Hi,
I am just one of you trying desperately to BEAT THE GMAT. Firstly bear with my English mistakes. Now I attended a coaching institute for about 3 months. Even though I was suggested to book for GMAT and prepare first. I ignored it. Did not know when the coaching started and when it ended. All the while I was reasoning that as I do not have enough time , I better not book an appointment. So at last I decided that I would take a sample test and then decide when to book an appointment. My first free GMAT prep test gave me 660. So I felt that getting 700+ is a near dream. So I booked an appointment for GMAT.
My strategy was to first to do reverse engineering. I visualized what would I do one day before the exam. What should I do 1 week before the exam. What should I do over the month before the exam. In the last how many months do I need to prepare for GMAT. I did not get answers for any of these questions except the last (may be I did not search well). I was given a gut feeling answer that a person needs 5 casual months and 3 serious months to prepare for GMAT. I booked a date and it was exactly 90 days to go for my exam. I decided that the day before the exam I will only review the mistakes I did during the preparation of Quant and Verbal and review the formulae. During the last week before the exam I will take 2-3 GMAT exams. During the last one month before the exam, I will at take practice GMAT for 10 times. I will uninstall and re install GMAT prep for more questions. I will do OG completely once again for Quant. Kaplan for CR and 1000SC for SC. No strategy for RC. Read as many news papers as possible.
I started gathering the material the coaching insti gave me. I have Princeton Math, Verbal, Manhattan Gmat, Kaplan, OG 10, 11, 12 and many other stuff. I did the mistake of over accumulating the material. The problem was owing to the little time I have, I faced another task of prioritizing the material and discarding some stuff. Ideally for working people like me I say that we first clearly guage the amount of time we have each day for over a period of 3 months. We should ensure that the preparation time should be 3 continuous hours atleast. I emphasize on continuity because we need to get used to the real test environment. I registered for Beat the GMAT. Now I am ready with my material, I know how much time I have got and all I needed was commitment less overconfidence. Unfortunately I was out of stock in both.
I took the insti test again and scored 600 this time. Learnt that I scored badly in verbal. I took the mock exam exactly after one week and this time it is 640. Really the ground broke. It opened my eyes. I took these exams at Sunday early morning 5. So no question of disturbance or any other stuff which might have reduced my score. So I started assessing myself. I found that I am good at CR (thanks to KAPLAN) but bad in SC and surprisingly very bad in RC. Quant, I was managing to bet at 45-48. I realized one thing here. In many SCs I was rounding the answer to two options and always choosing the wrong ones. In RC I am making the mistake because of loosing focus. In Quant I am losing out on the simple questions. I was 45 days from the exam.
Now that I know what I lack I decided to form my core strategy. I will surely take the 1000Sc I came across Beat the GMAT. I will complete at least 100 questions daily no matter how much time it takes. I decided that I will not touch others until SC is done as I am very bad in SC. I was hardly working on this strategy. Ha ha found the mistake in previous sentence. Actually I meant to say I was working hard with this strategy. I gained this ability from Praci Parekh's blog and Manhattan Gmat's SC. One good thing I did during this time is that whenever I felt that I made a serious mistake, I copied the question in one doc and answer in another. This will help you during the week before the exam. Just like everybody I was tired and could not concentrate on 100 SC continuously. So after every 45 mins I used to close SCs and read news websites. The advantage of this that as you practice SC your brain will be tuned to this and when you read News sites then you will feel relaxed but subconsciously your brain will continue its work. This does not happen when you watch movie or talk to someone. The reason going for news website and not Advs of Huckleberry finn is that news sites, bound by regulation, are committed to report correctly. They cannot say "You can watch Mt Etna explode in two videos from our website". It appears as if the mountain is exploding from the website. These are the tricky GMAT SC questions where they combine grammar with commonsense and answering them will take you to 40 in Verbal. As I said reading the news sites and doing 1000SC were really helpful. I am now 30 days from my exam.
Due to some personal reasons I had to postpone my exam by another 2 months. However I was confident that I will get a good score and when I took VERITAS free I scored just 640. Where did I go wrong? I realized one thing. I was good at things individually but bad when I do them all mixed up together. I did not take into consideration the Psychometric capability of GMAT. Now I am 2 months from the new exam date and I am back to square one. I feel that I might never pass the 700 barrier.
Now I was getting more serious in preparation. Thanks to Kaplan GMAT I can handle 90% of CR but RC and SC were still teasing me. The tough thing with RC is that you have to remember a lot of things and then recollect your answer. Actually this is not correct. It is actually my opinion and I felt that it is common for every one. See doing CR does help you realize you mistkes. The real thing with RC is that we have to read the question first and search for answers. This technique really does work. Also second thing we need to look at RC is that they are really well written topics and if you love reading then obviously you will fall in this trap. You might learn a new thing but end up not answering RC in time. Then one day I stumbled across the way one of the instructors answered the RC. For each para she wrote synopsis in 2 lines. This trick combined with reading the question first did the miracle. Bingo!! I was moving fast in RC. Even though the strike rate did not improve but I am taking less time to do the same in mistakes in RC. The extra time is helping me get either easy SC questions or moderate CRs which I am good at and my score improved. I know I can get 680 on any day now and as my timing improved, I no longer look at time while writing the exam. For both verbal and Quant I see the time remaining at Q 30. I am now getting 680 and I am completing the exam 5 mins ahead. Its now 30 days to my exam.
Now that I experienced what Over confidence can do, I felt that its good I start my math again. I see the advantage of sticking to a limited and sufficient material. You can always know where you stand. If you try out a lot of material, firstly you will never complete it and lastly you will never improve. The vital outputs of a good preparation are it will tell you who you are and where you stand. The previous sentence is wrong and I leave to you to correct it. The previous sentence is again wrong. Can't hel,p got habituated to this kind of stuff. So one month before the exam all I did was complete OG 10, 11, 12 maths. Refreshed Manhattan Gmat once again and completed SCs in OG 12. I was reading everything possible for RC and as anything can come for RC I felt that just reading RC for OGs or any book will not be sufficient. Beat the GMAT RCs were good test here. I was now 15 days to the exam.
From now on I concentrated on my physical diet. I stopped non veg as it gives me dizzy feeling. I stopped having GMAT or watching pornography. I was so involved that I forgot about them. I was eating many times during the day in small amounts. Thus I am not getting tired and not feeling sleepy even after sitting continuously for 4 hrs. At this stage I am getting max 49 in quant and 36 in verbal. All the while I was revising and writing down formulas so as to read them the day before the exam. Its just one week for the exam.
I browsed to see if there are any strategies for last week present. Luckily one person (Sorry mate I forgot your name) who eventually got admitted to University Polytechnique - Milan wrote about his preparation for the day before the exam. I read it and felt that I will surely thanks him after the exam if his advise comes handy. Thanks Mate. He wrote the invaluable advise about the psychometric aspect of the aspect. I summarized that GMAT does not want to test if I know (a+b)^2. They wanna know if I can apply that formula. They are not sadists or psychos. This revelation helped me a lot. I concluded that whenever I am facing a tough question all I need to do is just recollect all the formulae I know and try applying one after the other. Same with SC just check if all the 6 rules in Manhattan GMAT are satisfied or not. Also since this is Psychometric you can expect one in every 7-9 questions to have the correct answer as A. There is no proof for this but I feel that they also wanna test if we go for assumptions and always ignore A thinking that it is always trap answer or wrong answer. I was on full day leave during the last week for the exam. I completed remaining tests and decided to take Gmat Prep. I am now 3 days before the exam. I have all the formulae I need to revise before exam date. I have all the questions I wronged in 1000SC, OG and my coaching centre material.
I got 700 on GMAT Prep sample exam 2. During this exam I enjoyed the fruits of psychometric aspects of GMAT. I am 50 in Quant and 37 in Verbal. As I said practice improved my time. I completed Quant in 75 mins. I was at Q 30 after 60 mins. Last 30 Q were standard stuff and I am quite sure that they are not demo. I was at Q34 after 60 mins in verbal. Surprisingly I got the first verbal Q wrong and still made 700. Also when I was doing DS well, I got more and more tough questions on DS. I am now confident that if I pull myself up and be consistent getting 680+ will be a reality. This also proved that the myth of getting the first 10 Q right to get good score is wrong. I also realized that I did not touch AWA in OG. I was writing things on my own when taking practice tests and getting a 3 - 4. I did not want to take chances so 2 days before the exam I studied AWA in OG12. As my schooling was in English I felt that this is a calculated risk worth taken owing to the little time I had while working.
The day before the exam I simply practiced all the mistakes I did for SC in 1000SC. I revised the Quant mistakes I did in OG. My strategy now is:
1. Write down AWA coolly so that that anxiety will not kill my Quant. Though very rarely anyone dares ask my opinion I better not write a biography of myself over there. Moreover AWA is less priority compared to Quant and Verbal.
2. Whenever I face a tough question in Quant or verbal I will try applying all formulae or reasons and if nothing exists then I will make a guess. I don't want my ego to kill my career. If I cannot answer a question simple or hard, it means I need focus that is all. No hard feelings in making mistakes for simple questions. Similarly I resolved that I will not outsmart the Prep. It has some 0.2 million question in its DB. So out of my ego if I rapidly answer questions then I might end up facing tough questions which take more time. Instead of consistent ups (a cycle of 2 right and 1 wrong) my score might go (in cycles of 3 right and 2 wrong). This might make it difficult for the prep to judge my consistency and hence I might end up with wrong data. After all it's a software and will never have any mercy one me. The other disadvantage of going too fast is that it will throw you into a pool of tough questions which you might never be able to answer in the given time. Why boast ourself for the presidency when we ourselves did not get elected for the senate. Moreover answering too tough questions will drain your energy and might effect the next less easier question available or it might even effect the next section as well.
3. In SC whenever being comes I will be doubly careful. I will prefer active to passive. A can also be a right answer.
4. In a CR just because % are given in options that does mean those options are correct. In CR entire territory and most territory are two different things.
On the early morning of the exam day I simply revised the Manhattan GMAT SC rules again. Took a bottle of water. Some biscuits for eating and my identification proof along with GMAT receipt. One thing is that the GMAT centre phone number is not present on the receipt. So I had trouble locating it. I should have gone there a day before. Luckily I found the venue on time. When I was invited into the venue I took time, completed reading all the maths formulae and then entered the venue. I faced the following rules:
1. No reading inside the venue.
2. Nothing in the pocket, even if they are sentimental.
3. Your jewellery should not have lockets.
4. No two finger rings should be on the same hand. Imagine if you are in this scenario and if your ring does not come out you have to stress your self in removing the ring leading to a lot of wastage of mental energy.
5. You cannot take any object other than the test centre material into the venue.
After entering the exam centre I was able to locate my colleges. After the standard instructions my AWA started and along with the trouble.
My co test taker who entered the venue before me is already in the middle of AWA. He is good at typing and the sound echoing the whole centre. So to avoid this trouble I requested ear plugs. I did not know when my AWA started and ended. All I did was, analyzed the issue at hand. Instead of giving the example and leaving the examiner to review it, I explained why I support a particular thing and wrote an example with the same features. This way I am establishing co-relation to what I am writing. Analysis of issues went well. First I organized the para on rough sheet. Then wrote them on the screen. Last 5 mins I used for spell check. I could not control my feelings for Analysis of an argument. In the end I was left with only 2 mins to review and spell check. But I did not panic. I know that if we organize the paras well and if there is continuity in the para flow, spell checks will be ignored. That's how my AWA ended.
Rested and returned for Quant after 7 mins during 8 min break. I did not know that I will be checked again. That took some time and by the time I started Quant I lost 16 secs. However I started coolly. I faced a tough DS question in geometry. Sticking to my strategy I guessed and went ahead. I was able to move well in quant and completed it on time. Went for the break. This time in the wash room a thought emanated as if what would I do if my verbal goes for a toss. What could be my score. I controlled my emotions. I remembered all the sacrifices I made to come here. I said good or bad I will not let my ego come before truth. So I decided that I will take the scores whatever they may be. I returned 2 mins before the break ended and checking went well.
Verbal started well with, as I expected, SC. I got a CR and then another CR and then an RC. RC was a short paragraph. Then the flow continued. I did not how time ran away. After 3 RCs and many SCs and CRs I came to Q30. I was left with 25 mins. I did not realize that due to my anxiety I was whispering my questions. I was warned by the exam co-ordinator. I stopped doing it and when I killed my anxiety I returned to normalcy. My long practice sessions and reading news sites are paying now. Whenever RC comes after a tough CR or SC it is like a relaxation for me. I am reading the questions first, writing the synopsis of the paras and then jumping into the answers. Whenever I solved a tricky SC or CR I realized that GMAT is as much analytical as it is Psychometric. All I need to do is apply all the things I learned simultaneously and coolly. I came to the break point. Q38 and 6 mins left. Q38 easy. Q39 hard so guessed it. Q40 6 mins left. Q40 moderate. Q41 5 mins left. I felt that either I made a mistake answering a prior question or did not allocate ample time for prior question. Whatever it is I am now left with one question and 5 valuable minutes. It was an SC and as usual I don't know the correct answer. I just thought for one more minute. I recalled the Milan MBA guy's advise. When in dilemma in SC follow your intuition. I did that. I opted for the answer closest to my heart. Then pressed next and confirm.
I was then put up for the update of my details. I updated them. Now the scoring part came. I had 2 mins to cancel my score. I prayed that I get above 680.
God heard me and heeded to my prayer. I could not control myself looking at the score. I almost cried. The exam coordinator rushed to me thinking that I had some cardiac arrest. I denied his help. I requested him some more time. Just some time to cry. I don't know why in this moment of Happiness, I wanna cry. May be its because I used to skip my weekends for this score. May be its because my family is more pious than me and their prayer's are answered. May be it's a reward for the pain I engulfed and the merries I skipped to prepares for this exam. No not at all. There are many more people who sacrificed a lot of things than I did. There are many more people who are ready to toil a lot more than my struggle for this score. There are many people who are much more talented than me. Then why did I end up this score. I believe its GOD'S grace.
To all those frens who sneak a GMAT flash card into their lunch so that they learn a formula.
To all those brethren who miss their time with their family for a better score.
To all those committed individuals who consistently try for a good score putting aside their ego.
I have something to say.
YES WE CAN!!!
Sorry OBAMA I hijacked your president elect speech.
I am just one of you trying desperately to BEAT THE GMAT. Firstly bear with my English mistakes. Now I attended a coaching institute for about 3 months. Even though I was suggested to book for GMAT and prepare first. I ignored it. Did not know when the coaching started and when it ended. All the while I was reasoning that as I do not have enough time , I better not book an appointment. So at last I decided that I would take a sample test and then decide when to book an appointment. My first free GMAT prep test gave me 660. So I felt that getting 700+ is a near dream. So I booked an appointment for GMAT.
My strategy was to first to do reverse engineering. I visualized what would I do one day before the exam. What should I do 1 week before the exam. What should I do over the month before the exam. In the last how many months do I need to prepare for GMAT. I did not get answers for any of these questions except the last (may be I did not search well). I was given a gut feeling answer that a person needs 5 casual months and 3 serious months to prepare for GMAT. I booked a date and it was exactly 90 days to go for my exam. I decided that the day before the exam I will only review the mistakes I did during the preparation of Quant and Verbal and review the formulae. During the last week before the exam I will take 2-3 GMAT exams. During the last one month before the exam, I will at take practice GMAT for 10 times. I will uninstall and re install GMAT prep for more questions. I will do OG completely once again for Quant. Kaplan for CR and 1000SC for SC. No strategy for RC. Read as many news papers as possible.
I started gathering the material the coaching insti gave me. I have Princeton Math, Verbal, Manhattan Gmat, Kaplan, OG 10, 11, 12 and many other stuff. I did the mistake of over accumulating the material. The problem was owing to the little time I have, I faced another task of prioritizing the material and discarding some stuff. Ideally for working people like me I say that we first clearly guage the amount of time we have each day for over a period of 3 months. We should ensure that the preparation time should be 3 continuous hours atleast. I emphasize on continuity because we need to get used to the real test environment. I registered for Beat the GMAT. Now I am ready with my material, I know how much time I have got and all I needed was commitment less overconfidence. Unfortunately I was out of stock in both.
I took the insti test again and scored 600 this time. Learnt that I scored badly in verbal. I took the mock exam exactly after one week and this time it is 640. Really the ground broke. It opened my eyes. I took these exams at Sunday early morning 5. So no question of disturbance or any other stuff which might have reduced my score. So I started assessing myself. I found that I am good at CR (thanks to KAPLAN) but bad in SC and surprisingly very bad in RC. Quant, I was managing to bet at 45-48. I realized one thing here. In many SCs I was rounding the answer to two options and always choosing the wrong ones. In RC I am making the mistake because of loosing focus. In Quant I am losing out on the simple questions. I was 45 days from the exam.
Now that I know what I lack I decided to form my core strategy. I will surely take the 1000Sc I came across Beat the GMAT. I will complete at least 100 questions daily no matter how much time it takes. I decided that I will not touch others until SC is done as I am very bad in SC. I was hardly working on this strategy. Ha ha found the mistake in previous sentence. Actually I meant to say I was working hard with this strategy. I gained this ability from Praci Parekh's blog and Manhattan Gmat's SC. One good thing I did during this time is that whenever I felt that I made a serious mistake, I copied the question in one doc and answer in another. This will help you during the week before the exam. Just like everybody I was tired and could not concentrate on 100 SC continuously. So after every 45 mins I used to close SCs and read news websites. The advantage of this that as you practice SC your brain will be tuned to this and when you read News sites then you will feel relaxed but subconsciously your brain will continue its work. This does not happen when you watch movie or talk to someone. The reason going for news website and not Advs of Huckleberry finn is that news sites, bound by regulation, are committed to report correctly. They cannot say "You can watch Mt Etna explode in two videos from our website". It appears as if the mountain is exploding from the website. These are the tricky GMAT SC questions where they combine grammar with commonsense and answering them will take you to 40 in Verbal. As I said reading the news sites and doing 1000SC were really helpful. I am now 30 days from my exam.
Due to some personal reasons I had to postpone my exam by another 2 months. However I was confident that I will get a good score and when I took VERITAS free I scored just 640. Where did I go wrong? I realized one thing. I was good at things individually but bad when I do them all mixed up together. I did not take into consideration the Psychometric capability of GMAT. Now I am 2 months from the new exam date and I am back to square one. I feel that I might never pass the 700 barrier.
Now I was getting more serious in preparation. Thanks to Kaplan GMAT I can handle 90% of CR but RC and SC were still teasing me. The tough thing with RC is that you have to remember a lot of things and then recollect your answer. Actually this is not correct. It is actually my opinion and I felt that it is common for every one. See doing CR does help you realize you mistkes. The real thing with RC is that we have to read the question first and search for answers. This technique really does work. Also second thing we need to look at RC is that they are really well written topics and if you love reading then obviously you will fall in this trap. You might learn a new thing but end up not answering RC in time. Then one day I stumbled across the way one of the instructors answered the RC. For each para she wrote synopsis in 2 lines. This trick combined with reading the question first did the miracle. Bingo!! I was moving fast in RC. Even though the strike rate did not improve but I am taking less time to do the same in mistakes in RC. The extra time is helping me get either easy SC questions or moderate CRs which I am good at and my score improved. I know I can get 680 on any day now and as my timing improved, I no longer look at time while writing the exam. For both verbal and Quant I see the time remaining at Q 30. I am now getting 680 and I am completing the exam 5 mins ahead. Its now 30 days to my exam.
Now that I experienced what Over confidence can do, I felt that its good I start my math again. I see the advantage of sticking to a limited and sufficient material. You can always know where you stand. If you try out a lot of material, firstly you will never complete it and lastly you will never improve. The vital outputs of a good preparation are it will tell you who you are and where you stand. The previous sentence is wrong and I leave to you to correct it. The previous sentence is again wrong. Can't hel,p got habituated to this kind of stuff. So one month before the exam all I did was complete OG 10, 11, 12 maths. Refreshed Manhattan Gmat once again and completed SCs in OG 12. I was reading everything possible for RC and as anything can come for RC I felt that just reading RC for OGs or any book will not be sufficient. Beat the GMAT RCs were good test here. I was now 15 days to the exam.
From now on I concentrated on my physical diet. I stopped non veg as it gives me dizzy feeling. I stopped having GMAT or watching pornography. I was so involved that I forgot about them. I was eating many times during the day in small amounts. Thus I am not getting tired and not feeling sleepy even after sitting continuously for 4 hrs. At this stage I am getting max 49 in quant and 36 in verbal. All the while I was revising and writing down formulas so as to read them the day before the exam. Its just one week for the exam.
I browsed to see if there are any strategies for last week present. Luckily one person (Sorry mate I forgot your name) who eventually got admitted to University Polytechnique - Milan wrote about his preparation for the day before the exam. I read it and felt that I will surely thanks him after the exam if his advise comes handy. Thanks Mate. He wrote the invaluable advise about the psychometric aspect of the aspect. I summarized that GMAT does not want to test if I know (a+b)^2. They wanna know if I can apply that formula. They are not sadists or psychos. This revelation helped me a lot. I concluded that whenever I am facing a tough question all I need to do is just recollect all the formulae I know and try applying one after the other. Same with SC just check if all the 6 rules in Manhattan GMAT are satisfied or not. Also since this is Psychometric you can expect one in every 7-9 questions to have the correct answer as A. There is no proof for this but I feel that they also wanna test if we go for assumptions and always ignore A thinking that it is always trap answer or wrong answer. I was on full day leave during the last week for the exam. I completed remaining tests and decided to take Gmat Prep. I am now 3 days before the exam. I have all the formulae I need to revise before exam date. I have all the questions I wronged in 1000SC, OG and my coaching centre material.
I got 700 on GMAT Prep sample exam 2. During this exam I enjoyed the fruits of psychometric aspects of GMAT. I am 50 in Quant and 37 in Verbal. As I said practice improved my time. I completed Quant in 75 mins. I was at Q 30 after 60 mins. Last 30 Q were standard stuff and I am quite sure that they are not demo. I was at Q34 after 60 mins in verbal. Surprisingly I got the first verbal Q wrong and still made 700. Also when I was doing DS well, I got more and more tough questions on DS. I am now confident that if I pull myself up and be consistent getting 680+ will be a reality. This also proved that the myth of getting the first 10 Q right to get good score is wrong. I also realized that I did not touch AWA in OG. I was writing things on my own when taking practice tests and getting a 3 - 4. I did not want to take chances so 2 days before the exam I studied AWA in OG12. As my schooling was in English I felt that this is a calculated risk worth taken owing to the little time I had while working.
The day before the exam I simply practiced all the mistakes I did for SC in 1000SC. I revised the Quant mistakes I did in OG. My strategy now is:
1. Write down AWA coolly so that that anxiety will not kill my Quant. Though very rarely anyone dares ask my opinion I better not write a biography of myself over there. Moreover AWA is less priority compared to Quant and Verbal.
2. Whenever I face a tough question in Quant or verbal I will try applying all formulae or reasons and if nothing exists then I will make a guess. I don't want my ego to kill my career. If I cannot answer a question simple or hard, it means I need focus that is all. No hard feelings in making mistakes for simple questions. Similarly I resolved that I will not outsmart the Prep. It has some 0.2 million question in its DB. So out of my ego if I rapidly answer questions then I might end up facing tough questions which take more time. Instead of consistent ups (a cycle of 2 right and 1 wrong) my score might go (in cycles of 3 right and 2 wrong). This might make it difficult for the prep to judge my consistency and hence I might end up with wrong data. After all it's a software and will never have any mercy one me. The other disadvantage of going too fast is that it will throw you into a pool of tough questions which you might never be able to answer in the given time. Why boast ourself for the presidency when we ourselves did not get elected for the senate. Moreover answering too tough questions will drain your energy and might effect the next less easier question available or it might even effect the next section as well.
3. In SC whenever being comes I will be doubly careful. I will prefer active to passive. A can also be a right answer.
4. In a CR just because % are given in options that does mean those options are correct. In CR entire territory and most territory are two different things.
On the early morning of the exam day I simply revised the Manhattan GMAT SC rules again. Took a bottle of water. Some biscuits for eating and my identification proof along with GMAT receipt. One thing is that the GMAT centre phone number is not present on the receipt. So I had trouble locating it. I should have gone there a day before. Luckily I found the venue on time. When I was invited into the venue I took time, completed reading all the maths formulae and then entered the venue. I faced the following rules:
1. No reading inside the venue.
2. Nothing in the pocket, even if they are sentimental.
3. Your jewellery should not have lockets.
4. No two finger rings should be on the same hand. Imagine if you are in this scenario and if your ring does not come out you have to stress your self in removing the ring leading to a lot of wastage of mental energy.
5. You cannot take any object other than the test centre material into the venue.
After entering the exam centre I was able to locate my colleges. After the standard instructions my AWA started and along with the trouble.
My co test taker who entered the venue before me is already in the middle of AWA. He is good at typing and the sound echoing the whole centre. So to avoid this trouble I requested ear plugs. I did not know when my AWA started and ended. All I did was, analyzed the issue at hand. Instead of giving the example and leaving the examiner to review it, I explained why I support a particular thing and wrote an example with the same features. This way I am establishing co-relation to what I am writing. Analysis of issues went well. First I organized the para on rough sheet. Then wrote them on the screen. Last 5 mins I used for spell check. I could not control my feelings for Analysis of an argument. In the end I was left with only 2 mins to review and spell check. But I did not panic. I know that if we organize the paras well and if there is continuity in the para flow, spell checks will be ignored. That's how my AWA ended.
Rested and returned for Quant after 7 mins during 8 min break. I did not know that I will be checked again. That took some time and by the time I started Quant I lost 16 secs. However I started coolly. I faced a tough DS question in geometry. Sticking to my strategy I guessed and went ahead. I was able to move well in quant and completed it on time. Went for the break. This time in the wash room a thought emanated as if what would I do if my verbal goes for a toss. What could be my score. I controlled my emotions. I remembered all the sacrifices I made to come here. I said good or bad I will not let my ego come before truth. So I decided that I will take the scores whatever they may be. I returned 2 mins before the break ended and checking went well.
Verbal started well with, as I expected, SC. I got a CR and then another CR and then an RC. RC was a short paragraph. Then the flow continued. I did not how time ran away. After 3 RCs and many SCs and CRs I came to Q30. I was left with 25 mins. I did not realize that due to my anxiety I was whispering my questions. I was warned by the exam co-ordinator. I stopped doing it and when I killed my anxiety I returned to normalcy. My long practice sessions and reading news sites are paying now. Whenever RC comes after a tough CR or SC it is like a relaxation for me. I am reading the questions first, writing the synopsis of the paras and then jumping into the answers. Whenever I solved a tricky SC or CR I realized that GMAT is as much analytical as it is Psychometric. All I need to do is apply all the things I learned simultaneously and coolly. I came to the break point. Q38 and 6 mins left. Q38 easy. Q39 hard so guessed it. Q40 6 mins left. Q40 moderate. Q41 5 mins left. I felt that either I made a mistake answering a prior question or did not allocate ample time for prior question. Whatever it is I am now left with one question and 5 valuable minutes. It was an SC and as usual I don't know the correct answer. I just thought for one more minute. I recalled the Milan MBA guy's advise. When in dilemma in SC follow your intuition. I did that. I opted for the answer closest to my heart. Then pressed next and confirm.
I was then put up for the update of my details. I updated them. Now the scoring part came. I had 2 mins to cancel my score. I prayed that I get above 680.
God heard me and heeded to my prayer. I could not control myself looking at the score. I almost cried. The exam coordinator rushed to me thinking that I had some cardiac arrest. I denied his help. I requested him some more time. Just some time to cry. I don't know why in this moment of Happiness, I wanna cry. May be its because I used to skip my weekends for this score. May be its because my family is more pious than me and their prayer's are answered. May be it's a reward for the pain I engulfed and the merries I skipped to prepares for this exam. No not at all. There are many more people who sacrificed a lot of things than I did. There are many more people who are ready to toil a lot more than my struggle for this score. There are many people who are much more talented than me. Then why did I end up this score. I believe its GOD'S grace.
To all those frens who sneak a GMAT flash card into their lunch so that they learn a formula.
To all those brethren who miss their time with their family for a better score.
To all those committed individuals who consistently try for a good score putting aside their ego.
I have something to say.
YES WE CAN!!!
Sorry OBAMA I hijacked your president elect speech.
