720 (Q48, V41) - it was a long hard road out of hell :)

When I clicked on the button "Report the score" I felt like a century had passed before I saw the score on the screen. My first thought was - "Gosh, I am on the other side! I won't return to GMAT materials any more!!!"

Before that moment I have been brutally preparing for the GMAT for about 6-6.5 months starting from February. Almost every day was filled with some GMAT stuff. Wherever I went, whatever I did my briefcase was always full of practice tests, my mobile phone was adjusted to GMAT forums. GMAT was like a virus with which I got infected, the disease which could only be cured after passing this test successfully.

Actually, 720 was my third attempt. My previous two were - "cancelled" and miserable 580 I struggled hard being encouraged by my own motto - "You will not lose until you stop fighting".

As somebody wrote on this forum passing GMAT can be psychologically difficult because of a special environment of the GMAC's testing facilities. Some test-takers are shocked with special notepads and black markers, some become depressed with the environment of the testing rooms, some are irritated by proctors etc. And it was the case for me - I did not like the testing room of a certain testing centre (dim light, noisy desktops, small living space So I have changed my strategy towards finding a more appropriate place to pass this exam (thankfully, GMAC has more than one testing centre in my country).

Another thing that you may encounter on your exam is that your initial preparation for the exam is not enough since the difficulty of the exam questions have drastically risen since 2005/06 the period when some important materials (including OG11, GMATPrep) have been published/ made. However, according to my theory the most difficult exam questions are experimental, those that do not contribute to your final score. So again, it's a psychological problem that you may need to deal with properly - do not get paniced when you see something like "[(23^766 * 8738^454) / 443^955] - sqrt(8787) x 56454" - just miss it and go forward - remember the time is crucial.

The exam. The morning on the exam day was especially weird - the picture below comes close to what I felt in that morning. I wake up at about 9 am and felt very-very sick maybe because I was hungry, maybe because I was very excited, so I decided to continue sleeping till 10 am. Then suddenly I realized that I felt sick because I was hungry not because I was too excited. Immediately I stood up and rushed to the local cafeteria. There I ordered a bottle of mineral water, some soup and fried eggs. I felt a little bit better but still not excellent. I came back to my hotel and packed all necessary things (zephyr, juices, water, the pills of vitamin C that could be dissolved in water). vitamin C has an effect of tonic like caffeine but lacks the caffeine's side effects like "vasoconstriction of blood flow in the brain" so that your brain may run a longer marathon.

4 minutes till the registration deadline and the beginning of the exam, I came into the centre very calm. The proctor said "Hey man, you can really miss your test, you should have come much earlier" - I was not worried at all. Passports, digital photos, fingerprints… done - I am in front of the beloved GMAC screen typing my essays. I have a little bit messed up the essays but still ended with 4.5 AWA. In my opinion, b-schools pay less attention to the essays than to the score.

During the first break I ate half of the box of zephyr, drank the solution of vitamin C and water and moved on.

Math started with a relatively easy question. I was sure I got it right - a good beginning Somewhere on the 27-th question I felt that the pages in the notepad were ending. So I waved my hand - no reaction, waved again - nothing changed. 17 min. left on the clock. I went out of the testing room and asked the proctor to give me another pad and he disappeared with my pad in the bathroom. I came back to my table without a notepad. I started writing formulae and equations right on the table and got a washed notepad (still with water on its pages:) only 4-5 minutes later. Unfortunately, I had to guess on my last two questions - and don't know whether I missed them or got right

During the second break I ate the rest of zephyr, drank some juice with high concentration of sugar, relaxed on a nice couch with cold leather coating. This couch greatly helped me to calm down and prepare emotionally to the third part - the verbal.

Generally, in the verbal there was nothing special but for the difficulty - a little bit higher than in your GMATPreps. I remember one of the RCs was so dull that I spent 15 minutes on its 4-5 questions. Somewhere in the middle I started feeling bored and sometimes fell out of my thinking process. During the fall-out moments I tried the meditation technique - repeated the words "bore, bore, bore....." and "thinking, thinking, thinking.....", stabilized my breath - and it helped Anyway I had to guess on the last two questions in this part as well I had only 35 seconds for the last two questions and allocated them as follows: 25 secs - for the boldface, 10 seconds for SC question

When I finished I did not feel that I missed much and hoped I would get a decent score - and that happened. 720 is a last year's average score in Stanford!!! So it won't be a hurdle to apply even there!!!

I would like to thank all the members of GMATClub, especially vikramjit_01 (the guy whose lead I followed:), Fig (whose math talent is unequalled), KillerSquirrel (whose avatar has always joyed me:). You guys rock!!! Your support encouraged me on this hard road

The questions posted on our forums are indeed very useful for preparation. But my advice - avoid Kaplan's, Barron's and other infamous materials (even on these forums) to save your precious time.

Now it is an application time, not easy but long-awaited

Nick_sun