Just wanted to thank all in this forum . I just finished my GMAT yesterday and got a 780 ( surprised myself!) . I registered for GMAT just a month back . And started with a state of complete panic . Till I found this forum and Testmagic. Hats off to these for giving me all the material I needed in a few hours of surfing. And strategies for preparing.
Let me add my two bits for those who have just begun.
My serious prep was for 2 weeks but intensive. I bought Kaplan GMAT with CD, downloaded OG Verbal section ( some kind soul had uploaded it) and some GMAT paper tests. Bought Princeton Verbal workout for GMAT at the last minute. Of course, I had the Powerprep tests. Also had the Princeton CAT tests - a 2 year old version. I finally did 4 Kaplan CATS, 1 Princeton CAT, 4 paper tests, about 70% of the Sentence correction grom OG.
Started with Kaplan CAT 2 weeks back after reading thru material in the book. Got a disastrous 560. Panic. My quant is usually good. But I was so stuck on solving even tough problems, I tended to lose time and would have to guess my way thru the last few questions. Also, i had serious trouble with HCF and LCM despite reading up and feeling i had understood the conceps! Verbal sentence correction was a serious issue.
The key to preparation is NOT just practice as most books tell you. It is focussed practice. I got a school math tutorial on HCF, LCM from the net, solved some 60 silly one line problems and was fine on this. I trained myself to look at the time and forced myself to give up after 3 minutes on any question and take a guess. any test I took, I tracked my mistakes . Any conceptual ones, I spent extra time studying these specific concepts and did a few more problems. Silly mistakes ( plenty!) - I trained myself to pause after hitting the Next button , look over the problem once more to spot any silly mistake or GMAT tricks ( eg. question is in cents, answer asked for in dollars), then only hit Confirm.
Verbal - only 2 pieces of advice - and very important ones.
1. DO NOT GUESS THE RIGHT ANSWER AND LOOK FOR IT IN THE ANSWER CHOICES. Use the Process of elimination. All books talk about this but the Princeton Verbal hammers this point. Believe me , I shifted to this process some 3 days before the actual GMAT and I will give 70% of the credit to this process alone. as they rightly say, GMAT does not want you to select the right answer. You need to select the answer that stinks the LEAST.
2. Learn the 8 or 9 rules outlined in Kaplan or Princeton ( pretty much the same list) and apply these in the process of elimination. When you check answers, check ALL the explanations not just what you got wrong. Then make notes if you find anything that seems new to you. our tendency is to just skim and with all the tests that you take, you WILL forget.
Actual exam - I must say I found the Quant section tougher. screwed up on time by mis-reading a question and then wasting time. I HAD to pause, take a few deep breaths, give up on a few questions, guess and move on. Verbal - I used the POE and still had to choose between 2 answers about 50 % of the time. Time management is key in both the sections. In the first half, you have to tell yourself to spend some more time because you must get these right. in the second half, you have to tell yourself to move on because the last few questions might be simpler than the toughie you are trying to solve just then. I found this shift in attitude quite painful and wished I had practised this.
One final point. I have a 3 year old daughter who of course found my computer based tests extremely interesting and insisted on clicking away. and we have 2 dogs who were most stressed with the Diwali noise and continued to bark through my prep . I used earplugs. They were useful but not good enough to drown out the noise. BUT ... it was sheer bliss to take the actual GMAT with only the sound of keyboards. I must have added some 50 points just by improved test taking environment. Maybe its worth doing your prep in suboptimal conditions!
all the best. And thanks again.
Nalini
And Congrats on the top score Nalini... Nice to see you coming back to post your experiences and sharing it with everybody... Hope to see you sticking around thro' your apping process and and help guide other GMAT applicants 
. atb for the other stages.
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