GMAT debrief; e-GMAT verbal online

Hello Folks,

I appeared for GMAT on 9th Dec '14. I scored 710 (Q51 V34 AWA 6.0 and 5 on that section I can't remember the name). Anyways, this debrief will layout the resources I used, time I spent and my opinion about the whole thing.

Resources:
MGMAT Math books - Very useful to refresh the basics
GMAT Club - Quizzes - extremely useful - Highly recommended
e-GMAT Verbal Online - Highly recommended for non-native speakers. I will write a separate note about this.
800 Tests: Recommended to get into the groove. Take these tests seriously but not the scores, don't worry about what you score
OG 13 - Cover to cover
Verbal Review 2ed - Cover to cover
Quant Review 2ed - Cover to cover
Time:
I started my preparation in Aug '13 and the first thing I did was to purchase the OG'13 book from Amazon, got it shipped and slept over it till Feb '14 (work issues). The next thing I did was to get serious about my goals and buy MGMAT set of 10 books and slept over again till July '14. I should remind that I was preparing on and off in an unstructured way. I signed up for e-GMAT in May'14 and attended a few sessions run by Rajat, Payal and team. I wasn't aware of the details behind verbal. I realized it is not run of the mill test and got serious about verbal prep and went over each and every online lesson till Sept'14. I been working for about 9 years now and my attention span is of a 2-year old (largely due to emails, projects and the life on fast track during my work days). The training that e-GMAT provided was a life changing experience. I left all the grammar, reasoning, RC habits during the course of my work (who cares about grammar anyways while writing emails or preparing a presentation, RC? I don't know of anyone reading more than 2 liner emails, forget about 700 word paragraphs, reasoning? nobody cares - Ok, enough of the rant about work). e-GMAT helped me update my verbal skills and I was back in form (the last time I gave any serious test was in 2003 - GRE, CAT etc). I was consistently scoring around 40 in all my tests.

Needless to say, Math was a cakewalk.

Test Day: 3:30 PM - worst possible slot. AWA was cool. I used the template by chineseburned (take a bow). Next up was that awful topic and my score reflected my liking for it.
Math - was damn hard. The tests and quizzes were no where near the difficulty level I faced. I thought I screwed it up badly. I used the whole 75 mins allotted for Quant. A point to note is that I never used more than 45 mins to complete the 37 questions during my mock tests. So, considering that, I felt humbled and sad after those stressful 75 mins.
Took the 8 min break. My advise - take it. Take a walk, stretch, eat something, smoke etc.
Verbal - I don't know what to say, I never imagined I would score 34. One thing I learned is that the algorithm can't be beaten (sorry beat the gmat), it finds out your skills that you acquired over your lifetime (thanks Liam Neeson) and puts you where you are supposed to be.

Final Words:
Anyways, it has been a great learning experience and I was able to get over something that I have been procrastinating for over 6 months. Now that GMAT is out of the way, I am off to the next step - lengthy essays and application forms. I hate this aspect of the application process. I wish there was one form that I could fill for all colleges and get over it. Okay, I think I rambled enough.

Thanks GMATCLUB and e-GMAT. I wish all the future applicants great success.

To the GMATClub team: I am hiding my name and personal details on my score card. Hope that is okay.