GMAT - I

I decided to take the GMAT in the spring of 2008. After some research I discovered I was racing against time to apply for the 2009 session. A couple of things that helped me in Canada were - more time for personal use after work and the resourceful public library. I visited the library on almost every weekend.
I started reading the Princeton review for GMAT. This book is a good introduction for someone who has no idea what the test is all about as it explains in the simplest of languages using layman examples. I used this book to get a gist of things to come. I did not spend much time on this book as there was not much to practice. I moved on to Kaplan's prep stuff, which is better than the Princeton one in terms of the difficulty level of the questions. I skimmed through this book, did some problems and learnt a few fundamentals. I think the OG is the best prep books available. I got hold of OG12 and went through it cover to cover(I hate buying books that you'd hardly read more than once in a lifetime). I wasn't sure about the improvements that I made since I started prep'ing. The best way to find was by taking a Sim test. I took the mba.com's simulation test and scored a paltry 630. I had been studying for almost a month but the score did not reflect any improvement. I realized that sitting through the whole test was tough. Mental fatigue gets you towards the end. You know you should analyze a question a bit more but the mind is so fried by this time that you say what the hell, I just get over with it, screw the score. I figured the mind has to be trained to think clearly this long. I started spending more and more time practicing, thus following the brute force approach. In hindsight I think working smarter and harder is the magic pill to success. Hard work alone makes an ass of you.

In July of 2008 I learnt that my Canada assignment could end in a couple of months. This news derailed many of plans, but for the sake of sticking to the topic I would just talk about the one relevant here. Even though my studies had been random, I had been digging GMAT books for around a couple of months by now. I wanted to get over with GMAT while in Canada. I agree that many ppl do take the exam in India and get awesome scores. (And I too would have been one of them had I haven't got the onsite opportunity). But now that I was in a slightly advantageous position I decided to put it to best possible use, at least for getting the GMAT out of the way. With all this happening in the background I took the GMAT appointment for the 25th of sep 2008 (ya that's my official b'day as well). I had around a month and a half to spare before the test. Since I had already gone through most of the books I started taking simulation tests. I was happy just by the taking the tests and thinking that I am training myself for the 4 hour marathon. I did not analyze my answers after the tests as I thought just sitting through it and tackling the questions was good enough (which later was proved wrong). Like most of you I too had been educated in good English medium schools. I rated my English language abilities highly. I thought I could get a decent score in English just relying on my intuition. So all I did was read the question and select the answer based on how an option sounded (far from logical way.. no doubt I flunked in the end).

My sim test scores ranged from 650-730 with an average of 680. With a little luck and a final push I hoped to land somewhere around the 720 mark. Of all the sections on the GMAT I practiced English the least. I wanted to rely on my intuition (to clear out all confusuion - not because I was confident or something, but because I was lazy). Over the last few months I could not figure a relation between the time spent practicing English and the scores on the sim tests. Cracking English seemed a case of pure luck. Sometimes I got all the RC's and CR's right sometimes none. It never occurred to me that there could be a flaw in my strategy.

Finally the test day arrived. I reached the venue an hour in advance, which happened to be 7:15 am. I don't remember why the hell did I choose this hour, I was still a bit asleep. The test started at the scheduled time. I breezed through the essays without a hiccup (got a 5.5 with a days prep). The maths section was fine except the beginning. I was treading too cautiously that I faced the risk of exhausting the allotted time before the last question. In the last quarter I did some questions really hastily and I think would have got a few questions wrong. (got a 49, which was a mark short of my expectation). Now came the decider English. Started off well. I followed the "what sounds right" approach. When you use this approach you end up feeling great as every selection you made sounds correct to you. But it could be far from truth and this approach frequently yields surprizing results. The paper ended and I was hopeful of a good final score. Sitting through many sim tests I had trained my mind to sail through the 4 hour long exercise. It clearly showed in my actual test. I was still fresh after the test. Feeling confident I clicked the "Send Score" button and the next screen was the bitter truth I wasn't prepared to face. I had estimated my score to lie between 680-720. I got a 640, a measly 26 in English (my lowest Eng score till date in over 15 sims and 2 actuals). My predictions had gone haywire. The invigilator lady handed me the score print out and said - "congratulations", to this day I don't know if she meant it sarcastically.

I wasn't actually sad. I was disappointed that all the hard work, time, money etc went in vain. I went to work for the remainder of the day. Told who ever inquired (definitely didn't go announcing as I did for the ISB selection). Life went on with the routine stuff for the remainder of the year. As it turned out my on-site assignment did get an extension. So I was staying here for a little longer and was hoping to fight the beast gain (read GMAT).