Frank883
You guys are right I should have taken it more seriously.
The reason why I want to do CATs at the End is so I get used to the environment a few days before the real Exam.
If I do the CATs now I won't score well and just waste a CAT.
Since I already know my weakness in (quant and verbal) I just focus on them atm and once I am ready I do the CATs.
When I study for University I also just practice till I am confident enough and then I do the Test-Exams (Always done very well, maybe GMAT is different -.-).
The point of the CATs isn't necessarily to score well. Does it help if you do score well? Yes, of course. But ultimately, you just want to learn as much as possible and find key takeaways. Its hard to know if you are weak in a certain area without seeing how you would perform in an adaptive situation. Maybe you are bad at 700+ level SC questions. But that does not mean you are bad at SC overall.
There is no way you will be able to do CATs on consecutive days before your exam. I would recommend one per week leading up to it (maybe two after you exhausted all of your other resources). You need to make sure you go through all of the questions on each exam and review the answers. This alone could take a few days.
Leading up to the exam, you want your head to be 100% clear and make sure you are in the proper state of mind. I took my last CAT 4 days before the actual exam and didn't do any studying the day before my exam.
You need to be building test stamina over time. That's why studying in 75 minute spurts with 8 minute breaks will help. The whole point of studying should be to reflect the reality of the exam situation.
There are tons of CATs out there so I personally wouldn't worry about "wasting" them. GMATPrep gives you two free and two with exam pack 1, Veritas Prep has 7 for $49,
MGMAT has a bunch, etc... You won't run out of CATs because they are an adaptive test. If you take one early on and get a 500, then study and retake it and get a 760, you probably will not have seen many of the same questions. That is the beauty of the adaptive tests. As long as you improve, you can retake an exam with little overlap in questions.
I took a GMATPrep exam as my first exam when I began studying and scored a 610. I retook it months later after studying and didn't remember any of the questions because time had passed. I probably didn't face more than 5 of the same questions (which I didn't even remember) because my score had improved and the algorithm gave me harder questions.
At the end of the day, the studying process if your choice. I understand where you come from based on college exams (I was the same way for the past 3.5 years and just graduated), but the GMAT is way different in my opinion.