Crazy difficult

For the past couple of days I have been finishing off all the problems, in the ETS green book, under problem solving and data sufficiency. MAN were they tough! I don't know how people think ETS is just not hard, either these folks are geniuses, or I am just plain dumb. But I made over 25 mistakes out of the last 45 under data sufficiency. These problems were tough, and extremely time consuming. Difficult to imagine that you get less than 2 mins to solve them.

I wonder how the real test compares to these problems. Is it the same level of difficulty or is it easier? Now I have even more respect for people like PowerYogi, who scored 770 and Pablo Simon who scored around 710. Hats off to you guys. You are a lot better at this, than I am.

So right now, I am pretty low on morale and have a pretty low expectation out of my GMAT score. Inititally, I was looking for a good score but yesterday I seriously considered postponing the test to give me more time to prepare. BUGGER IT!

GMail is here! :)

In a surprising development, someone sent me a GMail invitation and I promptly signed up. Luckily I got in early enough to actually get the name I wanted. :) Definitely very nice. Not sure if I want to shift all my correspondence to the new account, since gmail is yet in Beta and if it doesn't go through, this painful process will have to be done all over again. But I am definitely planning to shift my family members there. Hotmail positively sucks. I don't know what they are smoking by offering only 1 MB of space.

Signed up for the test

Finally bit the bullet and registered for the test. The date is July the 6th and the time is 12:30 pm. Will probably have to skip Lunch, but that shouldn't be a problem. Usually I have too many butterflies in my stomach to eat anything. Though it might not be a good idea to be fatigued due to lack of fuel.

Arco's is too easy!

Gave a test on Sunday last, it was so bloody easy, I almost fell asleep. Usually doing Math is the way I wake up and my neurons start to fire. But Arco's Diagnostic test 4 was so bloody simple, it was more a 600 level paper as compared to a 800 level one. Regardless I made a couple of mistakes in Math and about 7 in English.

As far as GMAT books are concerned, personally I like Princeton Review the best atleast as far as English is concerned. I am only sad I din't find out about it earlier. The book has some terrific strategies as far as AWA is concerned and the basic rules for CR, RC and SC are terrific. Much better than KAPLAN. The diagnostic tests are also pretty sharp. And the level of Math and English pretty high.

Somehow I found myself getting very tired by the end of the Verbal section. I did do the AWA's in the beginning so the 4 hour stretch probably contributed to the fatigue. I wonder how other people who gave/plan to give GMAT dealt/ are dealing with the fatigue. I would have liked to take a little Red Bull with me to the GMAT exam unfortunately the rules to allow that. :(

Phew!

Looks like the effort is back on track. I was extremely concerned about my slipping grades. Scored badly (600) in the third Princeton test I took, and kept making silly mistakes in all the topics of Verbal and Quant. For sometime I was wondering if I should quit this excercise and concentrate on my job and at some point of time in the future go for an executive MBA.

Luckily in the interim, I managed to get my hands on a Princeton Review book, and after running through the Joe Bloggs scenario, am refocussed. I seem to have figured out the technique of POE and looking for the standard "gotcha's". So hopefully the next 18 days see more of the same. I guess I lose interest when I reach my glass ceiling and that translates into bad scores because I am just not on the top of things.

I have this office on the 9th floor, where I have an absolutely amazing view of a couple of lagoons right in front of my office. There are tons of ducks and geese in the water at any given point of time. Sometimes when I look up, at the water in front of me, I see these birds trying to get airborne. It is a sight to be seen. They require this long runup before they get airborne, and during the entire process you constantly get the feeling that they are not going to make it. And just when you feel they are going to crash into the opposite shore they pull up and start soaring.

My test preperation is something like that. If I give a test cold, I usually do much worse than if I am in the rythmn. So it is very important that I keep solving problems, following the theory, and only after that will I do well. :)

Burn out?

Haven't posted in the past couple of days basically because I haven't got much to say as far as the GMAT prep is concerned. I am not sure why, but after scoring 700 in that princeton practise test, I kinda lost focus. Not sure if I was holding on too tight, or just lost enthusiasm, but for whatever reason, it was that much more difficult to sit down and concentrate.

Gave a couple of tests in the interim period though. Scored 690 in the second powerprep test with a scaled score of 45 in quant (82 percentile) and a 40 in verbal (90 percentile). The same trend continued in a Arco's test that I took at home on Sunday. Make about 6/37 mistakes in quant and 12/41 mistakes in Verbal.

I am pretty confident of cracking quant, just because most of the mistakes were silly mistakes due to being rusty from the week long break. Things I should have spotted but din't, mental fatigue and just bad strategy. The good news in Verbal is that my sentence correction skills seems to have gotten up since I took it as a challange and concentrated on it. I took 50 questions fromt the ETS OG, made mistakes, but went through the explanations a couple of times. And that has really really helped me drastically. Once you start spotting the patterns, you can usually zero in on a right answer. The place where I seem to have regressed is Reading Comprehension where I have muffed up more questions in the last couple of tests than you can imagine. What is it about RC paragraphs where I can make neither head nor tail, that I screw up. Gotto get some strategy down for that.

One thing that might have contributed to the low score was me taking the essays before getting started on the verbal/quant. This is something I feel everyone SHOULD prepare for. It is absolutely essential to get your timing down on that part. Also it makes a big difference to your mental state, since the test normally takes 4 hours as compared to 3 hours if you practise without the essays.

Hopefully the disapointment of not scoring well in the practise tests will spur me on to study more seriously for the next few weeks. I should register for the test by the end of this week. My cousin plans to come and visit us over the long weekend, which will negate the usage of the long weekend as a study period for me. So it is better for me to give the test in June as compared to July.

Blogers are active today

Browsed through the blogs of the usual suspects. Apparently Blogers don't face Monday morning blues, or in this case Tuesday morning blues coming after a long weekend. Most people had a long post or two posted on their blogs.

Did some sentence correction yesterday and totally sucked at it as usual. At times like this I really wonder how on earth I will ever crack into the 80 percentile minimum required for admission to the top schools let alone a 740 + expected from my peer group.

mba07 probably hit the nail from the head when he mentioned frequent and repetitive review of the basics. The only question is where do I get the review list other than what I have culled from various mistakes I have been making.

Post Long weekend

There was a Layoff last Friday as expected, and quite a few people from the company were laid off, one of which was a friend (from my group). While I can understand the reasons why companies lay people off, I this was a rank bad choice. I don't think the company gained anything but lost quite a lot of knowledge and experience. The rest of us are going to miss him, and from what people are saying this has been the last straw that will accelerate their plans to leave.

Again I digress from the MBA theme. Back on the GMAT trail, cracked 700 for the first time in a paractise test. Scored exactly 700 in a Princeton Review CAT test. Thought the Math was particularly vicious, towards the end I was really strapped for time, but luckily finished with about a minute remaining. For all that scored well, 51 with about 4 mistakes. The Verbal I though was easier but din't do quite as well, scored 31 with 9 mistakes. While it was much less than usual, I am absolutely unsatisfied with the score. Felt I could do much better.

I spoke with a friend who just got into Harward. He was pretty brutal in his assessment. I don't know whether it is the Harward effect but noticed a slightly supercilious manner in his speach. Having said that, it was definitely an interesting conversation, and he pushed me to market myself better. Build a theme and connect all the dots with the Essays, Recommendations, GMAT and the GPA all pointing to one story and one story only! With even the weaknesses being shown as strengths.

Did my usual round of other MBA Blogs and S2S. Most people hadn't bothered to post over the weekend, and the S2S has the usual crapola postings. :) Though some of the threads were pretty good. Specially the one started for 2007 applicants. Apparently they are planning on scheduling a particular day for college visits. It will definitely help doing something so daunting with company. So looking forward for that plan to materialize.

On the Essay front, thought of my strengths and weaknesses, and the achievements that I want to highlight. I will also be posting shortly, some gems I culled after browsing the S2S boards for a few hours over the weekend. That should make for interesting reading to all the MBA applicants out there and act as a place holder for me.