My Test Day
My test was a Saturday 8-AMer. This sometimes sounds frightening, but I am a morning person and generally am up and thinking by 6:30 each day. So, by 8, I am actually working at near peak mental efficiency. I got there early and was an easy volunteer to process first as the others were a little slower to move. I therefore got started about 15 minutes early with the real test part.
Essays – Finished first essay with 20 seconds and really had to rush the conclusion / introduction. I have never worried about the essays and practiced a few (about 4 sets during the my practice tests) and looked at recommendations for the structure from this website. I was still confident that I had a good essay though.
Second, finished with 10 minutes left and had time to modify. Harder than I expected. It was a very generic statement that I had a hard time figuring out the appropriate arguments for. I knew the side I wanted to argue, but just could not come up with many points for either side. Felt I had a good essay in the end, but personally dragged out some points longer than I would have liked. I did make one intelligent statement (one of my examples) that I am confident would make the real reader laugh.
I used the extra time to set up for the Quantitative section. I was terrified about time management in the Quant, so I had times listed question by question going down the notebook (I write very small) and crossed off each question as I finished it. This gave me a reference as to where I should be. Others might check every 5 questions or something like that, but I wanted to know immediately if I was running late. I used the generic ‘2 minutes per question’ rule. My times would then give me 1 more minute on the last question.
Overall, I still expected good scores (as was confirmed in the official report today).
Break – Took the break and ate a granola bar.
Quantitative –
Started off BADLY. Question Number 1 confused me and I could not solve analytically quickly. I fell back to doing math on each and every answer to find the lowest value. This was time consuming, but I absolutely refused to screw up the first question. This is the time of pride that caused me to have my Question-Time written on the page in the first place. I finally solved the question, having taken about 4 minutes, and started behind on my time.
I picked up speed quickly and knew I was catching up. So I started calming down a little. My next really bad question came at number 6. It was a data sufficiency question that I was not going to be able to answer in two minutes (or ANYTHING close to it). Individually, I knew that neither statement was sufficient. It looked like it would be sufficient, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it would be neither, but I would not know for sure until I work out all the math. If there was any easier trick, it was beyond me. I took a guess at (C) because it looked most like that. However, I believe that it was a trick and was really (E).
After this point, I breezed through the rest of the quantitative section. Maybe one or two more at most that left me with a bad feeling when I chose an answer. But overall, I did my best. By question 36, I was actually ahead of time and had a little over 6 minutes for the last two questions. Question 36 was a very hard geometry problem. With the time (about 4 minutes), I was able to work through it and know I got the answer right. Then 37 was fine and I finished with just under 1 minute left. However, I was confident that I had done well because of the difficulty of the last couple of questions that I knew I got right.
Break – Took the second break and ate another granola bar. Also downed a bottle of G2 that I was saving for this break. I felt like I was doing well and was relaxed. I chatted with one of the women sitting at the front desk and looked forward to finishing up now.
Verbal –
I am an engineer. I am also a native speaker and the son of a children’s librarian (mother) and a radio disc jockey (father). Verbal has not really scared me. I spent a lot of time catching up with Sentence Correction rules. I generally never had a problem with Critical Reasoning and could narrow down the Reading Comprehension questions to one right and one wrong answer and would pick one. During the test, I thought I was doing well. I did notice many more questions that I did not quite understand when it came to RC and CR. This really bothered me. I don’t think I did my best on these questions. I feel that it is a situation that given one set of questions, I would get them right, and another set, I would get them wrong.
With about 20 minutes left in the test, I realized that chugging a G2 was not my best decision of the day and really had to go to the bathroom. I kept testing and just had to hold it. Luckily, I move through the verbal section quickly and finished with about 12 minutes left. I know that finishing with time on the table is not a good idea. However, my experience is that I would not get the right answer on the questions that I missed if I spent any more time. I did spend more time on questions if I really didn’t understand or needed to re-read portions or something. I do not feel that working any slower would have made a difference in my case.
Result-
Finished up the test and went through their acknowledgments and further data entry screens. Acknowledged that I wanted the score and saw it. I was happy with it : ) It is the range I was hoping/expecting. It was probably an average to good showing for the quantitative section for me. I am a little disappointed with the Verbal. I honestly thought that I could have done better. Given another day, I think that should have been a 42 on an average-to-good day and maybe touching 45 on a very good day. If that's all I can complain about for the test, I got off easy.
Just got the official results today, only 5 days (and 2.5 business days) after taking the test. Full 6.0 on essays. 95th% on both verbal and quantitative. 99th% Overall.
Glad this is over. But it is still only a checkmark. Now, it is all about the essays and recommendations, etc.
Thank you, everyone on this board (especially simplyjat, netigen, saberprivateer, all the experts, and others). I learned a lot over the last couple of months. Hope to see you all in some top school later!
Long post… I know. But it is over! I may troll along this site for a little while longer, but it is time to move on.
My test was a Saturday 8-AMer. This sometimes sounds frightening, but I am a morning person and generally am up and thinking by 6:30 each day. So, by 8, I am actually working at near peak mental efficiency. I got there early and was an easy volunteer to process first as the others were a little slower to move. I therefore got started about 15 minutes early with the real test part.
Essays – Finished first essay with 20 seconds and really had to rush the conclusion / introduction. I have never worried about the essays and practiced a few (about 4 sets during the my practice tests) and looked at recommendations for the structure from this website. I was still confident that I had a good essay though.
Second, finished with 10 minutes left and had time to modify. Harder than I expected. It was a very generic statement that I had a hard time figuring out the appropriate arguments for. I knew the side I wanted to argue, but just could not come up with many points for either side. Felt I had a good essay in the end, but personally dragged out some points longer than I would have liked. I did make one intelligent statement (one of my examples) that I am confident would make the real reader laugh.
I used the extra time to set up for the Quantitative section. I was terrified about time management in the Quant, so I had times listed question by question going down the notebook (I write very small) and crossed off each question as I finished it. This gave me a reference as to where I should be. Others might check every 5 questions or something like that, but I wanted to know immediately if I was running late. I used the generic ‘2 minutes per question’ rule. My times would then give me 1 more minute on the last question.
Overall, I still expected good scores (as was confirmed in the official report today).
Break – Took the break and ate a granola bar.
Quantitative –
Started off BADLY. Question Number 1 confused me and I could not solve analytically quickly. I fell back to doing math on each and every answer to find the lowest value. This was time consuming, but I absolutely refused to screw up the first question. This is the time of pride that caused me to have my Question-Time written on the page in the first place. I finally solved the question, having taken about 4 minutes, and started behind on my time.
I picked up speed quickly and knew I was catching up. So I started calming down a little. My next really bad question came at number 6. It was a data sufficiency question that I was not going to be able to answer in two minutes (or ANYTHING close to it). Individually, I knew that neither statement was sufficient. It looked like it would be sufficient, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it would be neither, but I would not know for sure until I work out all the math. If there was any easier trick, it was beyond me. I took a guess at (C) because it looked most like that. However, I believe that it was a trick and was really (E).
After this point, I breezed through the rest of the quantitative section. Maybe one or two more at most that left me with a bad feeling when I chose an answer. But overall, I did my best. By question 36, I was actually ahead of time and had a little over 6 minutes for the last two questions. Question 36 was a very hard geometry problem. With the time (about 4 minutes), I was able to work through it and know I got the answer right. Then 37 was fine and I finished with just under 1 minute left. However, I was confident that I had done well because of the difficulty of the last couple of questions that I knew I got right.
Break – Took the second break and ate another granola bar. Also downed a bottle of G2 that I was saving for this break. I felt like I was doing well and was relaxed. I chatted with one of the women sitting at the front desk and looked forward to finishing up now.
Verbal –
I am an engineer. I am also a native speaker and the son of a children’s librarian (mother) and a radio disc jockey (father). Verbal has not really scared me. I spent a lot of time catching up with Sentence Correction rules. I generally never had a problem with Critical Reasoning and could narrow down the Reading Comprehension questions to one right and one wrong answer and would pick one. During the test, I thought I was doing well. I did notice many more questions that I did not quite understand when it came to RC and CR. This really bothered me. I don’t think I did my best on these questions. I feel that it is a situation that given one set of questions, I would get them right, and another set, I would get them wrong.
With about 20 minutes left in the test, I realized that chugging a G2 was not my best decision of the day and really had to go to the bathroom. I kept testing and just had to hold it. Luckily, I move through the verbal section quickly and finished with about 12 minutes left. I know that finishing with time on the table is not a good idea. However, my experience is that I would not get the right answer on the questions that I missed if I spent any more time. I did spend more time on questions if I really didn’t understand or needed to re-read portions or something. I do not feel that working any slower would have made a difference in my case.
Result-
Finished up the test and went through their acknowledgments and further data entry screens. Acknowledged that I wanted the score and saw it. I was happy with it : ) It is the range I was hoping/expecting. It was probably an average to good showing for the quantitative section for me. I am a little disappointed with the Verbal. I honestly thought that I could have done better. Given another day, I think that should have been a 42 on an average-to-good day and maybe touching 45 on a very good day. If that's all I can complain about for the test, I got off easy.
Just got the official results today, only 5 days (and 2.5 business days) after taking the test. Full 6.0 on essays. 95th% on both verbal and quantitative. 99th% Overall.
Glad this is over. But it is still only a checkmark. Now, it is all about the essays and recommendations, etc.
Thank you, everyone on this board (especially simplyjat, netigen, saberprivateer, all the experts, and others). I learned a lot over the last couple of months. Hope to see you all in some top school later!
Long post… I know. But it is over! I may troll along this site for a little while longer, but it is time to move on.
