Thanks everyone for your kind wishes!!
Below is a debrief only for the Test day..I am sorry it has become so long, but who knows, which point might prove beneficial to someone!! I will post my study plan & stuff a bit later..In the meantime, read the following when you have some time...As always, feel free to drop in a comment here or shoot me a PM in case you have any questions!!
Test Day
My test was at 2 PM. I ensured that my test was not in an early morning slot since I am a late riser. So I had a nice lunch and was off to my test centre.
At the test centre, the sign in procedure was really elaborate with palm-vein signatures and what not. So guys, those of you who are in India, make it a point to definitely reach the test centre a full 1 HOUR before your scheduled test start. I reached the test centre an hour before, and I finished my sign-in formalities just about 10 minutes before the start of my test.
Now the actual testing room experience...
As most of you must be aware, notebooks and pens are not provided and are not allowed in the testing room. What I got instead was something like a plastic coated graph paper printed on both sides and something like a felt pen or a marker. An even more accurate description would be a graph paper, printed on both sides, with transparencies (remember the old plastic sheets used on OHPs???) pasted on both sides. The booklet consisted of 5 such sheets, that made a total of 10 writing pages. It was not erasable..We were just asked to ask for more in case we required them..The pen & sheets were quite good to write on..Took a few minutes of getting used to, but certainly not a challenge that can derail your entire test!!
The first observation I had as soon as I started going thru the instructions was that the monitor of the computer was way too bright. It had been my observation during my practice CATs that if the brightness/contrast of the monitor was too high, my eyes would get strained easily and I would start facing difficulty in concentrating after about a third portion of Verbal. Hence, while going thru the instructions, I immediately located the controls and adjusted the contrast & brightness of the monitor to a very low level. Do remember that the instruction pages on the GMAT are timed...I think 4 minutes for the basic 10 page introduction..It's almost identical to the one on GMATPrep, so don't sweat it..Just ensure that you have read the GMATPrep instruction pages thoroughly and understand everything. The overall look n feel of the GMAT is identical to GMATPrep just in case you are curious about the color schemes..
The first thing that you are required to do is fill in 5 MBA programs to whom you want GMAC to send your official score report. You are not required to carry the college names or codes with you. The testing software has an excellent search facility using which you can search for the program of your choice using few characters of the name of the institute, region etc....
Now the test begins...The first essay was for Analysis of an argument. Cakewalk. No issues.. I had referred to the post by "myohmy" in the BTG AWA forum..You can't possibly go wrong with that template.. Yeah, 1 point before I forget.. I had practiced throughout on my laptop and I was very accustomed to using the "Home", "End", "Delete" keys. Also, I was accustomed to using a variety of shortcuts such as "Shift + Home", "Shift + End" etc. While these shortcuts did work in GMATPrep, these DID NOT work on the actual GMAT. Also, since I was working on a desktop keyboard, the "End", "Home" and "Delete" keys were placed very differently compared to their positions on my laptop. So for the first 10-12 minutes, I was continuously inserting or deleting pieces of my essay at unintended places. This was a real irritation and I had to be very cautious..This is just a tip for those who frequently use funky keyboard shortcuts to be extra careful and avoid using these shortcuts during practice CATs as far as possible.. The essay was otherwise uneventful..Finished about 4 minutes early, reviewed & edited it in 2 mins and net-net finished 2 mins early. Same story repeated for the Analysis of an Issue essay except that there were no issues with the keyboard since I was used to it..
Both the topics (argument & issue) were fairly straightforward and I could think of decent no. of points for both essays..
Time for the first break...8 minutes..Thrilled!! I had already started feeling hungry when writing my second essay. Had a few cookies and about 250 ml of water to drink..Just enough not to get hungry or thirsty and just enough not to want to take a leak when solving Quants! I think there was one good thing I did during this break..I feel some eye strain when I stare at a computer monitor for prolonged periods of time..Hence, just when the break was about to end, I went to the restroom and wet my face nicely with a lot of cold water..This was quite relieving, especially for my eyes, and I immediately felt a lot fresher when I entered the testing room again for Quants....Do remember that you are not allowed to wear a watch, so you need to have a decent idea of how long you have been out of the testing room. Especially if you are from India, you have to do the palm-vein signature thingy just after starting the break and just before entering the test room so do account for the additional times for such activities as well. Every second counts, believe me!!
Break time - 7 mins 44 sec..Back just in time!
Quants - Started off a bit sluggishly. Not that I was getting difficult questions but I was just being extra careful. For the first 15 questions, I could distinctly sense the difficulty of each question increasing. Nevertheless, I was spot-on time-wise, finished the first 17 questions in 34.something minutes..However questions 20 thru 37 just zipped by.. I was knocking off questions so fast that I was intermittently worried if I was really doing badly and consequently getting easier questions. But I chose to think positively since anyway nothing could be done about the questions that had already been answered..Long story short, I finished Quants a good 12 minutes before the deadline..In all my practice CATs, I never bothered to verify my result and simply marked the answers and moved on. However in GMAT, I actually cross-verified the results that I got using multiple methods wherever possible and only then marked all answers. In the end, I was quite sure I had done well since there had been no question where I had to make any guess, let alone an educated guess. I had arrived at all answers and I knew I had done well except for maybe a few DS questions where I couldn't be 200% sure..In terms of content, most of the DS & PS questions revolved around number systems & algebra. There were 2 que related to Geometry, 1 que each related to Probability, mixtures and other topics..
Second break - 8 minutes..Thrilled again!! Same process as first break..except that I ate fewer cookies..Again the cold water on the eye thingy was very helpful!!
Break time - 6 mins 26 sec.. Back in good time!
Verbal - Now this was where things did not remain rosy any longer. Some evil computer in some GMAC centre somewhere in the world thought that I had been doing too well and decided to screw me...Verbal was INSANE guys, believe me...This was the toughest verbal I have EVER seen in my life! Not exaggerating one bit.. I was not nervous at all, I was focussed, relaxed, not hungry and in the best mental & physical condition possible for Verbal...But no, that wasn't enough!! Anyway, to start from the beginning, got a couple of medium difficulty SC que, then a couple of medium difficulty CR que, and then one decent RC..So totally about say 9 que..From que no. 10, the verbal section became an untameable monster..CRs were still ok. With some thought, most of them could be reasoned out.. RCs were difficult, I can't put it any other way..One of them was barely two full paragraphs, but the answer choices were mind-numbing.. Almost each and every answer looked the same except for a word here or there..But the real killers were SCs...I have never come across such SCs..Usually when I see an SC que, the type of error pops out immediately such as modifiers, verb-tense agreement, pronouns ..you get it..but in some of these SCs, I couldn't even understand what type of problem was present. Worse, some of them had multiple types of errors within them..And even worse, some of them had options in which to me, all 5 seemed equally correct..
..I start suspecting in between if the scoring algorithm started me from a very high level in Verbal because of a good Quants score.. Hmm..conspiracy theory..who knows, could be true..but no time to think such nonsense!!!
I guess the only thing I did right was not to panic and just take one question at a time without thinking about the overall score, the past question/sections and just anything else..I focussed as hard as I could, and tried my best..Finished the section with about 2 mins to spare, but needless to say that I was hardly as happy as I was after completing quants..Content wise, lets see... CRs were fairly evenly mixed..weaken the conclusion, strengthen, inference, boldface etc... RCs were from four topics, biology, geology + astronomy, politics and anthropology (this one was abstract to an extent and the most difficult)..SCs..most of them tested verb-tense agreements, not a single question on idioms, not a single one on modifiers..just a couple maybe on other types of errors..And yes, all sentences were long, very very long..The computer screen was quite big (19" diagonal I think) and each sentence was at least 2 lines long with at least 1 line completely underlined..
Phew..test over..Background Information Questions screens pop up..I hate this screen for making me wait for the result.. You have about 4 minutes to confirm the data or feed new data into the screens. The data I believe is pulled from your profile on MBA.com.. Then the life changing moment... You are asked if you want to report your scores or cancel them.. You have precisely 2 minutes on this screen. If you DO NOT choose any option within 2 minutes, by default you test is CANCELED! So make sure that you select the option for reporting scores within 2 minutes!!
Well, after Verbal was over, I was hoping to get somewhere in 690-720 range. But I was absolutely thrilled on seeing the final 760 score!!! I was a tad upset on seeing the 41 in verbal.. I desperately wished that verbal had been just a little bit easier..If so, then who knows, what score could have been possible..Had a fleeting thought to retake the test..But, it was only fleeting and it flew away quite easily..
Anyway, I was finally relieved with the overall score and glad that the effort for GMAT finally paid off!!
