| i've taken the GMAT once (710, 91st percentile overall, 92nd percentile verbal, 77th percentile quant) and i'm retaking. here's my strategy:
general - i use ONLY the "official" gmat books. after taking the test once, i feel like that's all that's really important. unofficial materials can get questions that are sort of veering off into non-test territory.
verbal - i'm already naturally pretty good at this, so it's just a matter of brushing up by doing a couple hundred questions.
quant - this is my weak area. not that i'm necessarily bad at math, but i dropped out of hs and only took 2 math classes in college, so i have a bit of a knowledge gap here. i will do every single question in both the overall official book and the quant official book. if i get a problem wrong, i will focus on the answer part of it and try to understand why i got it wrong.
after going through every question of these two books twice, i will look at problems i got wrong twice. i'll re-read the explanation of how to do this type of problem and really focus on it, and then do a retake test of only questions that i've missed.
hopefully that'll get me a 760 or better! heh.
edit: also, semi-obvious tips to actually taking the test: be patient and relaxed. take your time and read everything and be meticulous. | 