Been there Done that

I took up the GMAT on 16th March, 2007 and I live to tell the sorry tale........
I wont say I screwed it up completely but yes I'm definately not in the driver's seat as far as my score is concerned.
I scored a 690. 38 in verbal and 47 in quant.

Where I went wrong:

• I did not take OG too seriously.I did not manage to complete the entire OG 10 ( OG 11 is good enough ) and I was not sincere in the rerun.
• Although quant is simple I should have looked up formulas and sums elsewhere. Kaplan is lacking in this regard.
• My downfall was the 2nd question in quant. It was on statistics...i spent way too much time on it... got it wrong and lost out on time on the other ques.
• I messed up the break timings between quant and verbal. I lost out on a good 3 minutes in verbal. silly silly mistake.
• I did not practice on the AWA front. I picked up Arco's GMAT essays , the day before my test and just skimmed through a couple of essays. Its an absolute MUST to write a couple of essays before D day.
• I did not take up a complete practice test before D day . It was always only quant and verbal and thus D day was a bit too taxing on me.

Although most of it sounds silly and elementry , i'm sure quite a few of us out there do end up making these mistakes and then end up paying a heavy price.......

i'm definately going to learn from my mistakes the next time round.......

Some of the must have's before I start off on appying for fall '09

• Must have taken up the GMAT by April
• Must have finalised my list of colleges by Mid March ( well this shld not be too tough coz i already am sure of 3 of them)
• Must have penned down my list of activities, achievements, failures right frm school till date by mid May(this is sure going to be one monumental task)
• Must have the first draft of the basic essays like why mba, career goals, leadership example, weakness jotted down by last week of June. (i think this would definately help in getting into the groove of essay writing and clear some cobwebs and hiccups we come across if we start appying a tad bit too late)

Quite a few Must Have's i say!!! Fingers crossed...lets see how many i can strike off the list in time!!!!