Tag Archives: GMAT

GMAT forum, ScoreTop banned by GMAC (?)

Well that was about to happen!

Though the news came bit late (than expected) and eventually it came when I was away from the GMAT world. (I mean, you can guess I was away as I was not blogging about GMAT and preparation stuff.) And therefore I couldn’t post an article about it. I think I dont have a valid source now to back this article. Anyways lets hope that the question mark in the title of the post will keep me safe. 😀

ScoreTop is GMAT preparation company which owns a forum ( I have mentioned about the forums on my blog on several occasions). ScoreTop give (used to give) question bank, known as GMAT sets to its ^VIP members^. The “GMAT sets” arguably used to contain contemporary questions that would most likely to come in real GMAT test.
They had high hit rate and perhaps thats why they are still famous in GMAT preparation industry eventhough they are no longer being published.

Some things better keep unsaid…. anyways but it was suspecious. and eventually it happened. At least thats what I heard from some other GMAT strategy forum.

Strategy for GMAT : study under a month.

The general answer for EVERYBODY :
PREPARATION for GMAT: STRATEGY for 30 days schedule:

[Here’s quick-n-dirty article about ‘study under a month’. Many people have aced the test by just 3 to 4 weeks of study. If you’re in time crunch, dont worry! by using right approach/ method you too can ace it.]
I presume you have sound knowledge of: all areas that GMAT tests; how GMAT works; what is its structure etc…
I assumed this because you generally register a date at least one month before. (if you’ve not, you should. …at least this is what I recommend! The early you book a date, easier it will be for you to plan a killing strategy). Lastly, of course, I assume you do get acquainted with GMAT before sending them your credit card number!
So you’ve thirty days. or let’s say, just four weeks!
Since it is much short period than ideal period to study for the test, you might need to compromise on few study materials which are not significant to you.
e.g. If you’re weak in verbal and Math is your strength you should devote more time for verbal (obviously! )
Coming to materials:
GMAT official guide 11th Edition is must:
Purchase the book immediately if you haven’t already!
As they suggested in the OG (official guide), ‘start with the diagnostic test’. Know your weak areas and know your strengths.
Repeat diagnostic test next day to see how awfully you score. Do meticulous analysis (let’s call it MA here onwards; I’ll come to it in next paragraph.) about your test/answers.
OG 11 has labeled/classified each question (which is great!). Use these tags in the future prep too….know which question belong to which category.
My definition of MA (meticulous analysis) and when & how to apply it:
While practicing GMAT problems I advise to solve at least 35-60 questions in one stretch. GMAT is more about mental stamina and patience! The real test is FOUR hours long and it tests your endurance like no other online test. 40-60 questions assures that you can sit at least for an hour at one go.
Make a table, on spreadsheet (on your computer) or on paper, of no. of rows you’ll be taking questions. And write details about how you feel about each question. This should be done while you’re doing the questions. So dont spend more than 2-3 seconds on filling the table (you can tick on pre-defined columns that will save your time). It can be used as a future reference for your study: the table should enable you to quickly realise your problem areas and which type of questions you require maximum amount of time. One session of this sitting should at least be of 35-40 questions; be it from any section: PS, SC, CR, RC or DS.
(…maybe I’ll put snapshots of table if you’re still confused, please remind me at my blog )
Same amount of time you should spend in reading explanation and analyzing each answers as the amount of time you spent in answering these questions. If you got many questions wrong, increase the analysing time.
Coming back to books and materials:
You can refer basic math books, college algebra or high school grammar books to brush up your verbal and quant skills if you really wanted. But with given time constrains like “GMAT in a month” I think I would instead stick to GMAT materials. If you study smart you, over the time, would know that GMAT asks particular type of questions; and they just love to ask them that way 😉 You’ll be familiar with GMAT style if you solve more OG problems.
Refer to Official guide 11.
Check the math section of the book. Read it (~10 hours?) and re-read all its theory to know the syllabus of GMAT right. Don’t end up studying subjects that are not tested in GMAT.
Download GMAT Prep software for simulated CAT from mba.com. It’s free!
There are many other sim CATs (simulated Computer Adaptive Tests)� that you should purchase.
Check out the article to know more about these sim C A Ts
You can finish OG11 in 5-6 days (Yes you can! but you shouldn’t). Many folks I know finished it in a week (I too did it once-just for fun); but that is not the right strategy. Since the time is short you surely can compromise on other books but not on OG11.
The problems in OG 11 are arranged in ascending order of difficulty. That means, you get harder (/upper range) questions at the end of the problem sets in each section. However problem types (categories) are mixed throughout the sets. This makes many things easy in setting a study schedule. You know your level and can begin the OG accordingly 😉
They say OG11 is a bible of GMAT! Solve as many as problems you can; examine the answers carefully do the ‘MA’ as suggested above. Make Analysis chart.
Try to go through OG 11 twice in the month. (Since I’m not suggesting any other book along with OG, I think its possible to do this.) Check your progress regularly. Once you finish OG for first time you’ll get idea of how many day it’ll take to you to study one more time! If you think you have more time left you should check with other two official guides
OG Verbal guide
and the OG Quant guide.

These new two official guides, (also known as purple and green guides,) are
published when GMAC stopped the production of OG 10th edition. While new
problems are in OG 11; purple and green guides give you lot of repeats from OG
10th edition. Therefore it is wise not to buy these two books iff you already have OG 10.

Three official guides (along with the sim CATs ) are enough for a month study!
Usually, I suggest to take as many simulated CATs as possible. Practice them periodically; say, one in three-four days.
Practice tests play very significant role in your preparation. You’ll need four hours to solve each of them and two more hours to analyze them.
Since they are Computer Adaptive tests you get only one question at a time and at times, you become curious to know your score and you hurriedly complete the test. (just to know where you stand and see the answers) Needless to say: dont do that 😐 While these CATs are especially created to gauge your performance for actual GMAT, I see practice tests purely for practice. These tests hone your endurance, mental stamina to face four hour long real GMAT test! The tests are time consuming and drains your energy and hence you should keep special period for these CATs in your schedule. Be ready to spend ~6 hours for a test. Keep your cell phone on silent mode. Don’t start the test at 10.30 in the night: I know most of you out there are owls 😀 but it really not going to help in your real test. (You cant take the real-McCoy in the night, right? 😉 In fact, once you know your test times be sure to take these practice tests on the same time of the day… say: start your test everytime on 1.30 pm if your real test is scheduled on 1.30 pm of the G-Day!
——————————————————————————————–
I think this much is enough!
If I receive any comment I might add something you wanted.
To sum up the article I can say:

  • Eat OG 11.
  • if time permits study OG verbal and quant
  • Eat OG 11 one more time
  • GMAT Prep : the official computer adaptive practise test for GMAT
  • Plus other CATs

Note that I have not set any particular order in this you should all of it simultaneously.
Hope that helps everyone who is in time crunch.

Scholarship Beat The GMAT

“Never Before Mega scholarship for GMAT studies on cyberspace.”
…that’s my new signature in one of the GMAT and MBA related forums.
But now I think I have to modify it a bit. Scholarships are not just limited to GMAT aspirants. Thanks to generous Stacy Blackman Co It has something to offer for beyond GMAT test too.
I salute generous Forum site who’s launching this Scholarship. ( And also the sponsors Manhattan GMAT and Stacy Consulting Co. )
Well! the name is none other than Beat the GMAT. As you must have known by now by reading earlier parts [Part-I] and [Part-II] of this article, about the site and its community involvement.
To-day, I am really feel proud of being part of it.
This year’s annual BeattheGMAT scholarship is, as I said earlier, gonna be bigger and wider than before. I call it Mega Scholarship.
Here’s a sneek peek of What scholarship comprises of this year.

  • The competition is running from April1- May 7.

Gosh! its gonna be huge!
( Total price money is going to exceed $8000!! )

  • First Price:

GMAT registration
One full Manhattan GMAT course
4-hour consultation with Stacy Blackman Co.

  • Second Price:

GMAT registration subsidy ($150)
One full Manhattan GMAT course
1-hour consultation with Stacy Blackman Co.

  • Third Price:

GMAT registration subsidy ($50)
One full Manhattan GMAT course
1-hour consultation with Stacy Blackman Co.

  • Fourth Price:

GMAT registration subsidy ($50)
One full Manhattan GMAT course

  • Fifth Price:

One full Manhattan GMAT course.
[PS] Beat The GMAT and sponsors might change some details @ scholarship so please refer to the link provided at the title.
Check for updates here: http://www.beatthegmat.com/scholarship/
Thank you.

1000 SC, CR are they worth your time?

They are very famous documents. Yes they are famous and there are lots of reasons for it.
But being famous doenst make them nice.
All right, so lets see whats these documents are upto!
If you are checking my blog regularly, you must be knowing that some months back I made an announcement that I’ll exhaust 1000 SC document & I’ll provide the explanation of their questions. Yes! I tried that but while I was in process of eating 1000 SC document I observed many things about the document that I’d like to share here.
But before that, what’s the fuss? What’s 1000 SC & 1000 CR all about?
1000 SC is a compilation of thousand sentence correction problems related to GMAT exam. Similarly 1000 CR is a word document of thousand critical reasoning problem related to GMAT and LSAT tests. They were produced by very renowned company called scoretop ( you can see the link of the scoretop forums on right hand column of my blog, )
They are easily on internet on sharing/ uploading sites such as esnip or megaupload or rapidshare well you might find some copyrighted documents on such sites but these documents are even available on various (almost every ) GMAT related forums the reason for this is they’re meant to share it across the world wide web.
I am sure you’ll find them anywhere.
So, they are popular. And have so many problems to practice, that GMAT aspirants download them and use them.
Well even I did the same.
[Now before I go ahead I must thank score top for compiling such huge documents. These documents, since available for free on internet, helped and are helping many people who can’t otherwise affort to buy premium GMAT study material.]

But the problem with 1000 SC is that it doesn’t give you the explanations to the answers. That end us up in wondering why given particular answer is correct.
As I started solving 1000 SC problems more & more I realized that the problems are not that ^GMAT like^.
If you compare the 1000SC problems with problems from Official guides or Power Prep or GMAT prep you’ll realize that they do not follow the same trend, or similar style or what they call GMAT like.
Many constructions are bad awkward and they simply arent worth your time studying.
Morever I started a special thread on one of the forum encouraging people to post the problems from 1000 SC that have wrong answers.
Take one, for example, Problem #985 discussed in one of the forums where I am active member.
So there are some problems like these where the answer given in the document is actually wrong!
I am looking for some more such problems. but then I think is it worth the time?
The answer come : NO. You have other good materials that you can refer.
SO the bottomline is refer to OG 11th edition; exhaust it, you have GMAT-Prep, solve every problem also there are similar official materials such as Power Prep & other books Purple and green official guide (refer to How to Approach GMAT & GMAT strategy for more details )
& still if you think that you need some more material to practise then refer them back exhaust OG 11 twice.
& then you’ll be able to know which are GMAT like problem then you can safely start 1000 SC
PS: I think special article for 1000 CR is not worth, same can be said about 1000 CR or 3000 RC. However good (or a bad) thing about these other documents is: they’ve included LSAT type problems which are good for practise as they’re considered more difficult than GMAT types. So one last tip before wraping up: go for LSAT problems for higher level 🙂
Thank you.
You can download these documents from here.

In search of GMAT blogs

Hello people as I mentioned in my earlier article in my blog, I am compiling the list of GMAT bloggers.
If you have a blog and you write something about GMAT in your blog then just let me know. I’ll add your url weblink in this article. All you have to do is send me a note. You can post a comment or just put a note on the chat box, which is available on the right hand side of the blog.

You must have seen a new item “Great GMAT links” in the right column.

Yes, I know what now you are thinking… something similar to League of MBA bloggers or Dave’s MBA list… NO.

For “Great GMAT links
No. I wont just add the link of your GMAT blog. I’ll check your blog and will see whether you are regular into blogging, whether you write more about GMAT. If I find it really worth you will be listed in the “Great GMAT links”

I hope a good response from GMAT enthusiasts :

The list of GMAT bloggers (so far)
UPDATE:Apologies I updated the links today on Aug 2008. I must say some of the links mentioned below are worth reading entirely!!

Keep them coming guys.

& I found a Blogs Directory which keeps database of all blogs available.

Lets beat the GMAT!

This is post is just let you know I have started my GMAT preparation. Unlike Eric I wont publish my day to day log here on my blog; I know nothing can beat his blog whn it comes to GMAT study and strategy. ( though I might start GMAT lessons or something like that here on blog….) But I have started a thread called ‘lets beat the GMAT‘ on http://www.beatthegmat.com forums. There I would post my day to day study plan and my progress. …might help you if you want to see how a plan could work.

If you want a specific plan for yourself just hit the thread and tell me your requirement I will try to make one for you too.

When I started this blog I was not preparing for GMAT and I been saying this from my first post that I would be taking the test in Feb 2007. Last year before starting this blog I was almost finished with my preparation just to realise that I needed a passport to take the test.

I applied for one and today its in my pocket. I am all ready to prepare and take the test.

Lets beat the GMAT!

I am back!

some changes in the blog.
I think My blog has come to the (st)age where I should provide a search option.
so I am removing bussiness week online search to my blog search.
this would help you finding archives and many other key words you look for.
Also I upgrade my blog to beta(?) (is it still beta?)… blogger from google.
I was afraid that I’ ll have to do all html work once again so i bit-of postponing this unavoidable upgrade.
now I could safely upgrade it.
Just wanna make sure that rss feed code is the same or changed….
I ll use the new beta-features in this blog
the labels i can think of right now are:
My reaserch den
refernece posts
Editors choice
…..
& many more i wont reveal… yes
there’s lots of interesting stuff coming your way in coming months so stay tuned.
Now about some GMAT>>
I think I wont take a break from studying…. will finish with my GMAT once & for all.
right now I have not planned anything specific….
I might start solving 1000SC problems and publish the solutions here
at http://thousandsc.blogspot.com/
by the way there’s one more blogger , also started solving 1000SC. He has published a new blog now
so you guys can have a look.
OK.
time to go & check more resource.
bbye.

Jack GMAT story compiled

Here’s ready link for all posts of [Jack GMAT story: A case study]
Dont worry if you lose this page. I have made a quick link on right column of my blog in reference section, so that you dont have to hit back button.

I might add couple of more posts about the survey/poll i conducted on various GMAT related forums. And also add peoples responses.

[case study] Jack’s GMAT story

Jack’s GMAT Story is a cautionary tale of a typical MBA aspirant, ‘Jack’ who plans his GMAT prep and MBA application journey. It’s a multi-page article converted from series of posts for ease of browsing.

  1. Index Page
  2. Preface
  3. Jack’s Story : Wrong approach
  4. Solution to the dilemma
  5. What went wrong
  6. The right approach

I’ve konwn thousands of GMAT students and many relate to Jack’s story. I might add couple of more posts about the survey/poll I conducted on various GMAT  forums for this article.

Jack’s GMAT story: [part- IV RIght Approach]

Case A: An undergrad student.

This is the best time to take the test. Although, average age of GMAT test taker is more than GRE-folks, it is still recommended to take it in early ages.

A college student can get good resources from the library, he has peers, friends who can study together & motivate.

The life after graduation is quite miserable, plane and lonely. (believe me!)

Jack could have decided to take GMAT on December, joined some quality forum boards- gained some mixed opinions and knowledge-networked with other fellow GMAT students & MBA aspirants. By Feb-March Jack could have taken the GMAT test successfully.

Case B: Person has all free time, nothing else to do but to study for GMAT.

Jack could have got max out of it (… out of this period). He really doesn’t have to join any tuition of preparation classes. As he could have done it all alone, with stable mind of course.

Jack has plenty of material and online resources such as forums and blogs. The key is to get to know what suits you out of the materials available.

Most of People (most of Jacks!) say that they need as much material as it is available on earth.
No!. It is a wrong approach. Yes, you should review every material available, but then you have to decide what suits you.

There are certainly loads of resources and hard/ soft material available. And each material has its own style; each tutor has her own style of approaching to the plan ( what it’s called the strategy) or particular problem.

Each unit/ coaching class / tutor has his/her own strategy. You have to decide which strategy works for you.

It’s not about getting the maximum material available but about getting the maximum out of the material available.

Case C: Balancing work and study

This is very crucial!

We have loads of similar cases here.

Jack has full time job. He hardly finds time to check with his parents or his old friends. Jack lives comfortable life (read: earning money) and focus on GMAT in this case, goes fading.

In order to avoid this:

Jack should learn to love his GMAT journey first. May be he should keep a blog or do some other inspirational stuff.

He can join a preparation classes. Some reputed or may be third grade; it doesn’t matter as long as it is making Jack’s GMAT journey stimulating. (Caution: the above statement is valid only if Jack has other wise materials available.)

It is very important for Jack to keep his GMAT interest alive. May be he should network with other GMAT aspirants and meet on weekends. Such tiny things can help Jack stay alive.

If Jack is successful in keeping his GMAT interest alive the rest things become “cake walk”.

No matter how hectic your life is, you can always find some
time for your favorite activities.

Indulge in GMAT related forums- get addicted. No harm, if you find the zeal to study at age of 29. Being addicted is sometimes beneficial. 😉

I think I have provided three vital scenarios ( cases I mean). However if you, readers find new case feel free to discuss it here or on some forums boards where I am available.

Thank you.