I just wanted to quickly summarise my prep. technique in case any of you were wondering what it consisted of.
I decided to do the gmat this july, and promptly ordered;
OG 10th
Kaplan GMAT 2006
Princeton crack the gmat 2005
kaplan math & verbal guide
kaplan 800.
I went through the Kaplan GMAT book and the kaplan math workbook in about a month. In August I got so bored of studying I did not open another book until late September, when I went through the harder math and verbal problems (bin 4) in the princeton review book and also through kaplan 800 (Best one by far next to the kaplan GMAT book)
I took a brief peek inside of the OG and the kaplan verbal guide but did not do more than one fifth of the problems in each. (I am not sure if the OG lists questions in order from easiest to hardest, but I did the last 50-60 in each section.)
I took the kaplan diagnostic test (640), PP 1 (710) GMATprep 1 (710). If I have to be perfectly honest, I had actually intended to go through the whole OG and do every CAT available to me, but never managed getting around to it. In retrospect, I truly wish I had done at least one or two AWA sections (I always skipped them and always thought I would get the chance to brush up my skills a week or two before the exam) as I got a very hard question on the exam and only managed writing three paragraphs. Both of my essays were slightly shorter than this forum post up until this point. Nevertheless, Im keeping my fingers crossed in hopes that I get at least a 4 overall - I would not want to have to do the GMAT again just because of that useless section.
I know many people recommend that you should study hard and so forth, but I actually think that as long as you visit this forum a few times a week and do some of the verbal and quant. questions (as well as read others explanations), you should do decently well. I would only recommend the OG, and the Kaplan 800/GMAT books.
As for the day of the test, I hadnt done any revision for 2 weeks save 20-30 questions from the OG, so I was dead sure I would do badly and was actually planning on booking another test date as soon as possible. I woke up feeling extremely tired and grumpy(I didnt manage getting more than five hours sleep the night before - its always like that when I have a big day coming up), and made my way to the test centre.
The quant section began terribly - The third question involved combinations, an area I touched upon only briefly in my revision and hence was forced to guess . I chose the wrong answer and assume that this resulted in my relatively low quant score of 48 (87th percentile

). I spent way too much time on the first 20 questions, and actually had about a minute to spend on each of the last 10 questions. By this point I was extremely upset as the questions were terribly easy, and I was sure I had done very badly.
The verbal section was a different story - although some of the RC and the SC questions stomped me for a good 3-5 minutes, most of the questions were extremely easy. I got _5_ RC passages, two on females in the work force (ETS just seems to love them) and three on science related topics such as lava canals on venus. I had about 5-6 minutes to spare with 2 questions to go, which I rushed through as I wanted to get my scores and get out of there as soon as possible - remember I was almost positive that I had messed up badly due to the verbal and latter quant questions being so easy. Imagine my surprise when 750 popped up, I couldnt believe my eyes and was positive that the computer would crash or something similar causing it to get erased.
Now I am just keeping my fingers crossed regarding the AWA. It would be a pity if a poor score in this section keeps me from getting into the top schools out there.
Ill be happy to answer any further questions should anyone have anything to ask.