Hi,
I just finished my GMAT exam (3rd attempt) to a get score of 710 Q49(87%) V37(80%). I had given GMAT in 2006 and got 650 and then again in 2007 and got 660. The second score was after a 9-week ManhattanGMAT class. My score for verbal was not letting my score cross the 660 range. For my third attempt I decided to focus on SC specifically. Three of us made a study group and that really helped me improve my verbal thought process. We used to meet once in a week for about 1.5 years. Full-fledged GMAT preparation was about 8 intense weeks.
As I understood the SC GMAT traps and concepts, CR was becoming a bottleneck and after 3 week of practice and review I realized that for CR I was not making the bubbles and arrows that I needed to analyze the arguments correctly. After that it was GMAT quantitative that became a problem. Silly mistakes mostly and some weak areas such as algebra and word translations.
One week before the GMAT exam I started to wind down my preparation and focused solely on the GMAT OG 12's last 50 questions for all areas. The number of questions attempted in the last five days until the exam day were not more than 150.
On actual day, I was calm and composed and decided to just breeze through Argument and Issue analysis. For Quant I decided to pace myself as that is the single most important in GMAT. The same applied for verbal. I did have some time constraints in the last 5 questions as I had 7 minutes left but managed to finish them on time. Again one needs to pace himself or herself.
I will now apply for part-time MBA programs.