To take the GMAT test in Shanghai, you have to go to the Pearson Professional Center which recently moved to the new location at Asia Mansion. When you register for the test, directions to the test center is actually given to you. It’s about 10 minutes walking distance from the People’s Square Metro Station, behind Raffles City in the corner of Hankou road and Zhejiang road. The center is on the 10th floor and there is a banner when you exit the lift. You wouldn’t miss it. [How to go]

On the actual test day, there are some people waiting at the entrance of the test center, an elderly man and an woman probably in their 50s. I was thinking “Wow, these 2 are going to take the GMAT… They probably plan to take the Executive MBA usually meant for top management types”…

As it turned out, they were just the parents of one of the candidates. OMG… it’s like parents sending their kid to school for exams and I almost thought they are going to sit in together with their daughter!

Dad: Is everything alright?
Mom: Remember to relax… don’t be nervous
Dad: Call us when you have finished, we’ll pick you up.

I feel like in an elementary school. Oh common baby… you are taking the GMAT for MBA for god’s sake. But then again, the candidate looked really young. My guess is that she is probably in her mid 20s, with just one or two years of work experience. Doubt she can contribute much to her MBA class.

The test center was very strict and please take note that personal items including rings and bracelets have to be removed and placed in the lockers as well. I felt it was a little overboard? Phones, wallets, watches etc… I can probably understand but rings and bracelets too?? They probably worried that people will engrave some information on the rings and cheat in the test

Our palms were scanned before we are allowed into the test area. The whole experience was pretty nerve-racking. I was pretty confident of my abilities in the Quantitative Section where math problems are tested. It was the Verbal Section that was giving me headaches, especially the Sentence Correction part. I spent a lot of time on some of the tough questions and ended up with little time left for the last few questions. Had no choice but to guess intelligently. By the time I finished the last question in the test, I was feeling pretty down. This is my first take and I felt that I would probably score only 640 at best. Imagine my surprise when I found out that my unofficial score is 690. Now all that is left is to wait for the official score with my Essay ratings.

As for the preparation, I spend about one month studying for the GMAT. I practiced on the GMATPrep mock test that can be downloaded freely from the website www.mba.com. I tried the mock test without any preparation at all, just to get a hang of the GMAT format. The first 2 times, I only managed to score 600 and I realized that my Verbal Section was pretty weak. I spend about 2 weeks to brush up on the grammar stuff and other parts of the Verbal Section. Took the mock test again and scored 640. I figured that if I spend the remaining 2 weeks studying hard, I could stand a chance of scoring 680. In the final week of study, I read somewhere that many questions can be found in GMAT forums in the web. Solutions to the questions are discussed as well. 2 GMAT forums that I found very useful are www.gmatclub.com and www.beatthegmat.com. Eric Bahn’s GMAT flashcards are pretty helpful as well. You can find them in www.beatthegmat.com. I only knew about the flashcards one day before the actual test date. Darn! Wished I had discovered them earlier.

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4:49 pm

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