I zoomed straight to Gmat Club's resources. @Bunuel's explanations helped me a lot, since I'm weak in Number Properties. I found a collection of Quant 700-800 problems on this forum which was very depressing to start with (as I'd get stuck for 15 minutes on 1 question), but paid off in the end as I gained confidence in some topics. Unfortunately I didn't have time to go through all of the topics. I did think that if anyone concentrate on Quant drills using Gmat Club resources, given 2 months or so, 48-50 for Quant shouldn't be an issue. Gmat Club really has the best Quant materials to work with.
4. For Verbal, the
OG did not give much by way of grammar / idioms refresh. The Economist GMAT Tutor's 7-day trial gave me a bit of tips for Sentence Correction. I also found a collection of 100 700+ SC questions on Gmat Club, which I completed. Kaplan's guide for Critical Reasoning is quite useful, basically to avoid extreme statements such as 'this is the only way to xxx', and very weak ones 'some xxx did that'. I neglected Reading Comprehension due to lack of time. Fortunately I've been reading Yuval Harari's Sapiens. Since it has components of anthropology studies, history, and socioeconomic discussions, it reads like a typical RC passage. Semi-familiarity with the topics was a blessing when digging through RC passages.
5. IR & AWA: only drilled through these using the CATs. Maybe if I'd had prepped more on AWA, time management would've been better and I would've remembered to remove the gibberish self-pointers before time was up