Do the writing samples on practice tests!

Hey everyone,

I've been lurking on the board since July and am taking the test at the end of October. My scores have been mediocre:

Kaplan Diag 1: 490
" 2: 520
" 3: 510
PowerPrep 1: 570 (better than the Kaplan scores, as I've learned and read from everyone here, Kaplan's scoring is more challenging)

Now here's the kicker, I was reading a suggestion by member Rhyme to do the writing samples on all the practice tests, to get a proper, true experience. Until now, I had not been doing so. I did it for the first time yesterday, and I have to say the impact is very significant. I was feeling a great deal of mental fatigue during the Verbal portion of the exam, and was forcing myself to focus and push through. Interestingly enough, the essays did get my brain flowing, as I had to think creatively for the responses. I noticed this had a calming effect before I started the Quant section. The downside, however was the extreme fatigue going into the Verbal portion. From now onwards, I plan on taking the same approach, as to build up my mental tolerance to intently focus for 3h 30 min, instead of the usual 2h 30min with the Quant and Verbal sections. I employed that method on a Princeton Revew Diag and scored a 570. I'm not impressed with my performance, in fact, I feel quite lousy that I've been studying since July and am still not seeing major improvment. My goal is to hit the 670-700 range. Do my fellow members have any good suggestions? I have the OG 11th ed, the OG Quant review book, the OG Verbal review book, GMAT 800, and the Princeton Revew book. Should I start doing the Challenges to build up my Quant skills? Any other books that can help? Or tools/techniques? So far I've been focusing on on area a day (RC, DS, PS, etc), and then on the weekend taking a full exam.

This is probably alot for a first post, but I wanted to reiterate what Rhyme and a few others have mentioned about doing the writing samples in the practice tests. Do it. You'll need to build up the mental endurance for focusing for such an extended period of time with not much of a break. I'd also help any feedback from members on how I can improve my studying/test taking.

Thanks alot everyone, Kudos to the community for sharing the information and helping each other out.

Regards,

AK