I started studying in January knowing I would be aiming to take the GMAT in the spring. Before I took a practice test I read the Powerscore guide to sentence correction and another general book on the GMAT verbal section because I hadn't refreshed myself with grammar since high school. Being a professional engineer I was overly confident that I would dominate the quantitative section. I am looking at top 10 programs so I knew I needed at least a 700 to be competitive. My first practice test I received a 610. I was very disappointed. What surprised me is I scored above the 90%ile for verbal but sucked at the math section. I purchased the full set of Manhattan gmat study guides after researching the options and I developed a study schedule of approximately 6 hours a week. I had no intentions of ever taking a class. I didn't see the value in paying thousands of dollars to have an instructor tell me which problems to practice on my own. I guess some people need the structure of a classroom but I certainly do not. I went through and read every book (except sentence correction) cover to cover and performed the practice problems. In April I began taking CAT's again. I took a total of 4 and scored between 680 and 710 each time. I finally decided it was time to take the test because I was beginning to forget the tricks I learned in January. The week before the test I went back through each book and practiced problems from each section. I finally read the sentence correction book which turned out to be the most valuable study session of the entire 5 months. On test day when I began the quantitative section I was flustered and nervous and had to guess on the first two questions, both of which I knew I would normally be able to answer. My heart dropped... I'm totally screwed. Well the rest of the quant section seemed relatively easy, which lead me to believe I hadn't performed well. What was crazy is I felt like I knew the answer to every single sentence correction problem on the verbal. I could easily spot the problem. I finished the verbal section with 8 minutes to spare.

I got a 740 (97%ile), 46 verbal (99%ile), 47 math (77%ile) and a 5.5 AWA. The Manhattan study guides truly made all the difference!!!! Thanks!!! I will be attending Stanford, Harvard, Cal Berkeley, UCLA, or Northwestern in 2012... depending who is smart enough to accept me :)