Difficulties and stupidities I faced and committed in my application process from beginning till hitting submit on the applications. I will cover GRE in this post. Will write about TOEFL & essays in few days. Time to take GRE GRE is the first step in the application process. After GRE a long road exists – 1. Struggling with recommendations, waiting for busy profs, begging them again and again (I was a fresher so don’t know how well the team leads and managers in a firm co-operate) 2. Writing a SOP is not a two day thing , especially for MIS where most of the universities give different questions. 3. Transcripts— your college will ask for your time and money both to prepare a transcript, so keep enough buffer time to get this requirement. Therefore, best time to take GRE is August or maximum September. Try not to delay than this period. When to book GRE Once you have booked your GRE test, honestly you’d be more worried from that day only. It might be true you are working hard earlier but once you know the date you will be mentally prepared to do your best. So GRE date should be booked 3 months before to get a satisfied center, date and time slot. Time Slot to choose I booked my test 1 and a half month ago, All the afternoon slots were filled and I had to choose a morning time slot. DON’T GO FOR A MORNING TIME SLOT. Particularly when you are an owl and the desired center (for me it was Prometric) is far from your home. Morning timings in prometric is 10 am, for me it was too early as Gurgaon is 2 hours metro from my place. When to reach the center One of the magoosh videos suggested to visit the centre 2-3 days before the exam, park your car / take public transportation & enter the elevator the same way you’d do on the test day to get psychologically prepared. If your test begins at 10 a.m. reach the centre by 9:15. They let you enter as soon as you reach, need not wait till 10 & use the best of your aware and active mind. Shit that can happen during the test 1. Be patient & read the instructions unlike the ETS official mocks (which asks u at every step if u want to skip a section) the actual test won’t ask. A guy sitting behind me came after the break and impatient to start the section he clicked next..next many times to skip the instructions. But little did he know HE CLICKED NEXT SO MANY TIMES THAT HE SKIPPED THAT SECTION COMPLETELY. He made a chaos there in the pin drop silence, called every guy from the glass window and didnt leave any stone unturned to disturb us. In his defense he said, “but the ETS mock always asked before moving to next section”. Don’t do such stupid things & disturb others. 2. Verbal Surprise Sections are always better Guys, being Indian engineers we feel we will do our best in quant and manage to bring an average score in verbal. We pray for a surprise quant section instead of Verbal. Honestly, verbal on GRE is simpler than QUANT. MY analysis of the exam is the section you get after AWA is your surprise section. So the pattern becomes VQVQV or QVQVQ. (I might be wrong). I got my first section as Q. I ruined it. It was no easy like the mocks. My answers were not coming, I was not able to land up on a certain option. I always scored around 165 in the mocks & ended up with 158. If you are a bad test taker, please relax at this moment. I ruined my first Quant, and was not able to concentrate on the first verbal which followed it. 3. Heavy eyelashes and starving stomach If you have prepared well for 2 months, the difference between 305 & 325 is the amount of sleep u have taken & how peaceful your mind is during those 4 hours. Don’t forget to keep something to eat during the break. An energy bar and orange juice should be suffice. Reporting your Scores One should always have knowledge about the universities he/she is applying to. Don’t leave this task for later. Based on that knowledge use the 4 free reporting options judiciously. Don’t even waste one option. If u get a low score, don’t give up on ur dream universities. Remember GRE is not the only parameter for u to get an admit.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 13:26:47 +0000