Party people,
This is my first post, but I read through these forums pretty frequently while studying, so I thought I'd pay it forward as much as possible.
I took the GMAT a few days ago and shocked myself with a 780 48Q, 49V, and 8 on IR). I was expecting to do pretty well - my first of the official GMAC exams was a 710, and after working out some kinks, I was able to get my MGMAT scores up to 740 - but actually seeing the score still kind of blew my mind.
Below are some tips and tricks I found useful (in no particular order of importance - just written as they come to mind). You've probably seen a bunch of them elsewhere (either in study manuals or on forums), but they're worth repeating because they worked. Note that there's nothing here that's specific to high scorers.
1) When taking exams, USE THE MGMAT SIMULATION BOOKLET. It sounds like a goofy tip, but I didn't even realize that you had to use one of those laminated booklets until I received my study materials, and then on my first practice exam, I ran out of room on booklet. If that had happened on exam day, it would have thrown me for a loop and would have definitely lowered my score.
2) Create an answer grid for verbal. When I came back to the computer after the break between quant and verbal, you're given 60 seconds to read through the instructions for verbal. I used this time (along with the fact that the booklet is graph paper) to number 1-41 down the page and A-E going across. When I was doing a particular question, for answer choice in the row of my grid, I would put a big X if the answer choice was obviously wrong, a circle if it might be right but I should continue looking at the other answers, and a checkmark if I thought it was definitely right. Granted, you don't need to do all of this (you're probably doing something similar in your head anyway), but I wanted to get everything out of my working memory and down on paper. I found while studying that, without this process, I'd forget which answers I'd already ruled out, which caused me to take an unnecessarily long time on even easy problems.
3) Don't panic! You'll read this everywhere, but that's because it's true. There was a moment during quant where I started to panic because I saw 3 geometry problems back-to-back-to-back that were all harder than anything I'd seen in any of my practice. I just had to remind myself that: a) if I'm seeing problems of this difficulty, it's a good sign, and b) remember my timing and avoid the urge to let 1 (or 2 or 3) tough problems ruin my entire exam.
4) Related to #3, do timed sets religiously. Picking groups of 15 quant problems from the OG and forcing myself to finish in 30 minutes helped me more than any other thing I did to prepare. It really does help you develop a "mental clock". In fact, I probably broke some MGMAT commandment and spent 6 minutes on one quant question, but I only did so because: a) it was near the end of the section, b) I knew I could solve it, and c) I had enough time left over specifically BECAUSE I didn't let those tough geometry questions I mentioned above throw me off earlier in the exam.
5) Be in a good mindset when going into the exam. This is something I've learned the importance of in my professional career (I'm an actuary, so I take tons of exams). When I left my apartment the morning of the exam, I was panicking because I hadn't been able to study in two weeks due to work emergencies. Fortunately, it was a nice day, so I walked the 30 minutes to the testing center listening to upbeat music and pumping myself up. If anybody driving by saw me, I probably looked like a crazy person, but it worked - by the time I got to the test, my nerves were gone and I'd convinced myself that I was going to score a 780 or 790. Maybe it's "The Secret"...
6) Sleep. Definitely the night before. The whole week before if possible. I used earplugs to drown out the party next door the night before my test.
7) The GMAT is a marathon - prepare accordingly. For me this meant: a) a banana and 1/2 5 Hour Energy during my first break, and b) a Snickers bar and the remaining 1/2 5 Hour Energy during the second break. I started to feel the mental fatigue by the time I got to around Q38 on verbal, but that was nothing like the "wall" I hit during some of my early practice exams.
8) Take practice exams with the essay and IR. I don't even know why you would take a practice exam without them, since it seems like half the battle on the GMAT is fighting mental exhaustion. If you don't have time to do the essay & IR when trying to squeeze in a practice exam, then you really should just do some other practice problems and save that practice test for later.
9) For what it's worth, IR on the actual exam was MUCH easier than MGMAT practice exams.
10) Go into the essay with a pre-defined essay structure. For me, it was just 5 paragraphs in the form "simple intro/point 1/point 2/point 3/simple conclusion". With the structure decided beforehand, I could focus my attention on generating the content.
11) Combining points 9 and 10, I felt really strong going into the quant section. I know colleges don't place a lot of importance on the GMAT essays, but it was important for me psychologically to do well on that. On practice exams where I just tried to "wing" the essays, I'd struggle on that and then everything afterward felt like a slog. It's like the difference between running uphill versus downhill. Combine a strong essay with IR being easier than expected, I felt primed to have a good day.
As for study materials, I purchased the MGMAT Complete Prep Set, but most of my time was spent with the OG13 and the MGMAT quant books. I never had time to get to the OG Quant and Verbal books. As for the MGMAT verbal books, I was pretty strong at CR and RC to begin with, so I ignored those books. As for SC, I found that the more grammar I learned from the strategy guide, the more I was getting confused, so eventually I set the book down. I'm fortunate in that I'm a native English speaker, so I could use my "ear" along with process-of-elimination (see my note #2 above) to rule out 3 incorrect answers on most SC questions. To decide between the remaining two, almost always there was something fairly obvious from one of the first chapters from the strategy guide to pick the correct answer. If there wasn't, I just picked one and moved on.
Hope this helps somebody.
Good luck!
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