A Year Ago Today

I took the GMAT. I had been studying diligently for three months and spent top dollar on a ManhattanGMAT Preparation course. The highest I had scored on a practice test was 710, but I could never duplicate that score again, so I resolved to score in the mid 600s on the real test and just take it again.

Looking back, I have never been so ready for game time than I had been on that day. The evening before, I decided to take it easy and go get a manicure, so my hands were looking quite pretty. When I got to the testing center, I was so ready to rock. I had played my game song for the GMAT on the way to the building so I was in the zone.

Halfway into the quant section, I knew I bombed the test. I got stuck on a particularly hard question and lost crucial time. I had to basically hack away at some of the questions so I could have a bank of time at the end to finish strong.

Convinced I bombed quant, I figured that verbal would be my saving grace as it's always been. But I felt like I was bombing that too at one point. I got to a particularly technical passage for RC, read through it twice, and still couldn't retain anything. I tried to use process of elimination, and wound up eliminating all the answer choices. I sped through the next few sentence correction and critical reasoning questions to make up ground so I wouldn't be penalized for not finishing.

When I got to the end of the exam, I was relieved to have finally taken the test and had braced myself for the 600 I thought I'd see. Imagine my surprise when I hit show me the score and saw a freaking 730. I had scored that high in quant before and that high in verbal but on separate tests! The moral of the story is don't cancel your score. Because the test is adaptive, the better you're doing, the more you'll feel like you're flailing because the test will give you harder and harder questions. The other moral of the story is to make the most of your GMAT prep course. I know folks who took them and didn't really do all the homework and take advantage of all the resources the company provides. I lived, breathed, ate, slept the GMAT for three months and I went from a 590 (practice exam) to a 730. It can be done, but it's not easy.

And finally, my GMAT theme song, Cosmic Slop by Parliament Funkadellic. It has absolutely nothing to do with overcoming obstacles or winning. It's actually just a really funky song with a nice bass line and guitar riff that always got me amped up to go through a 3 hour practice test.