Test Day (!)

Hi again.

Just going to give a quick-ish account of how my actual test day panned out. I will in my next post try and give certain strategies specific to each section (AWA, Numeracy and Verbal).

Right where to begin.......okay lets start with what you should do with yourself the day before your test! Now ideally before your test, you want to be well rested, in a positive frame of mind and focused. I ran through GMAT Prep 2 the day before my exam (for the second time) to keep my mind sharp. I scored 760. After going through the questions I got wrong, I decided to relax and spent a couple of hours watching the Wimbledon Final. It was a great match, felt a bit sorry for Roddick, but great to see Federer make history by winning 15 grand slams at the age of 27. Especially liked Roddick saying "Sorry Pete (Sampras) tried to hold him off as long as possible!" in his interview. I did a couple of SC questions in the evening, and went to bed early at 10pm.

You know yourself best, so do whatever relaxes you, whether its going to the gym, watching a movie or listening to music. I couldn't see any harm doing a couple of questions or running through a prep the day before just to keep the mind sharp. I would not suggest a massive cramming session either. After all, the GMAT is just not the type of exam you can "cram" for. There isn't a mass of information to digest. You either know the principles and techniques or you don't.

My test was scheduled at 12.45pm and despite sleeping early, I woke up @ 9am feeling TIRED. I think I had a broken sleep, waking up a couple of times, it was probably unconscious anxiety - nevertheless these things cannot be avoided sometimes! I proceeded to have a shower, and ate a hearty breakfast (eggs bacon mushrooms mmmmmm). Bought a Coke on my way to the test center for caffeine and sugar and also a Red Bull (open in case of emergency - I thought to myself).

My local test center is in London. I got there an hour early and they asked me if I wanted to take it early as they had free slots. I thought "Why Not?" and decided to go for it. To my shock......I was not allowed to take any drinks in. No Water, no Coke and no Red Bull. They suggested I could drink during my breaks. I then asked for some ear muffs to block out any noise and to help me concentrate. They had run out. I also asked for an additional notebook. I wasn't allowed. Now I assume these annoyances are specific to the London test centre (aka Prison) as I had read these little tips from other test takers on the GMAT forums. I didn't get particularly rattled but it wasn't exactly a warm welcome.

I sat at my seat. Took my shoes off to relax. No my feet didn't stink! AWA section. I had written a couple of practice essays on the GMAT prep software but nothing marked. I followed a fairly traditional structure on both argument and issue questions (will talk about this more in later posts). Nothing dramatic to report here, wrote each in about 20 mins and proof read for 5+ mins. Still awaiting the scores, but it felt like it went okay. Now at the end of the AWA section I wrote the following on my notepad:

Now the above is a tip I picked up from www.beatthegmat.com. The left side represents the numeracy section and shows on question 5 you should have 66 minutes left, question 10, 56 minutes left etc. The gap here is 10 mins per 5 questions. The right side represents the verbal section and is exactly the same principle instead the gap between 5 questions is 9 minutes. Timekeeping is very important on the GMAT. You get heavily penalised if you do not finish the test so referring to the above is a good way of keeping track of how much time you have left.

Right onto the numeracy section. Question one - seems like a simple algebra rearranging problem. Do the workings on my pad, and look up.......cannot see the answer listed! Redo my workings......still cannot see the answer. I think to myself "this is the first question, 50% get it right, 50% get it wrong, surely you can get the answer". Before I know it 5 minutes have elapsed. An important lesson here is sometimes you have to let go of your pride and just make an educated guess. That's exactly what I did but I wasted far too much time before doing so. I also don't buy into this "get the first 10 questions correct at all costs" business. You have to devote an equal amount of time/effort to all questions and it is imperative to finish the test (at all costs). I managed to make up the time on some easier PS questions and some DS questions where the principles came to me quickly. Whenever I saw a difficult question from that point on, I did not spend too long on it, 1-2 mins max, then making an educated guess. I did not notice the test getting progressively harder either......I felt it was a mixture of easy/moderate and difficult questions throughout.

Who knows if I got that first question correct? But by referring to my notepad for timing, making educated guesses where I needed to, and nailing those questions I knew how to do, I finished in time and scored 49 (88 percentile). Now of course......I didn't know this at the time. I was glad I didn't lose the plot after the Question 1 debacle and was able to finish the test but it did not feel like I had aced the section either.

Took a break. Went outside drank some Coke. Went to the toilet splashed my face with water.

Now onto the verbal section. I don't have a great deal to write here. It felt slightly harder than the GMAT prep but I am certain that was more down to the pressure of exam conditions rather than genuinely more difficult questions. My timing was fine and I worked through the test. There were 2 long RC passages and 2 short ones. I scored 40 or 89 percentile. I'm sure many of you out there are perfectionists. But sometimes you have to realise, you cannot get every question on the GMAT correct so don't fret if you are not 100% certain of an answer. Choose what you think is best and move on.

I click "finish" on my screen. My initial assessment is......."Please Please over 700" but I am not certain at all. The score comes up.........730 - Q49 V40 overall 96 Percentile. Happiness. Relief. Silent fist pump. I am.........Roger Federer (for about 2 seconds).