Hello World!

Long time! And I have many an excuse for what kept me away from blogworld.

First, my car. After coming back from India, someone decided to put in a dent in the front of my car and as I contemplated reporting it, I found a nail happily buried in the tire. In the process of fixing the flat, I realized only the drivers side window works and the rest do not slide up (or down). So I moved into the mechanics house and spent few days educating myself on fixing cars.

Once this was done with, my laptop decided to conk off. Did I tell anyone I got a new laptop like.... 3 weeks ago. And after working fine for few days it refused to accept any electrical input. Few weeks were spent waiting for SONY to send a technician home, who ripped the entire laptop apart and changed the motherboard. Hence, after car education, I was into laptop education.

And I thought since I am getting so much of an education, I might as well try to get it from Harvard. Hence most evenings are spent reading up on the GMAT. Now let me tell you about the GMAT. This is no piece of cake. My entire life I have played around with the system. Wanna know how I passed my 10th grade? And my 12th Grade? And my engineering? Ok, all you guys who are still in your teens, writing exams and cursing yourself on having to cram every small letter in a book which resembles the encyclopaedia. What I tell you now is the guide to your success.

In most of my exams, we used to have questions which went - "Answer any 7 out of the 10" or something similar. Now this was my strategy. Let me first warn you, I was a duffer. I never knew more than 5 or 6 out of those 10 answers. So if you are the kinds who knows 11 out of 10, this tip is not for you. Well, this is how I went about answering the questions:

Answer 3
Answer 7
Answer 1
Answer 9
Answer 2
Answer 3
Answer 8

Notice something? I answered Question 3 twice, happily avoiding 10, 4, 5 and 6. 90% of the time, the examiner would not notice I have answered Q3 twice. All that was verified was I answered 7 questions, total it up and write down the marks for that section. 10% of the time, I have seen a red mark, something saying answer is repeated.

When is it safe to do this?
- When you are absolutely sure that the best you can get in the other four questions is a zero.
- When the answer sheet does not have a grid box on the main (first page) having a space for evaluating every question (you know those irritating little boxes which have 1a, 1b, 1c etc. typed in it and all the examiner has to do is fill in the marks next to each box).

What you should do:
- The answer which you repeat, please do not write it word to word matching to the previous one. The examiner is gonna say, "Didnt I read these exact words before?" (unless you are asked to quote). Write it in a different way. In fact, keep it little incomplete and lose a point or two if you like.

Variations:
Answer 3
Answer 7
Answer 1
Answer 9
Answer 2
Answer 3
Answer 8
Answer 10
Answer 5

You didnt know 10 or 5 too well, but good enough to perhaps get a point or two. In this case, the examiner is going to pick the top seven answers as per your score in each one. If he figures out you have repeated Q3, he will just mark it out and award you points from 10 or 5. Caveat: You need the time to attempt those extra questions.


For those who are not aware, the GMAT follows a pattern where all questions are compulsory. Which is my third reason for not being visible on the blogworld. I need to sit and study as all my above theories which got me all the way to an engineering degree have been tossed into the bin. And as I read this post again, I notice so many grammatical errors, which is an indication that I need to work more on my sentence correction!

If you come across someone who could pass off as my twin, and happens to have taken the GMAT with an 800 score, kindly get his phone #. I would much appreciate it.