About this time last year, I had enrolled myself for MBA classes, partly on my dad's insistence. And here I am, writing about (surprise surprise) GRE. Mine isn't a unique case at all. Lots of people think they're tired of engineering, or the technical stuff as they say and decide for MBA. While in reality they're just tired of-my personal favourite punching bag, our beloved Mumbai University.
Of course, I'm trying to hide the fact that CAT (or NMAT, CMAT, SNAP, XAT, MAT, BAT, RAT, GODDAMN-THESE-ATS) can be frustratingly difficult for many of their aspiring candidates, while the GRE offers a much easier route for those not wishing to join, say, TCS.
If some of you blunderbusses (GRE word) haven't realised as yet, this is not a 'How to crack the GRE' or 'Put your best foot forward' kinda article. There are plenty of those already, and as the people close to me would attest to, if I were to give someone advice, they'd get a score that's closer to 100 than 340. It's a different thing that I managed 333, but Maybelline**.
So, I joined Collegepond (or colgpond in SMS lingo) in late Jan and the entire portion was covered in a span of two months from Feb to March. Now I am NOT endorsing these classes because they won't really pay me for it *sob sob*, but in case some of you do choose to join them for any random reason, do give my reference so I could try milking them later.
The only reason I joined- they were insanely close to my home. Yes yes, laziness ftw.
Now April and May are the dreaded submissions-practicals-exams months, so I had the excuse of not doing anything for GRE. It was only an excuse, because as a wise meme once said- 98% of our time goes in telling people we have work, while 3% is the time we spend actually working. Oh, this generation of ours I tell you. *sigh*
On an average, people tend to give themselves about a month to study for this exam. You know, the part where they choose to bunk college and maybe show their faces for pracs from time to time at most. Now I wouldn't know too much of that, as I did the majority of my (negligible) studies in the vacations after the MU exams. Having said that, I did bunk the first 8ish days of college leading up to my test date. But being a DJ Sanghvi student, 7 a.m. college gets even the most hardened 'attendance freaks' (those who'd be willing to attend even after the World ceases to exist and who are universally responsible for every failed mass bunk) to bunk.
And at the end of it all, here I am again. An MBA reject (by choice, of course) giving free sermons about GRE. Kinda like those wise men and women, in khaki clothes and white topis with their faces plastered all over the city, often illegally. Because if you fail at everything else, you can surely run this country.
To the ground.
As I rightly claimed, this article wouldn't be telling you how to give the GRE, because for competitive exams, the key is knowing what works for you. Practice might make one perfect, but how to practice is still up to the individual.
There is one thing I'd definitely share though. Now as we know, the GRE can be given multiple times. But I see that as more of a bane than a boon. Because the moment we think that there's a next time, we stand defeated. We grow complacent. Even Bruce Wayne could not escape the pit when there was the rope to save him. Only when he removed the rope, and knew that it was either now or never, could he successfully come out.
Sometimes the fear of failure can drive you to success.
But yet, if you find yourself crying in the washroom of your test centre because you couldn't solve a sum and have all but given up on your life... Fret not.
For in GRE, there's always a next time!
PS: For those of you who were sneering at my apparent failure at accurately performing a simple addition in the midst of this article, remember- I'm done with GRE.
