I have never posted on this board before, but have found it to be indispensable to my GMAT preparation. I am not sure I would have been able to keep a level head without reading everyone's debriefs about their test experiences as well as what materials they found useful.
I took the GMAT today and scored 750 (Q-48, V-45).
Here is my debrief (I apologize for any grammatical mistakes, as I have been celebrating all afternoon watching college bball and drinking beers):
I am 24 and graduated from a fringe top-50 U.S University where I studied Economics and Political Science. I have always been a strong standardized test taker, scoring a 1450 on my SAT in high school. Since graduation I have worked at two mid-market management consulting firms.
I signed up for th Feb 7 GMAT on December 14th, giving me a little less than 2 months to prepare. I am always a fan of restricting your prep time because it focuses you more. In college, I was the guy who could either have 3 weeks or 3 months to complete soemthing and was doing it the last 10 days either way. I excel under pressure.
I began my prep, as I suggest everyone does, by taking the first GMATPrep exam from mba.com. I scored a 690. I identfied my weaknesses to be the high level quant and sentence correction.
Although I bought a bunch of non-official books (i.e Kaplan), I found using them to be, for lack of a better word, useless. The wording of the questions just did not seem congruent to the actual GMAT language.
For actual question prep, I truly endorse buying any offical GMAT material possible. This includes the OG 11, subsequent verbal and quant specific reviews, and paper tests from mba.com. Getting familiar with the language and structure of the questions is key. I have found that all the other prep companies do not come close to mimicking the language and structure of the GMAT questions. I did the official guides and written tests several times.
If any one specific area is your weaknes (mine was sentece correction), I strongly suggest the Manhatten guides. I order mine 2 weeks before my exam and my sentence correction improved dramtically. For example, when I would take or re-take gmat-prep I woul 7 or 8 verball wrong and all but one would be sentence correction. The Manhatten guide gave me the strategies I needed to improve my score (I was scorign 40-42 on the GMAT prep and 45 on the actual).
As far as practice tests, I only found the GMAT Prep useful. I also agree that it is the best indication of you actual score. I took and retook both preps multiple times and despite the fact I saw repeat question, I found this excersise indispensible to my prep. The interfaceis exactly what you encounter test day, and being comfortable with the interface makes taking the actual test that much easier.
Gmat prep 1 - 690
Gmat prep 2 - 740 (2 weeks before test)
Retakes - 730 - 760
As for the actual test day, I took the exam at 8 am. Worked out and did not do much studying the night before. I never focused much studying on the essays and breeezed through them with relative ease on test day. I will say that I found the quant section to be incredibly daunting. There were two or three questions in the first 10 that i definetily got wrong and did not even feel close to getting the correct answer. This threw me off. I was seeing what I thought were easier questions later on and it got in my head. My one suggestion is to completely ignore the computer adaptive nature of the test. It can completely throw you off if you think that the test is indicating your performance before you see your score. I finished the quant 8 minutes early.
Drank a redbull and ate a tangelo during break. Verbal was nothing unexpected. I found the sentence correctins to be easier than gmatprep or the OG. The wrong answers weremore obvious. I recievd two very long passages for reading comprehension (5 or 6 paragraphs each, requirin scrolling), which threw me off a bit, but I managed.
The exam gives you 10 mins at the end to decide to cancel your score, in all honesty, I sat there for 9 and a half minutes trying to decide. I felt awful. I ended uo saying screw it and chalked it up to a $250 practice test. I was surprised to see my score.
In conclusion, hard work and repetion are the key. Expose yourself to as many actual past gmat problems as possible.
Thanks again to everyone that posts on this board. I am not sure I would have done so well without you.
Best,
Greg