Hi everyone,
I sat my exam last week and wanted to share my thoughts on how I went and my general experience!
Date completed: Friday 10 July - 10 am
Venue: Pearson Professional Centre (Adelaide)
The test centre staff were very pleasant, inside the testing room was very quiet (took earplugs provided but did not use) and I went to the bathroom beforehand. I was not rushed and took my time to stay composed and ready for the test.
Results:
| Verbal Reasoning | 670 |
| Decision Making | 890 |
| Quantitative Reasoning | 900 |
| Abstract Reasoning | 870 |
| Total Cognitive Score | 3330 |
| |
| Situational Judgement | 640 |
Overall, I am thrilled with my results. I prepared for about 5 months consistently and it was pleasing to see a significant amount of hard work, reflection and persistence paying off. I was confident that I had prepared enough to do well in each section and be able to answer any type of question in a reasonable amount of time. This was useful in that, despite a lower score in VR (than hoped for), I was able to make up for it across each remaining section. Focus on your weaknesses more than other sections in your preparation to minimise the chances of them having too much of a negative effect on your overall score.
General comments on the exam/exam experience:
The official practice exams are extremely valuable in preparation and I strongly advise you complete and review them in-depth. The test resembles these resources very well in terms of question style and time pressure (except for QR, in exam A especially). The majority of QR question stems in the official resources are useful, but sometimes they include some unreasonably complex units, which you just have to learn to skip and come back to them if there is time.
VR: this was an under-performance for me >> I spent too long on questions trying to be 100% certain with my choices (because it was test day) and in VR this is very costly. I had to rush the final 3 units, but still equally divided my time to at least make educated/logical guesses. Even though I under-performed, the difficulty of official practice exams is very similar to what I experienced. The text length was probably about the same (some longer and some shorter), but it is displayed more narrowly due to the square screen.
DM: overall, I found this section was slightly easier compared to the official exams. I left the interpreting info Yes/No questions to the end and had about 10 minutes left to attempt them, leaving me plenty of time to properly understand the stimulus and make considered judgements. Some of the 'strongest argument' questions had longer stimuli, so I found myself spending up to 60-80 seconds on some of these. Some logic games were tricky.
QR: this has always been my strongest section, and post-exam I expected 900 in this section - I was quite confident I had answered all questions correctly. I had about 1 minute after completing all questions to review some I was unsure of. I did not feel the need to 'skip' any units that were too long or complex (there were none). I found each unit to be of similar difficulty and I kept a relatively consistent pace. Mental maths is sometimes useful.
AR: I found this section to be of similar difficulty to the official practice exams (overall). Some patterns were tricky and I initially skipped 3 units (15 questions). I finished the rest (40 questions) with about 4 minutes left to finish the 3 incomplete units. I struggled with 2 of them but used my gut instinct to make educated guesses based on my observations of differences between each set.
SJ: similar difficulty to official practice exams, especially the later ones which I found more challenging.
The takeaway from my exam is to NOT over-check your answers, especially in VR, as it is widely considered the most time-pressured and evidently the most difficult to score highly in. In all sections except QR, I did not do the test in order of the questions - do not feel forced to go in order of the questions. You may feel more comfortable - as I was - to attempt easier questions first (or those I was stronger at) to allow more time to tackle more difficult questions with slightly more time.
If anyone has any questions, I would be happy to answer them!
. But if I were to describe what I did - I would read the paragraph first, then look at the question - if I knew it, I would answer it, if not I would skim back over the paragraph looking for keywords eg a date or something like that, if the question has a date in it. I hope that helps!
