I'm on the home stretch! The end is in sight so this should be my final update unless something goes horribly wrong
Location: Mississauga
App type: single
Physical presence: 1481
app sent date: Oct 12 2017
app recieved by cic date: October 13, 2017
AOR: Nov 15, 2017
IP: Dec 7, 2017
Test invite letter: Feb 22
Test date: March 8
Oath invite letter: March 13
Oath date: April 3 (inshallah)
As a followup to my previous post asking about getting out of the test early so I could make it to a course I signed up for, here's how it went. I am from the US so I have made many many trips across the border. I was one of about 3 people that they called by name before the test and asked to hold my passport during the test, saying they would be checking out the travel records while the test was in progress. As we were lining up to go into the test room, I waved down the lady in charge, who I had already talked to when she took my passport, and said something like "I hate to ask for special treatment, but I am signed up for a one-day course today that starts at 9:30 downtown, so I was wondering if I could get my interview on the early side." She said that I'd have to wait until the test was over for everyone (30 minute time limit) because she monitors the test and also does the interviews, but yes, she would take me first for the interview. So it pays to ask if you need to! So I showed up in Mississauga for 7:45 am, and I was out the door by 9 am. If it hadn't been rush hour I would have made it to my 9:30 course on time, but with the traffic I was about a half hour late, around 10. Not too bad.
The test was easy. The questions are all "reasonable" compared to some of the practice questions that you see online - there weren't any questions on very specific numbers (e.g. how many people have won the Victoria Cross etc) and the few date questions that there were, had multiple choices that were very far apart from each other - nothing like 1962 vs 1965 etc
The one snag was that they asked me to account for 4 exits from Canada that I had not declared on my application. I was really surprised because I had kept really careful records. I even pulled out my laptop and examined my spreadsheet in front of the interviewer. Ultimately she said she was satisfied because I had plenty of extra days, so even if I had been gone a week for each of those trips, which was totally impossible, I would still have plenty of days to meet the physical presence requirement. It occurred to me after I left that the reason I hadn't logged those trips was that they were all same-day or 1-night trips in which I was physically present in Canada at some point on both days, so that I hadn't lost any days at all towards the requirement. So since my record keeping was intended to count days, I hadn't bothered to log them. Now I realize that they check your exit records, so you really should log every time you cross the border even if you get full credit for the days.
All in all, getting citizenship will have taken less than six months from the time of application, so I'm pretty satisfied. I was quite upset when Harper's C-24 pushed back my eligibility by two years, but soon I will have forgotten about it. And I had a baby boy in the meantime, and it was always my dream to hold my child at my citizenship ceremony, so I'm kind of happy that that worked out. I also was hoping that QE2 would last long enough for me to swear to her instead of Charles, so I've got my fingers crossed that that's going to work out too!