Tale of TOEFL & GRE

The must dos for any graduate school aspirant - writing TOEFL and GRE. While TOEFL was a piece of cake GRE appeared to be a tough nut to crack.

My preparation for TOEFL was similar to those of most test takers - NOTHING. To appear as a sincere aspirant I bought a study book for TOEFL and after leafing through it for 10 minutes I decided I was not going to learn anything so I slept through most of my study time. On the day of the exam I arrived promptly at the centre at the stipulated time in the evening. All of us waited eagerly for the start of the exam. Due to some server problem our exam got delayed just like most of the flights. To add to this I was the second last person to report. And they have this system of starting the exam in a first come first serve basis. So I had to sit idle till the other 11 people were comfortably seated in their chairs.

At last I was allowed to start my exam. I couldn't wait to finish my exam and return home. After all my wedding was just a week away and we had a lot of things to do. I guess this sounds as wierd - writing TOEFL a week before one's wedding. Well it's all courtesy of the college I studied in. Anyway that's another story to be told later. I managed to sit still in my seat long enough to complete all the sections. Best part was not getting to know the score as soon as the test is over. I for one was not extremely eager for the scores. But when the scores eventually did come I was surprised to have surpassed my expectations with flying colours.

Coming to GRE, now this turned out to be a totally different cup of tea. The wordlists loomed like huge mountains. Try as I might I was unable to learn the words and their meanings. Even though I am a voracious reader this type of learning was totally out of my legion. I tried all possible methods known to me to learn the words. All of them gave me the same result - successfully finish one word list and be horrified at not being to able to recollect the words the very next day. This went on for some time. Finally I decided to move to the other sections. They proved to be easier. Quantitative appeared to be my strength. I could never judge my position regarding the essays simply because I could never get myself to write one essay (till the day before the exam). As for antonyms and analogies they depended solely on the wordlist so the less said the better.

Everyday I looked at the Barrons with a frown. This appeared to be a monster that just could not be conquered. After long deliberation I just decided to try my luck with GRE. After all time was running out for admissions. So with a million butterflies in my stomach I scheduled the test and with even more butterflies I ended up an hour early in the test center. Fortunately this time I got to start my test early itself instead of waiting for the stipulated time. The essay sections seemed to be ok.

Next came the dreaded verbal section. Once the 30 minutes were over I was able to breathe a lot easier. Next quants. What I had considered to be my stronghold turned out to be a bit of a challenge that day. Too many geometry based questions stumped me. Finally with bated breath I awaited the next section. To my horror the next section turned out to be verbal as well. So I ended up with two Verbals. Anyway I cruised through this round of Verbal. After completing all the sections I awaited the tentative scores pretty nervously. I was in no mood to write it again. Hey what a surprise. I cleared the test with more marks than I expected. Yippee.. This calls for a celebration. So we headed to the nearest hotel for a delayed lunch :)