[geek_goddess]

Thank you, everyone. Especially Oldman, you are probably right.

This was what I did-
I did five weeks of intensive studying + tests, which amounted to about 8-10 hours a day. Though I do feel 4 weeks is sufficient. I started with the first PP, in which I got 760 Q and 650 V. This post will be most useful to those who got scores around this.
I started studying with Barron's, which I found great as a starting point. I'd looked at Princeton Review, but it suggested Elimination for every single question, which doesn't work in reality. You need to know, to not just reduce your options to two or three, but to solve and get the answer. So Barron's was good to be able to see what questions the GRE tests, for example, a common concept tested is which is bigger: x or x^2? And so on. You shouldn't worry if you aren't getting the data interpretation questions of Barron's, for DI, PP is the best place for questions. I did PP tests many times over in the last week before the exams, as this throws up new questions for a while.
The word lists were daunting. The first thing I did was to reduce the Barrons' 3500 list to a list of words I did not know cold. This got the list down to about 1500-2000 words for me. I processed these slowly over time, this period felt largely unproductive, as one did not see immediate results from the memorising. I kept doing the Barron's math on the side.
I discovered Nova about halfway through my prep. It is a great book. It had a lovely section on RCs, and on essay writing. It's math was slightly tougher than PP.
With Nova math, I was doing the BB verbal tests. This was extremely useful. Although the prep books try to mimick GRE questions, there is nothing like the old papers of the exam you are giving, and especially if you have 54 of them. I did half of them as tests, then I saw Oink's post, and then on I switched to doing them typewise. This really helps you see patterns in the questions. The Antonyms require you to know the word, that is it. The analogies are also a bit deep, but you can get it down to two choices. The SCs- the trick is to see that what has been given to you is there only so that you can answer the question. There is no extra information in the sentence with blanks. Once you've filled in the blank, the sentence should look like a complete entity by itself. The RCs were a serious problem for me when I did BB RCs, but the actual exam had RCs where the answer choices could be eliminated easily, and I didn't have to look at the text, except to check whether something which was to be inferred had not been directly stated.
I kept reducing the Barron's list over time, and was marking new words from the BB tests too. Doing tests simultaneously with word lists helps you remember the words better. You just have to do the words. There is no escaping it. Reducing it helps- by the last day, I had about 20 which I could not retain at all, for which I built up the most twisted mnemonics.
I kept doing tests, any that I could find. I did not sequence my work, I was doing a dynamic optimization everyday, thinking about what is the best thing to do at t=0 today. (which is why this post appears so unstructured)
I followed threads in this forum with enthusiasm- this was good for SD and the gaussian distribution, as well as questions where Goldust found clean shortcuts. Bayern- I never had a problem with P&C, so I can't say.
Its important to do computer tests- in my first pp, most of my mistakes were silly ones, or I had checked the wrong box after calculating the answer. By doing all the tests I could find, I learnt to solve for col A and B in the left and right sides of the paper, and to be cautious about silly things like that.
For the essays, I read Gre nova to see the structures they suggested, then I built my own. You can't take anyone else's structure here- you need to know yourself, and how you write, and how you would like to present your ideas. I have some essays on this forum, but it's presumtuous of me to talk about it before I get my scores for AW.

The single worst thing about the exam is the kind of stamina you need. It was a sheer nightmare, it was literally the worst time of my life. This exam is like a video game. You have no idea what is coming next. The one minute breaks are more frustrating than useful. And (for mystic-) you aren't allowed watches in the exam hall. You have to lock everything except your passport up in some godforsaken locker outside. you have no idea when the breaks are getting close to over. It's hell. I was shaking when I stepped out- it is great if you can learn how to get control over the test, and create some stressful conditions to practice tests in. Do all the tests you can find- you will soon get a feel of what is like the exam, and what is not. Don't touch Arco tests. They are not useful. I didn't do any Princeton tests, so I cant' say about those. I did Barron's GRE Nova, Kaplan, PP, and some online tests. A total of about 9-12.

I posted a reply to Ruchia's thread on how to memorize words which might be useful. It's useful to look up your doubts by searching through this forum. Also read debriefings by goldust, oink and jeanette. i read them over many times. About my scores in my practice tests - I don't have them exactly- I managed to trash my hard disk two days before the exam- but on average I was hitting 760 in quant towards the middle of my prep, which edged up to 780-800 Q in Kaplan tests I did in the fourth week, and a steady 800 in the last week. I used to get about 2-3 wrong in the Kaplan tests, and usually it was DI. For verbal, I pulled up from 650 to ~750 by doing Barron's, and the BB tests. I knew i was in a safe interval, and so the fifth week was really not that productive. I wasn't pushing up the verbal any further. I was expecting about 750-760, but i found the actual test to be surprisingly easy in verbal and horribly difficult in the quant. I was not sure of my answers in the quant about 1/2 the time during the actual exam.

Well, that is all I can think of right now. If I've left out anything, do tell me.