I recently gave the GMAT exam

As most of you know,you can now choose the order in which you wish to answer the sections.I went for Analytical Writing,Integrated Reasoning,Quant and Verbal Reasoning.

Some observations:

1) The writing segment was pretty straightforward.I was asked to present my thoughts on a business analyst's analysis of a company.The passage was pretty small.I feel it will help if you know something about the subject/topic in question.So,try to have some knowledge about things around you.Anything from Sports to Corporations to State Law.Just a basic understanding is enough.

2) Integrated Reasoning was also straightforward.All depends on how well you understand the question.No fancy English in the passage(s) You are presented with some data and the context in which it applies to the given situation.Reading the passage carefully is most important here.Questions were fairly easy.

3) Quant was the easiest section.The practice questions I had done were much harder than the exam questions! I don't know,maybe I got lucky.I mostly got arithmetic based questions.Hardly 10% of the questions involved geometry.Again,understand the problem and then try to put in the values given.

4) Verbal reasoning was the most tricky section.The passages covered sociology,composition of Earth's core/mantle,etc.,etc.Personally,this is my favourite section.I got to learn a lot of new stuff! Things I would've never read otherwise.This section tests your objective skills and how well you understand new topics.So,it's pretty cool! Keep an open mind and don't put your own beliefs into the answer.Your job is to understand what the author is trying to say.All your answers should be based on the context in which the subject was presented in the given passage.


One thing I didn't like was the absolute isolation of each section.Once you answer a question,you cannot go back to it and once a section is done...it's done.Also,you just have to give an answer for every question.Sometimes,I was not absolutely sure of the answer and would've liked to leave it unanswered.But no,that's not allowed.Basically,it hurts your score if you leave the question unanswered.I read somewhere that there is a penalty involved too.There is not even a review for later option.Contrast this with the CAT exam: You can fill in tentative answers to questions and before submission,you will be prompted to re-visit those questions.This helps a lot if you have some time on your hands.Like if I finish the paper 15-20 minutes early,I can always go back and review my early answers.I hope GMAT adopts the CAT approach here.

Based on the unofficial score,I scored the most in the Verbal section followed by Quant followed by Writing.Reasoning was the absolute worst for me.This was surprising since at home I was doing the best in Reasoning section and the worst in the Verbal section.I probably focused too much on the Verbal section and lost the edge I had in reasoning section.Lesson is to not get cocky about sections you are strong in.Keep getting back to them once in a while.

In case you are curious,my unofficial score was around 680.

Hope this was helpful.