Here's my debrief.
Got a respectable 680
the first time but I was still disappointed because I didn't reach my goal of 700+. So I planned on taking the GMAT again.
The essays were easy. Just
memorize an essay format and plug the information from the passage into the essay. Being mathematically inclined I despise (for lack of an even worse word) writing essays. For those of you that share a similar view, this method works wonders. I can’t stress it enough.
With this method you’ll be amazed at how organized your essays become.
10 minute break. I was too anxious to spend the whole ten minutes and decided to tackle the quantitative section after about five minutes.
I've read in numerous places that it isn't true that the first ten questions in each section isn't essential; ‘it's better to pace yourself and not spend too much time on a question’ blah, blah Yeah, I know. I've tried to keep this in mind and not fall into this trap. This is difficult to overcome, especially when the PowerPrep and GMAT Prep practice exams indicate otherwise. Subsequently, I fell back into that trap.
I think it was the 8th or 9th question where I was just perplexed for what felt like an eternity. I was determined to answer that question and when I finally did, the timer read 55 minutes left. If this was verbal I would have been worried but being from an engineering background, I've learned many shortcuts when solving math problems that would significantly shorten the problem solving times. And those shortcuts have. Fortunately I've managed to catch up with time.
Overall, the math section wasn’t difficult at all. I knew that if I just avoided making careless mistakes I could get a 49 (worse case scenario would be a 47). I knew I could break the ‘40’ mark on the verbal section, but only on a good day.
The mistake that I made during the first GMAT attempt was that I was
too nervous. I panicked. The simplest of questions would take me the full 2 minutes to answer, leaving me with no 'reserve' time for the more difficult questions. My methods for overcoming this problem was to
stop for a few seconds and take a few deep breaths. Keep your cool.
SC is the easiest section to improve upon.
The Manhattan GMAT sentence correction book is gospel. If you find yourself lacking in this regard, then I strongly advise you to get this book.
The other problem that I realized during the first attempt at the GMAT was that
as I read the CR and RC passages, none of the information from the passages would process in my head and when I got to a question I found myself rereading the passage. This escalated my nervousness due to more time spent on each question, and thus tighter time constraints.
To overcome this I decided to
read the passage slowly , making sure to take in all the information. If I found my mind drifting I'd read that sentence again. Although this method may seem time consuming, it really isn't; what may seem like an eternity during an exam is probably 20-30 extra seconds. And that
lost time can be more than recouped when answering SC questions. I found myself answering a few SC questions in ~30 seconds. How do I know this you ask? There was an overhead clock above my computer.
What surprised me was that I was pretty calm throughout the whole exam in comparison to the first time I took the GMAT. This quickly changed once I answered the final verbal question. I answered the questionnaire and then this question came up.
‘Do you want to report your scores?’
There was no way in hell that I was going to select ‘cancel’. I had nothing to lose because I didn't send the score to any schools. I wanted to see it first. I hit the next button and the pointer became an hourglass. I knew that the computer was calculating my score then and there. 20-30 seconds seemed like an eternity. My heart began beating faster. Soon it felt like it was jumping out of my chest. I knew I did better than last time but how much better? I started to fear that I would not meet my goal and have to crack those GMAT books open again. I dreaded that thought; my life was literally on hold studying for this exam. After so much studying I felt that even a 700 would have been disappointing; I wanted a 720. I couldn't bear the pressure and just closed my eyes until I was absolutely sure that my score was on the screen.
Then I opened my eyes and saw it:
Q49 (89%), V40 (89%), O 730, (96%)
I pumped my fist so hard. For a few seconds I was ecstatic. Then I fell back into my seat, slouching. It’s over…The feeling was a combination of happiness, exhaustion and relief: Happy to surpass the score that I wanted, exhausted from the exam and the many hours of studying, and relieved to finally be finished with this exam.
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, I vote that this should be made a standing rule on BTG 
..
