Scored a 720, phew!

Just finished the exam. Scored a 720 (Q49, V39), 94 percentile. The target that I had when I started preparing for the exam was 750. I never had scored anything above 700 in any of my practice tests till now. So, I was expecting to score around 690 on the first effort and then was planning to retake the exam in July to reach 730-750. Considering the effort it takes to retake the test, I will settle for the 720...

Here is a debrief:

The exam:

...was yesterday. It was just like another day for me. I had a plan B in case it dint go well. So, I was calm and composed and gave it my best shot. Take away message 1: The exam is no big deal. You dont have to start taking multi-vitamin support one month before the exam (I read on this forum that someone had done this ). You dont need the "5-hour energy" crap either. You just need to prepare hard and believe in yourself to do good on the exam. Coming back to the exam- the Quant section somehow seemed easy. Occasionally I got a few ridiculously easy questions. My problem in quant is that whenever I see a long and wordy problem, my brain goes into a hibernate mode. So I kinda guessed on a few such questions. I screwed up the timing on Quant: I had 35 minutes for the last 10 questions and I finished quant with 6 mins to spare. This might be the reason that I got a 49 instead of a 50.

After the quant, I took the 8 min break. The 8 mins goes really really fast! When I returned back to my desk, there was just 20 sec left. The Verbal section dint throw any big surprises either. The SC ques were similar to those in GMAT Prep. The RC's, I felt, were slightly more tuff. CR is where I think I missed out a few, even though it was my strength before I started preparing. Take away message 2: Don't just focus on your weakness, try also to perfect your strengths!

The Preparation

...started in late Jan. My baseline score without any prep was 590 (on MGMAT 1). I dint know where to start, so I enrolled for MGMAT 9 week online course. The course was good, but, in my opinion, what it really does is it only puts you on the right track. Once you are on the track, it is entirely up to you whether you reach your destination or not. One mistake that I made was, I dint maintain a error log. I also dint keep a track of the questions that I had actually solved and the "to-do" questions. I omitted a lot of questions in OG 12. Take away message 3: Try to be organized and methodical, even if it is time consuming. But, one really good thing that I did was that I solved the GMAT club Math tests, 1 per day. These tests are very similar to the actual thing. I also think solving the question in a test like setting is more important than solving it from a book.

As far as verbal is concerned, I started out bad. I started with around 70% accuracy in CR, 50% in SC and 40% in RC. My verbal prep was focussed more toward my weakness areas. I was able to improve my accuracy to 100% in RC, 70% in SC and 80% in CR. Again,the MGMAT SC book is great. But you also need to learn how to apply the rules in the book to real problems. The Powerscore CR Bible has got some cool techniques. For RC, it is just practice and more practice that helps.

Finally here are my pre-GMAT scores:

MGMAT 1: 590 (Q47, V26)
MGMAT 2: 640 (Q44, V34)
MGMAT 3: 660 (Q45, V34)
MGMAT 4: 700 (Q47, V40)

GMAT Prep 1: 700 (Q48, V41)
GMAT Prep 2: 690 (Q48, V35)

Adios for now, but shoot me your ques if you have any...