Are you GMAT slacker? There's hope!

Woohoo! I'm done with the GMAT now!

How I studied
I was terribly lazy studying for the GMAT. I bought the Kaplan 800 book and the "OG," but I did maybe 200 of the 800 problems in the OG, and less than 30 in the Kaplan book. I spent an hour or two every night for a week studying. That's about it. No spreadsheets to track my performance, no Manhattan study guides.

My goal was to get 750+ on the test. Mission accomplished.

There are a hundred blogs and sites that suggest the best method for studying for this test. Here's what worked for me (a certified slacker).

First, I've always been really good at standardized tests. I did well on the SAT, ACT, and GRE, so I had no reason to expect less from the GMAT. If you are a native English speaker who reads a lot, you have a huge advantage on the verbal section.

Second, I studied only the hardest problems in the OG. Don't bother with the easy ones. Start at the last question and work backwards through the section. It's like working with a medicine ball -- by the time you get to the real thing, anything less than the hardest questions seems trivial.

Third, review the answer explanation to each question immediately after finishing it. Rather than flipping back and forth between the questions and explanations, I used the pad I was writing on to cover the explanation, then immediately read it after marking my answer. The 11ed. OG's explanations were almost always excellent.

Finally, I scheduled the test for the afternoon. If you're not a morning person, the ability to schedule the test later in the day is beautiful!

Practice Test Scores
I found the old PowerPrep and new GMATPrep practice tests to be highly predictive. I took both GMATPrep tests, and the scores were 10 and 20 points lower than my actual score. The PowerPrep test I took the day before the test scored exactly the same as my actual test!