For me 610 is sufficient

Hello All,

After spending waay tooo much time on this site reading the same things time and time again, now I am ready to contribute. Today I sat for IT and pulled out a 610(V35/Q37), which for me is fine as I will not be applying to any top 10 schools and I have my own business for 7 years. My story may be a little different and a little more helpful to those who only need to get a score like this rather than a 700+.
I started preparing for this about 4 months ago and when I started I did not have a clue that a radical was that symbol which we all know all too well (or at least I did not remember the name). I trudged through and studied and studied and accomplished not much, but instead of really worrying too much about learning all of math, I did the best that I could to give myself some kind of "number sense". I mean trying to get an idea of how numbers react (aka Math ) so that if I did not have any clue about a question I might be able to wing it. For me this was all I could do because I do not have much math background and have been out of Uni for 10 years. Plus, it is imperative to practice the basics such as mult, division, decimals. Do not get too cought up in the glam questions at first, because after a while they will be much more approchable. As for the verbal I thought that I was set, wrong, it turned out to be a real *complain*. The way I pulled myself with in range was to simple practice everything that I could get my hands on( I mean all the companies).
Now for the kicker, I took the PPI about 6 weeks ago and got a 550 so I knew the range that I was in, or so I thought. Then 3 weeks ago I got a 450 on PPII and I freaked. But from that point I worked every single question in the OG and laid siege to this website. I did not think I was even going to get a 500 for three weeks.
What I recommend for people going through this torture: 1) Get the OG and study the hell out of it, because many of the questions on the test, at this level anyways, were very similar. 2) When you take the powerprep take it seriously. Do it at the same time and day of the week that you will be taking the test. 3) To get inside the head of the CAT, keep running the questions to see the different scores and combinations. This gave me an idea of the way the questions might progress for the different stages of the exam. 4) Build your mental stamina!! I read a lot of really heavy history subjects that I found a little boring and practiced spotting modifiers, relative clauses, and the way points were made. Mental stamina is important!!! 5) Get a plan and stick to it. 6) Read everything about this site.
Hope this helps out others. Take care and good-luck in business school.
Chris