[tictaktoe]

Thanks everyone for the kind words.

Background: I am 23 year old, belong to India (Mumbai), an engineer by profession, working in a pretty reputed NON-IT Indian company for the past 2 years.

Scheduling of test: I scheduled my test long back in the month of May for 27th of July at Mumbai. In retrospection, I observed that the test date should be taken when one starts preparing for the exam and not while thinking about giving the exam. While a very late test date would rob you off the HEAT of the moment and one starts feeling kind of saturated during the long wait to the test date, a test date too early would leave less time for you to work on your potential weaknesses. However, one is always in a better position to plan the things if he/she has a fixed test date (could be 2-3 weeks later, a month, 2 months later). This approach is much better than preparing all the time and thinking of taking a test date just in next few days when you feel ready for the exam. With a fixed test date you are always mentally prepared for the exam.

First time: Unfortunately things didn’t go the way I wanted them to. Continuous rain on 26th July in Mumbai scared the hell out of me and I could see myself praying hard, for a change, to stop the rain. Well, with the kind of reputation I have in the eyes of Him, prayers didn’t work The next day in morning I woke up at around 4, and it was still raining. It was the highest rainfall in 100 years and the city was thrown totally out of gear for the next 10 days. I tried contacting Mumbai Prometric Center to know the status of the exam but didn’t get any response. Later on, I came to know that phone lines were not working. So I carried extra clothing with me and left for the center on my bike, which went down in between due to water getting into the engine. Took lift from a truck, another bike, a 2 km walk and an auto to reach the center only to return back after seeing some computers of the test center flowing on the water. Around 1000 people lost their life in those rains and standing at the test center, I could hear the screams of the women next to test center where a school wall came down on students and around 40 of them were killed. Test got postponed. And I lost all my momentum. More than that, those screams really shivered me up. I later spoke to prometric center in some other city and after calling frantically for around next 3-4 days was given my test date. There is a tremendous scope for improvement in their services.

This time: Since I gave TOEFL on 5th sept, a cakewalk, the anxiety was less and the surrounding was known to me. IN toefl’s structure part, I could figure out the errors (which weren’t part of underlined-supposed-to-be-errors) that do not fit well with GMAT way of SC. For GMAT, Slept pretty well the previous night so no morning blues. Test was scheduled at 1 in afternoon. Reached early and got used to the environment / AC, etc . Though many people advise taking chocolates, etc in the breaks, I didn’t carry any juices / chocolates / medicines as I don’t use them normally and these things can really make you nervous / conscious of the surroundings and exaggerate the importance of the test if you do not use them regularly. So just sat on the sofa and waited for my number. In the meantime chatted with the guy sitting next to me, some Stanford undergraduate with a startup company of his own though still studying. I got the idea of the people I shall be competing with. My name was called. I went in. They checked the passport and there I was – on my seat!

The test: The guy sitting next to my cubicle was giving TOEFL and instead of his headphone he started using headphone attached to my computer, surely a funny moment! Anyways in an attempt to get used to those conditions, I went through each of their tutorials –learning to move the mouse , how to scroll, how to answer, confirm etc etc . Please note that you can’t spend more than 30 minutes on these things. I took around 10 minutes to get used to the click click of mouse, stuffed those earplugs in my ears and started with writing part.


AWA
Analysis of Argument came first. Since I was fully prepared with my template and not to boast but yeah , I do sometimes write pretty decent and in a habit of writing stuffs like articles, etc, argument dint pose much of problem. A lot depends on your typing speed. I managed to put in 8 paragraphs of around 4-5 or more lines each with 5 minutes to spare for editing. Then came the Analysis of Issue. Well, I managed to do even better 9 para of arnd same lines. Make it sure that you write as much as you can ,though sensibly, in the writing parts as more paragraphs DO mean more marks. If you are getting a lower verbal scores, the adcom looks for your writing part to guage your communication skills. Also when you send your scores to any university they do get both the essays written by you, so they sometime compare the letter of reco with these writing material to make it sure that you have written your essays or recos yourself and not simply got it signed by someone else. Believe me they are expert in recognizing the style of writing. So be careful with these things too. Its not always good to ignore it completely.

*Took the break . went to loo. drank water.came back to my computer. Sat there on the seat itself itself till the break of 5 mins got over*

QUANT
Then came the Quant. Started with an easy question till I think 4th one. Got a tricky one on the fifth. Spent some good 4-5 mins on it and after narrowing it down to 2 just picked the more logical one and moved ahead. Got stuck again on 8th question. Did the same thing. Though this time I was a lil more optimistic about my answer. These were the only 2 of 3 answers I guessed including these. Then I saw time 50 mins remaining with almost 30 question remaining. I speeded up . Initially the difficulty level was low , increased gradually and by question 11-13 it peaked and then again came down. In these first 12-13 question, I remember getting arnd 3 in prob , 1 in absolute and mostly on number theories. Number theory was always a strength for me but few prob did manage to make me think. Finally managed to complete the section 5 mins in advance.

One of my friend gave GMAT few days back and we discussed his problems. I got absolutely the same question in probability and couldn’t help thanking him during those tense moment. So make sure you stick to test magic. It gets all kind of questions.

Difficulty level: Quant is definitely getting a bit tricky, if not difficult, day by day . Powerprep & last 1/3rd questions of OG definitely ranked a step below the real questions. I would say the real level was between those and GMAtprep quant.

*Took the break . went to loo. drank water.came back to my computer. Sat there on the seat itself itself till the break of 5 mins got over*

VERBAL
Started with a critical reasoning. Followed by another one. Then the most-dreaded reading comprehension, though shortone. Followed by another reading comprehension- this time a damn confusing article on some rrelation between poverty , banks and culture. Followed by 3 Sc. Those roughly made my first 15-16 questions. My strength was critical reasoning and I made it sure that I aint messing any of them. Though I worked really hard on SC, I really found, to my surprise, 2-3 weird SC, which were sounding the best options even after a start with “ing” kind of thing. So I moved on. Looking back, I got around 4 RCs, which is the now a norm , with 2 RCs in the first 12-15 questions. Thank got it dint struck to me that I wasn’t getting any Boldfaces, which are supposed to indicate that you are doing good in verbal. It was a surprise when I saw one BF on 28th and another on 34th question. Rest was easy. By the time I finished verbal I was having arnd 7 mins in hand.

Difficulty level - Same as PP, GMAt prep.

Then usual demographic info and all crap . Finally report score or cancel score. Lol, tht wasn’t an option for me. Report score. 750 50, 41. I felt good J


PS: The most important things during the test is NOT TO PANIC. Stay calm n cool even if you are stuck somewhere. If you can manage that , its not very difficult to crack.

Acknolwdgement: Each and every member of this forum, esp dreamz, goel_ar, Arjmen, twinsplitter, abhishek, he_hels, icecold, 800Bob, gmat168, alex_cute, greycellz, and many more who participated in the discussions. Testmagic was the foundation of my GMAt preparation. Thanks Erin. I would surely luv to put special thank to mah sweets for standing by me and encouraging me throughout these days,esp after it got spoiled the first time. Luv ya baby.

I’ll be putting the post abt my preparation in few days.