What shall I call it, "A smooth landing?"

Today was the test day. Slept late till around 6:30am. Unlike the mornings when GMAT preparation, I did not have anything to study. Unlike every other morning, had breakfast at home. Should do it more often. Yeh right !!. Started for the test center at around 7:30. Reached there by 8:15. Sat in the parking lot flipping through some flash cards. Went inside at around 8:30. Signed in and listened to the sermon. She gave me my workstation at 9:00 am. The first was, Argument analysis. I expect a 5 Score on that. The issue analysis did not go very well. I kind of write better when I disagree. This issue I agreed whole heartedly. So was not very passionate. So I expect a 4 score.

I was expecting the breaks to be 5mnts in length. In reality they were 10mnts. So much time. I took the whole 10 mnts to reiterate my Quant strategy. Which, simply put was to go at it very actively. Question 3, a simple one involving three decimal numbers took a hell a lot of time than I anticipated. I did not want to guess so early. So took the hit and solved it. By my first 1/3rd mark when the clock struck 50mnts, I was already 3 questions behind. From then on there was not a single question where I had to spend a lot of time to get to an answer. By the time 2nd 1/3rd was over, ie at 25mnts left on the clocks, I covered the lost ground and was even with the planned number of questions. So I was very relaxed for the last 13 questions. Last question I finished with 30 seconds to spare on the clock. I am very sure that it was experimental question, since that was far too easy.

My reflection on my Quant performance was that I am going to get 45. So I knew the Verbal plan is cut out very vividly. I must go at it with all the energy I got, and score as much as possible. I spent the 10 mnts break flipping through some points I wrote down, like read actively, what to do in CR, what to do in RC, what all errors to expect in SC etc. Also I ate a banana, and my chocolate. The chocolate has been a constant companion through out my test taking. My hypothesis is that if I take a bite of chocolate before every full test section, my brain kind of will know that it has some work ahead. Kind of stupid, but I believe it. Chocolate is known to have some effects on one's mood.

I started the verbal promptly at the end of 10 mnts break. I found the verbal section pretty easy. There were 4 RC passages spread evenly. I got 2 bold face CR and 2 fill the _____, CR. This gave me an indication that I am doing pretty well in Verbal. My definition of pretty good in Verbal is if I am scoring at 42 :-). So I was very happy. I made some cynical calculation that since I am going to be above 90 percentile, no one else in the room has a statistical probability of getting a 90 percentile (Since there were only two other persons in the room taking the GMAT at that time.). Pretty cocky of me. I think I kind of became a little over confident towards the last part of the Verbal and let my guard down. That is in retrospective. I finished verbal with around 1 minute to spare on the clock. Clicked through the screens and waited for the score.

The score report said I scored more than 94% of people who takes GMAT. The overall score was 710, with Quantitative chipping in 49 and Verbal accounting for a miserable 38. I was surprised with both my scores. I was expecting to do a lot better than that on the Verbal. However, the overall score and the balance of the sections should be enough for me to make my case be heard by the admission committees of most of B-Schools. So I am happy with the way GMAT went.

The Phase I is over. I will take a break of one week before I finalize on the rest of the application process. GMAT out of the way is a good thing. I shall just bask in it for a few days, and then get back into action.