Countdown to the GMAT begins

In about 10 days, I should be done with my GMAT, hopefully with a satisfactory score. It has been a good 6 weeks since I started my GMAT prep with the momentum being positive overall. Obviously I wish I had more time but I'll have to do with what I have. I aim to kick it into top gear the next 9-10 days and get done with it.

As part of my final stretch of preparation, I started with doing more OG questions, exclusively from the hard bin. I completed the 127 hard Problem Solving questions at a hit rate of ~90%. I will be happy if I can maintain the same on GMAT day. I'll focus on the Data Insufficiency for the rest of this week, do a couple of tests over the weekend and revise Verbal sections along with pointers on AWA next week.

I have been working on my essays as well. 6 weeks ago when I made the decision to apply this Fall, I couldnt imagine doing everything together along with a rather hectic work schedule but things seem to be falling into place, they always do. I hope I will look back to these days on a positive note 2-3 months from now and it will all be well worth it.

HBS Info Session

I attended the Harvard Business School info session in New York today. The session was scheduled from 6pm to 8pm and started promptly at 6:05pm after people had settled down. HBS was kind enough to arrange for some refreshments and snacks considering that people had come after work. One guy had flown in from Lebanon (apparently a 12 hour flight) just to attend this event.

The session was setup in an auditorium on the 12th floor of the Citigroup building and was full for the most part. The admissions committee members gave a powerpoint presentation which talked about the leadership focus, general management education and so on (stuff that most people know). That was followed by a video of campus showing professors talking, students in class and the gym and so on which was packaged pretty well and was nice to watch for the 3-4 minutes it ran. The admissions officer pretty much said the same things as seen elsewhere, be honest in your essays, its about you, tell us your story beyond what your transcript and resume indicate, apply early but only when you feel ready, interviews are mandatory, funding is available, loans are guaranteed, lots of housing options available on campus ...

A career services officer then briefly ran through some placement numbers for the Class of 2005 by job function and location. This was followed by a Q&A session conducted by 5 alums who were present. They talked about what they did before HBS and what they were doing now, underlined the essence of people and study teams at HBS, the strong network. The alums were very friendly and gave crisp but thorough answers to most questions except to some stupid questions like "How long should I prepare before I apply?", "I work in an investment bank in London and studied in the London School of Economics and am a lawer, should I apply to HBS?"
To such questions the alums politely responded with the standard "It depends on your goals and your vision for your career and your life. We cant answer that for you."

Overall, I didnt learn much that I didnt already know from my research on HBS, however the Q&A with the alums was insightful and I could relate to some of the experiences and challenges they brought up that people face at HBS. They were extremely proud of being HBS alums and the loyalty and allegiance clearly showed. After the event, I somehow managed to spend 5 minutes with an admissions officer to ask some application specific questions before she had to run to the next info session at 8:30pm. I would be happier if they had made arrangements for personal time with the alums instead of them taking questions from a vast audience, something that I found very useful at a previous Wharton info session. Today was well worth the trip and I had a good time nevertheless.

A good OG day.

Just got done with a 3 hour Saturday morning practice session. I started off with the 11th edition OG Sentence Correction diagnostic test and got a rating of 'excellent' (17/18). Then I went on to do 35 PS (32 correct), 18 DS (16 correct), 30 SC (27 correct) and 25 CR (22 correct) questions. I must say I feel much more confident with SC these days than I did 2-3 weeks ago. The key is to understand the 8 SC concepts being tested and just practice as much as one can. The OG 10th edition has an exhaustive set of SC questions that test every concept thoroughly.

Overall, a good practice session, will do a full length test later this evening.

Official Guide 11th edition

I recently ordered the Official Guide 11th edition and it was delivered to me today. The book begins with some general info on the GMAT exam and then has a Diagnostic Test. The test is paper based and has a number of questions (around 25) on each section. After the test, it has a chart which takes your score range on each section and assigns you a category - below average, average, above average and excellent. This tells you which area you need to put more emphasis on. The rest of the book has 800 questions in all from supposedly recently retired tests.

I took the Problem Solving diagnostic test and scored 17/24 which gave me a rating of 'above average.' Even though the diagnostic questions were pretty tough, 7 wrongs are concerning at this stage on Problem Solving, which I consider one of my stronger areas and rely upon to bump up my score on GMAT day. I know DS and RC are my weak spots and I will get a few wrong. Also it took me a little over an hour to do these 24 questions suggesting that my 17 right answers came at a higher average time per question than I will get on the actual GMAT.

Next, I decided to tackle some practice Problem Solving questions and did 85 questions (in about 2.5 hrs) randomly out of the 249 so that I got a mixture of easy, medium and hard questions. I got 84 of these correct. Atleast 12-15 of these 85 I have seen on the 10th edition, so there is definitely some overlap (atleast in PS) between the 10th and 11th editions contrary to what many people believe. The questions on the 11th edition were no more difficult or easy than those on the 10th edition but they are different.

So today was just 11th edition problem solving practice, did 109 questions and reviewed their solutions in about 4 hrs. Phew!

Upcoming B-School events

I will be attending the HBS event in NY on August 22nd and the CBS on-campus event on September 7th. Will be happy to meet up with other applicants attending. Just email me.

Essays begin

This past weekend I did not do much GMAT studying. I spent some time on the OG and other than Data Insufficiency and Reading Comprehension (which I dont prepare for at all), I hit a 80-85% hit rate on all other sections. I have realized that Reading Comprehension practice will not sharpen my RC skills. Sometimes I get all questions correct on 2-3 passages and sometimes I dont. My RC performance on GMAT day will depend on specific passages that I will get and no degree of practice can assure me that I will nail RC. SC and CR on the other hand are getting better with practice so I have hope there.

On Sunday, I worked on some essay drafts just because I felt more like writing than studying. I have made decent progress on first drafts of a couple of essays so the weekend was productive. I'd have liked to take another full length test but with my schedule it was not possible. I hope to get 2-3 first drafts done this week so that I can get some feedback on them next week. I started by reading all the general essay topics that my target schools have - goals, leadership, ethical dilemma, substantial accomplishments and made a list of potential experiences I can write about. Today, I also spent some time working on my extra-curricular / community work list. This is getting really exciting now and I am happy that my non-work related activities are consistent and follow established trends over the years. I cant wait to get done with the GMAT and start totally working on the essays.

4th week on the OG

Covered about 20 questions each from SC, CR, PS and DS sections of the OG today. The hit rates were 90%, 78%, 100% and 70%. I did not touch any RC passage. Generally speaking, the full length tests have been my only source of RC practice and it is just impossible to do each and every RC passage on the OG. Time permitting, I will do a few passages from the difficult bin of the OG. On my fourth week, I have completed about 50% of CR and SC questions and about 30% of PS and DS questions.

As I do more practice questions from the OG, I have gained confidence on SC and CR. I seem to be consistently hitting a 80-85% hit rate on the Verbal now which is in line with my target score of42+ on the GMAT.

Also spent some time on the Wharton Adcom blog and the Columbia Business School site to do some research and read this blog on the OG, 11th edition. This weekend I hope to take atleast one more practice test and continue to work on the OG.

The Official Guide Grid & Princeton Review CAT

I found this very helpful grid on The Official Guide questions at Beat the GMAT. It has a breakdown of all OG questions in terms of difficulty levels - easy, medium and hard. For someone like me, who does not have enough time to go through each OG question this is a great way to cover atleast the hard and some medium questions.

I took my first Princeton Review CAT last night and didnt realize I needed an internet connection to authenticate my account first. The test seemed to be a little easier than GMAT Prep or Kaplan although I was stumped by 2 probablity questions on the Quant section and the RC passages were longer. After I finished the test, it asked me authenticate my account and having no internet connection on that particular computer, I am not sure my test has been saved. Bottomline, I didnt get my score and was a little disappointed with the Princeton Review test setup.

Also did DS questions exclusively from the hard bin on the OG and scored at a 68% hit rate, so I need to work there.

Full length tests - Summary

As the end of my 3rd week prep is approaching (in 2 days), here is a breakdown of my full length tests so far:

Week 1
=====
ETS Powerprep Test 1 :: 700 :: Q48 :: V38
GMAT Prep Test 1 :: 710 :: Q48 :: V40

Week 2
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Kaplan CAT 1 :: 670 :: Q41 :: V40

Week 3
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ETS Powerprep Test 2:: 720 :: Q49 :: V40
GMAT Prep Test 2 :: 700 :: Q39 :: V48

My performance on Quant in today's GMAT Prep Test 2 was pedestrian. My pacing was totally off and I ended up not even getting the last 4 questions (33-37) as I had run out of time. Out of the 32 I did, I got 9 wrong! Most of these were stupid errors because I was rushing myself and taking too long to solve.

Probablity and standard deviation are still my weak spots and they need a lot more work. I find that it is more out of panic than actual problem difficulty that I loose focus on a probablity question and it seems impossible to solve. I knew I had messed up in the Quant today and was extra cautious during the Verbal and did well to get a 48. It certainly helped to take that 5 minute break in between sections to clear my head off.

I'd not believe myself if I can pull off the Verbal performance from today on actual GMAT test day.

The low 700 block

As part of my third week GMAT prep, I took yet another full length test from GMAT Powerprep (the second test) and scored a 720. During the test, I felt like I would get all the Quant questions correct but I ended up doing 3 stupid mistakes and my score fell to 49. The Verbal was a bit weaker at 40.

So far I have pretty much scored in the 700- 720 range, except the one Kaplan test on which I did 670. This is both good and bad. Good from a consistency standpoint but bad because I just dont seem to break beyond 720. I need to be scoring higher than 710 and 720 in my 3rd week if I am to entertain any chances of doing a 740+ on the real test. If my peak is really 720 and this is what I am going to score, I might as well take the test now and then start working on the essays, instead of doing GMAT prep for 3-4 more weeks.

I do have 4 more weeks before my test but a couple of weekends will go to some other commitments I have (far more important than the GMAT or the MBA), so I'd say I really have about 2 solid weeks to prepare for the GMAT. The plan is to do as much of the OG and Kaplan as possible and take 2 to 3 full length tests more.

If I dont hit a 750 in any of the practice tests, I dont see how I would do that on the real test. On the other hand I'd be happy if I got a 720+ even, given that its hard to predict performance based on practice tests and even after scoring 700 plus consistently, people do end up with a 650 on the real GMAT.

I just want the GMAT done and out of the way so I can seriously start finalizing my essays, recommendations etc and also have something else to write about on this blog.

In between GMAT practice

It felt a little better today to do some Quant practice from the Kaplan GMAT 800 book as the questions seem to be more in line with the real GMAT. I went through the arithmetic, algebra and geometry sections in one session. Over the next 2 days I plan to complete the word problem section and then move back to the OG again and hunt for some tougher Quant problems.

Meanwhile, I have also to figure out how to approach my boss for a recommendation and in the process reveal that I will be going away next year. While I anticipate getting a good letter of support, it might mean me having to forego my promotion. I dont know that I will be promoted for sure but the signs are telling that I have a good shot. It would have made my b-school case stronger to show 3 raises and 2 promotions in the last 3 years but I'll take it as it comes (or doesn't).

My 5 minute break is up, back to doing some Verbal for the day.

GMAT 800 for Quantitative

I am in my 3rd week of GMAT studying now and have primarily focussed on questions from the Official Guide. I have done about 100 questions from each section, except Reading Comprehension and have been generally unhappy about the quality of the Quant questions. They seem to be much easier than questions on the real GMAT. The Verbal questions are more accurate in terms of difficulty.

Given the short amount of time I have, it seemed that I needed to look for another source to work on my Quant skills rather than do all the OG questions. Beat the GMAT is a wonderful blog for GMAT test takers and I read it everyday so it was great to get in touch with Eric and exchange some GMAT prep thoughts.

My recommendation for anyone who is a Quant geek and is looking to tackle more tougher questions right away is to get a hand on GMAT 800 by Kaplan. The questions test your GMAT Quant concepts more thoroughly and help you prepare better in my mind. For Verbal, the Official Guide is very good and is a must to do. Kaplan and Princeton Review practice tests are useful as well.

I have 4 weeks left before my GMAT and lots to do!!!

End of Week 2

Week 2 was slower than week 1 in terms of the amount of time I could devote to my GMAT preparations. Deadlines at work, fatigue, not enough concentration, school research and thoughts on admission essays were all contributing factors.

Assuming my GMAT goes well (good enough to compete in the top schools), I will in all likelihood try to meet Columbia's ED round. Essays are never easy and need a lot of introspection, careful evaluation of career goals, writing multiple drafts and getting feedback from other people. Aside from Wharton and Harvard, neither of which I am applying to at this point, Columbia is a top school for me given my post MBA goals. I have visited the campus multiple times in the past, talked to students, alumni and read enough from their site, brochures and other material on the Internet and it seems to be the best fit for me.

Its a top MBA program, not easy to get into (which ivy league is?) but I think is within my reach if I am able to put together well constructed essays. In terms of credentials (GPA, Work ex, leadership etc) , I believe I have all those elements, however I need to weave the whole story together and present it to Admissions.

Back to the GMAT, this week will obviously see some catching up on my part as I just did one full length test and about 150 OG questions in all last week. Honestly, I am beginning to panic a bit but I'll do my best to keep my focus on the task at hand, which is to get as much GMAT practice done as possible and nail the GMAT.