Woohoo! I did it!
It’s over! I took the big old nasty GMAT! It seemed to take forever and turn my brain inside out, but it’s over. I didn’t get my official score yet — that’ll take about 3 weeks — but my preliminary score was over 700. Out of a maximum of 800, I think I did pretty good. If you can believe the percentile, I’m smarter at math than 82% of the people who think they’re smart enough to go to grad school. In verbal, I got 97th percentile. I think I got an edge here because I’m a native English speaker. I know plenty of people who have English as a second language who do a terrific job, but even for them there are some odd corners where things get tricky. Hey, if I took a Spanish test I’d get a percentile of about 4 — in Hindi, I’d get a solid 0 
The agreement I signed says I won’t go into details, but I think it’s okay to say stuff that mba.com posts on their site. There are two essay questions, a bunch of math (qualititative) questions, and a bunch of verbal questions. Every section is timed.
I think I nailed one of the essays and did a pretty mediocre job on the second. This shouldn’t affect my overall score but there is currently a blank spot for the essay problems.
That’s really good, and I’m glad I did well and especially that it’s over. If you still have to take it, just go for it. Definitely take the time to review using the program that mba.com provides.
