Hi!
I wanted to start off by thanking MGmat for creating this awesome math books. I had all the 5 math books as well as SC and RC/CR book.
Here's all the books I had
MGMAT - Buy all the books, CR/RC not that great I should say
OG 11, OG verbal and OG math - Must
Kaplan 800 - Not that great.
CR bible - Too big. Finished in 3 days. Not sure if it was good or not. But I found it tough to apply their principles. Nevertheless, I did revise it before the exam.
FlashCards from beat the gmat - Really good verbal. Did not refer to the math ones.
Score: 710
Quanti: 48
Verbal: 39
Best thing I did: Created flashcards for all the difficult stuff in MGMAT book.
Start: I started 7 weeks ago with no background work. I just decided to take the test and took the date of 29th Dec. And the preparation started. I was clueless on how to proceed and so did some research and found out about MGmat. Bought all the books from mgmat which was the best thing I ever did. I repeat that you need all the 5 copies of math and the SC guide. CR and Rc is just OK. Infact, it is not upto the standard of MGMAT if I may say so.
Math - As everyone says, OG is must. I would even buy the purple and green book as they have some extra problems. The best thing I did was just 2 weeks before the exam, I went over all the mgmat books again and created a flash card for any problem I found tough or any advice which did not make sense (I mean which was tough to remember ;))
I went through all the mgmat books once and took all the problems along. I marked the ones which were really cool. 2 weeks ago, I went through them again and made the flash cards. I could have made them before. I would recommend doing it for all the problems or tips that you think Aha. Infact, anytime you mind says "Hmnnn" or "Ahaa" take out a flashcard and write it down. It doesn't need to be concise, you can write some detail. The ones I used were slightly bigger than my palm. You get the point.
I also did all the problems in OG and the OG green book. I marked the ones that were tough and went over twice - last time on the very day of the test. Not everybody needs to do that but my mind takes a while to go in 5th gear and so it was necessary for me to go over it.
Other than that I did gmat 800 which was OK. I also took 6 mgmat exams (1st one is Free and then if you buy books (which you should) you get a code which gives you 6 more test). After studying for 1 week I took my 1st exam from the software downloaded from mba.com. I scored 590 and this was before studying all the mgmat books. So I was rough on all the parts. I had not touched math for 8 years after all.
I should mention that I never scored more than 640 on my mgmat exam though.
Verbal -
Yes, SC is the best. I didn't refer to any other book than mgmat sc. I also referred to the flash cards. During the 1st week I would daily look at those ready made flashcards before sleeping. That helped. Afer a while, I remembered all of them and things went cool. I could have scored more in verbal. But that would have required more time. After all, as you would have figured, english is not my 1st language.
However, Gmat SC is tough! If I have to do this again, I would make flash cards for each SC that I got wrong with reason. And I would insist that you should make sure you get all the examples in OG and purple book right. MGMAT exams are good but I felt there was a pattern in Gmat which I could not find in mgmat exam.
AWA:
There is some template floating around which is too good. I only wrote 2 essays before the test. I don't know my AWA score yet, but I think I did okay.
Other:
I also made sure that I practiced all the questions I got wrong on mgmat exams. That really helped. On the day of my exam, I knew all the answers very quickly. Infact, most of them in less than 30 sec. During the test as well, I was doing too good. I was like 6 minutes ahead of my schedule when I was halfway. Then couple of toughies took away all the extra time. When you go for exam, try not to spend more than 2.5 minute on any problem. It is not worth it.
Good luck! And all the best!
Btw, there were a few surprises in exam which I did not see in OG or MGmat. But you will do good if you know your fundamentals and know when to guess.