I was talking to this guy, who is  a good friend and a class of 2012 aspirant. He has already finished most of the stuff that I had suggested (Kaplan comprehensive, OG etc) and is presently getting scores around 750 in practice tests. When I last talked to him about his preps, he planned to spend his last month before the test working mainly on AWA. 

If your idea of effort is something similar to this guy’s (Before my GMAT, I used to think on somewhat similar lines too, though even at that time, I would have considered 1 month for AWA as too much) , let me assure you: it’s not really worth ths amount of effort. The primarily reason that I say this is that unless you score abysmally low (which is 3.5 or lower), nobody really cares about your score.  In last two years, I have gone through numerous threads and blogs, contacted a number of current and prospective students and attended many B-school events, but till date, I am yet to find an instance, where a candidate was denied admission due to a low AWA score. Why should the schools actually care about how you write on some random topic, when they already have their essays to guage your writing skills?

However, I am not suggesting that you dismiss AWA altogether.  In particular, if you are headed towards a real good GMAT score, you’d surely like it better if it’s accompanied by a stellar AWA score too. ( At times, it pinched when while entering GMAT scores for a school, I had to write AWA percentile as 53 (score 5.0) after mentioneing Quants and Verbal as 99 and 97 respectively. ) Also, I have heard that some schools schools compare your AWA essays (yes, they get your essays too instead of just the score!!) to check whether the app-essays have actually been written by you. (I find this a bit unreasonable as it’s not fair to compare a time-bound performance on a random topic with your output on topics that are about your life and about which you typically have more than 3 months to think about.)

Another reason AWA needs to be practiced is that it’s the first section of the GMAT and if you feel good about what you have written your essays well, you’ll start the real stuff on a confident note. Also do practice a few full-length tests with real AWA essays. That will help you develop the test-taking stamina lasting 3.5 hours. 

Enough of why AWA is important and why it’s not. Here’s how I would suggest handling it:

• Get a template ready for both issue and analysis essays. There are many templates available on the internet.Use that as a base and get one of your own ready. Remember that one of the readers of your essays would be a computer. So make sure that you include proper transition words.  
• Download the list of AWA essays from mba.com.  These are two long lists of 130+ topics each and the topics that you’ll get on the test day would be from these lists. 
• Everytime you get too loaded correcting sentences or testing data sufficiency, take a look at one of the topics and think of 3-4 points for the topic.  You don’t have to write it every time. 
• For Analysis of Argument, normally, it’s suggested to keep a strong stand in your analysis.Your CR preps will help here. The claims made in the question stem are invariably bogus and you can easily find at least 3 flaws in most of these. 
• For Analysis of  Issue, normally, it’s suggested to keep a moderate stand in your analysis. Think of what stand you’d like to take on the issue. Think of at least 2(preferably 3) points favouring your stand and preferably one opposing it. After the opening para, expand each point into a para. Try to include some examples. (See next point). In the penultimate para, acknowledge the other side and then towards conclusion, mention why you still favour your original stand. 
•  If you go through the issue-list, you’d easily locate 6-7 recurring themes. I can recall a few from the list that I had prepared: “business and ethics”, “Successful/powerful women”, “rags to riches” , “technology V/s environment” (Will add more to this list in case I locate my notebook.)  Get ready a few real world well-known examples for each of them. You’d be surprised to see how preparing examples for a small list will help you cover a very good number of essay topics. 
• Find some time may be once a week in your last month to complete a time-bound AWA exercise. Once you complete that post your answers on your blog or some GMAT prep forums.  Not many would care to comment, but some times you can get some real good inputs.  (I got very good feedback as comments on the essays I posted on this blog.)
• Practice atleast 3-4 full length tests with the AWA section as well.  As discussed above, this will help you test your real GMAT stamina. Most of the tests (other  than the official ones:GMAT Prep and Powerprep) will either have no AWA secion or essays on topics different from the ones in the offical list. So it’s better to open the official list and start on any randomly picked topic. 
• FInal, but very important tip: For practising AWA, never use MS word or any other editor that offers features like spell-check or grammar-check. The editor in the real exam will have minimal features. (As far as I remember, just cut, copy, paste and undo/redo upto last one operation.) You can try that from the GMATPrep software. (Even the powerprep editor is different from the one that is currently being used.)

Hope this helps.  If you have any specific Q about AWA section that is not covered here, leave a comment and I’ll try to cover that as well.

Speed of time == 5 seconds/second!!
Now this is what I’m feeling these days!! Time is running out so fast..

It feels like yesterday, when I was talking to ahembea “With September starting tonorrow, every deadline would be “next month!!”". I find it hard to believe that 10 days have already passed and I’ve not achieved much. I know everyone around is feeling the same.. September is perhaps the fastest disappearing month for R1 applicants. (And perhaps December the slowest, when the results take their own sweet time to appear)

Meanwhile, here’re a few highlights:

• Have got my scores sent to Ross, Tuck and Darden. Amongst my target schools, I had already sent the scores to ISB and Emory on the G-day. Will wait for Duke. (See next point.)
• Duke is confusing me. The info regarding the no-cosigner loan on their website has changed from “guaranteed loans without a US cosigner ” to ” Information about the International Student Loan is forthcoming.” What does this mean?? Are they planning to discontinue their “International Student Loan “??
  My apping to Fuqua will depend on answer to this Question. I’ve written to them, but no response yet.
  (FAQs page still confirms theavailability, but I’ll trust the finaid site more)
• Talked to my recommenders:: Had told my boss even before writing GMAT. Needed to talk to two more. One of them, an ISB grad, is a program manager in my team.. He’s a great guy to talk to!!  I discussed the feasibility and practically of B-school targets and post-MBA goals with him. He’s ready to write a reco for me and to review my essays as well!!
  Today called upp my third recomender too. She too is happy to write a reco for me. She’s my supervisor from one of my extra-curricular invovements. And since it was she. who recommended me for one of the leadership positions in the organisation, I’m sure she’ll write a gr8 reco here too.
• Transcripts:: Stll trying to get hold of a junior to get these. If anything doesn’t crystallise in next 6-7 days, I guess I’ll have to make a trip to my alma-mater myself.. That has been a dream for long, but I don’t think that I’m in a position to afford that luxury at this stage.
• Goals-essay:: First draft mostly done.. Though need to add the “Why MBA” and “WHy now” part to it in addition to “Why school X” for  each school. This is the essay that needs to undergo a reality check by a few experts. (And may need a good amount of overhaul in case I’m not specific enough.)
• Tuck essays:: Leadership essay and Constructive criticism :::: first draft done.
  Personal deadline for rest of the first drafts:: Sept 13.
• Ross essays::
  Developing outlines for “alternate career” and “most challenging time” essays.
  Personal deadline for all first drafts:: Sept 16.

Hope I’m able to stick to these deadlines. Given the shape of the drafts that I’ve ready, I know that they need a lot of polishing as of now before they can be even sent to be reviewed by some of my close friends.

BTW, if anybody gets to know anything confirmed about Duke Interational Loan, do let me know.

Tip1: Data Sufficiency..
Treat options (B) and (D) as red flags..
Every time you’re marking an answer as (B) or (D), double check it. No need to spend  any extra time, just make a mental check.
Many times, we mentally drag down the data given in condition 1, while evaluating condition 2.. And when we find (2) to be sufficient, we confidently proceed and mark the answer as (B), whereas it shud’ve been (C) 
From the discussions on GMAT groups and my own experience with Data-sufficency Qs, I can tell u that this is a very,very common problem.. I too did this all the time, while I was doing OG. But once I made this rule, I never ever committed this mistake again.

Tip2:: GMAT Verbal:
In quants, if you spend 5 minutes on a problem, chances are that you’d get it.. Not that I actually recommend it, but what I want to emphasize is that you can get to a correct answer in PS and DS if you spend more time. This, however, is not the case with Verbal. After spending some 30-40 seconds on a question, you often end up with two options and sometimes it’s impossible to decide which one to choose.
For example: You’ve read the RC passage in full and have almost complete grasp of the content. The question that comes up first, asks you the author’s tone. You’re sure it wasn’t happy or appreciative. It can’t exactly be termed as sad. Now you’re down with the final two options: indifferent and angry. And you feel that the author looked indifferent at times, but a bit angry at others.. Normally at this juncture, you spend a good amount of time, juggling between the options, scrolling up and down the passage or just staring in blank.. Suddenly after 5 minutes have passed, u realise that u have many, more questions to follow. You quicly pick one of the options and proceed to answer the next question.. Just think, couldn’t you have done exactly the same thing 240 seconds earlier??
Same applies to CR and SC questions too. If you are not sure whether the correct idiom is “mistook as” or “mistook for” and u have already tried fitting this idiom in a simple sentence of ur own (highly recommended!!), I don’t think that you’ll get to the correct answer confidently even if u spend 10 mins on the question.. 

The crux is that once you’ve exhausted your knowledge of idioms, grammar and common sense, you’re not going to get the correct answer by spending more time… So as and when you realise that you’re not able to choose between two equally appealing options, just pick one of them (which appeals slightly more) and move on.

Hope you find these useful.. In case of confusion/need for clarificatin, feel free to leave a comment or drop a mail qo my gmail ID: quizophobic.