Background: Senior, Electrical Engineering major, ~3.7 GPA want to enter joint MBA-MS program (first choice is Georgia Tech, Rice - anybody else know any other high quality programs?) also applying to Columbia MBA (shot in the dark, with no work experience). I also test fairly well, I was National Merit back in high school (top half of one % on PSAT, and got 580v/760q (wish it was higher, bah)/5 AWA on GRE)
Just took the GMAT today. Compared to most on this forum, I did relatively little prep work, and I am very pleased with my score, higher than any practice:) My prep work (I started in late June and studied for about a month, then refreshed recently - but nothing hardcore, got enough studying with EE)
Read entire Princeton Review GMAT Book
Kaplan GMAT (flipped thru)
Kaplan GMAT 800 (did most of it, questions very hard and frustrating)
Kaplan paper test (took completely blind back in Feb., offered at my university, I think they made it intentionally hard to get ppl to pay them $1200) - 620
Princeton Review CD with book - did 2 tests, I think both scores 630-670
Powerprep - 660 (this summer), 710 (2-3 weeks ago)
Read this forum
I also took the GRE back in August, memorized a lot of words for it (hehe that didn't help for GMAT) - math sections were similiary, with DS instead of QC
A few comments:
1. Quant was pretty easy, one weird question about finding factors, something like how many factors of 5^k exist within 1-20 multiplied? I had no idea
2. Verbal, I got the bold faced questions starting around #25, 3 consecutive of them. Not hard. SC are always the hardest but without too much extensive work I will take my verbal score.