First Test

When you look up 'disaster' in the dictionary in 2026 on your google contact lenses, it will show the last 40 seconds of this Quant test.  I answered 7 questions without reading the question, and only got one right.  One!  There are 5 multiple choice possibilities!  I didn't just answer them incorrectly, I also failed at randomness!

The Verbal section was better because I use words almost daily.

Total = 610.  It's rivaling my credit score.

Lucky I'm enrolled in a class!

Thanks for reading.

DAY 1

Today started as every day does - the sun blinding me because I never put up curtains.

But today is special because it is the first day of studying for my GMATs.

A little about me:

I was born to French and American parents, grew up in Wales, and went to an international boarding school for the last two years of high school where I studied the International Baccalaureate (woah!  I spelled that with out AutoCorrect!  That's 750 material right there).

I studied Economics and Communications at Northwestern University and graduated with a 3.2 average (read: econ gpa = 2.7, comm = theater).  I spent two years traveling and working abroad in international development, worked for a CDFI in New York for a year and am currently, ahem, between jobs (funemployed).  I'm working on two start-ups and have a number of job prospects (I do, Dad, I promise), but decided that I should make the most of my flexible schedule by taking the GMAT.  I don't plan on applying to biz skool this year, but the scores are valid for 5 years, so I thought 'why not!?'

My parents offered me the extremely generous birthday gift of the Complete Course at Manhattan GMAT, which came very highly recommended from friends.  It's a 9-week course that starts on February 19th and ends on April 16th, giving me plenty of time to kill myself before the test.

THE TEST.  Oh lord.

MAY 7TH.  Oh feck.

Mark it down in your calendar.  I'm stressed just thinking about it.  Maybe it's the caffein though.

I'm studying at my favorite coffee shop, The West.  I read the first chapters of GMAT Roadmap from Manhattan GMAT.  It was a delightful read full of twists and turns, but left me desperate for more.  Also, it answers a lot of questions upfront like "Wait, this is adaptive?  WTF does that mean!?"
In all honesty, it made me feel more at ease.  The literature wasn't dry, and it made me feel like I knew what I was in for for the next 12 weeks.

But there's only one way to find out!  Time to take a practice test. Two 75-minute sessions to find out how dumb I've become since I last did math (4.5 years and counting).

I will do the practice test that is offered for students on the Manhattan GMAT website.  The first test excludes the essay portion (apparently not that important - "The essay only really matters if you score in the bottom 20%") and the Integrated Reasoning (IR) portion because "[it] is new as of June 2012.  It will take years for the admission committees to care all that much about IR scores, since schools will not be able to calibrate IR scores against academic performance... for quite some time."

Time to start!

Thanks for reading.

The quest for 720+ begins...

WELCOME TO 12 WEEKS OF HELL

Maybe.  Who knows.

I am exactly 84 days away from...

The GMAT.

The most important examination of my natural born life.

Except for those SATs that were so important.  And the IB.  And the GCSEs before that.  And that entrance exam I took to get into kindergarten.  And my quarterly STD tests.  Other than those, this is the one that might make or break my entire life.

Maybe.  Who knows.

Follow the journey as I detail the highs and lows, the exhilaration and depression, the caffein and the valium, of the next 12 weeks.

Thanks for reading.