Thursday, November 20, 2008
650 --- Need I say more??
Thanks for following my blog... Ping me if I can be of any help..
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The clock is ticking.. fast...
This will also be end of my GMAT Journey. Yes, I have decided to end my GMAT journey with this attempt. Last one year has been difficult not only for me but for my family too. So whether I get an MBA degree or not, I have decided to move on..!! After all, there's more to life than just an MBA degree.. I just hope that I end this journey on a high note... Wish me luck..
Friday, May 23, 2008
Prepared to take on GMAT again?
Quantitative section:
- No issues with fundamentals except for few topics.
- Have practiced an approach to avoid silly mistakes.
- Have seen accuracy improve
- Haven't practiced tougher P&C questions
- Careless mistakes! I am always in a hurry :-) I guess old habits die hard.
- Slow. I take ~1.75 minutes per questions.
- I will manage at least 48 in this section (I know this is not good enough!)
Sentence Correction:
- There's no end to fundamental concepts.
- SCs are becoming tougher in GMAT.
- Accuracy in tougher questions drops drastically.
- based on experience, cannot rely on SC either.
- Timing not an issue here. Ha Ha.. When you don't know enough, you will never have time pressure. :-)) You will never catch the error in the original sentence. :-)
Critical Reasoning:
- Have practiced tough Reasoning questions.
- Reasonably confident in this section. Feel much comforatble.
- Should get 85%-95% questions correct even if they are difficult ones.
- Think the approach is just right.
- I take ~1.75 minutes per question while doing tests.
Reading Comprehension:
- Have practiced OG10/OG11 ONLY!!
- CR fundamentals help. That's the confidence booster.
- Timing is alright.
- Unable to understand some of the passages because the language & comprehension are really difficult. I don't expect to see more than 2 such passages however. So this should be fine!
- Should be able to manage moderate difficult passages with reasonable accuracy.
To sum it up, I am not ready yet.. But I think I have reached my peak level. Anything beyond this will require too much committement. I don't think I can commit myself to GMAT journey for another 6 month. At the same time, This doesn't mean that I'm low on confidence. In fact, I am in excellent mental state. Guess kinda prepared for the worst case scenario.. And I still have at least 15 days to work on my weaknesses. Think I can do it this time.. Let's see..
Saturday, May 10, 2008
GMAT Quant Trouble :-(
Contrary to the general belief that people from engineering background will find GMAT quantitative section easier, I find Quantitative section tougher than the Verbal section. My accuracy is only ~70% in Quant question sets. The worst part is that I'm stuck at this accuracy level for sometime now. The difficulty level of these questions is very close to the real thing and unless I improve accuracy, I can forget entry to the magic 7XX club :-(. So, I analyzed my mistakes today and tried to bin them in different broad categories such as gap in fundamental concept, careless mistakes, etc. The mistakes are too basic, but time and again I continue repeating similar mistakes. This is good news because it means I have fewer problems to work on and it's bad news because I still haven't learnt from mistakes. Anyways, better late than never.. I hope that this exercise will help me minimize the mistakes.. :-(
Here are the mistake categories -
1. Number properties.
- I have lost count of the number of times when I got trapped in the properties :-(
- Unless stated otherwise, all numbers in GMAT are real numbers.
- If given number is integer, don't forget to consider '0', -ve, and +ve integers.
- In problems involving X^Y, always consider the special case when X, Y is 0, 1, -1
- Try out these different values: -2, -1.5 -1, -0.5, 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2. Does time permit to try out so many values? Specially if there are more than one variable?
2. Word problems.
- Read the question carefully. While translating it to equations or symbol representation, double check that you have translated the word problem correctly.!!
- After spending 1-2 min, you realize that the calculations do not yield the correct result. You have two options. Either to do the exercise once again, or to guess and move on.
- Even worse, if you did not read the question stem carefully, you will mark one of the wrong answer choices and move on. Worst, you will not even realize your mistake until you see your score :-(
- Bad choice of variables/symbols and you find yourself lost in the equations. Finally, you just guess and move on. Take a deep breath.. think... then proceed. This will probably cost extra 10 sec, but will help a lot.
3. Probability Questions
- Question is to find the probability of event A. Almost certain that you will see probability of (1-A) too in the correct answer choice. You fail to read the question carefully and mark the wrong answer choice and move on.
4. Ratio problems
- Very similar to the last point. The question asks you to find out the ratio of A and (A+B). You find the ration of B and (A+B), mark the wrong answer choice, and move on. Be assured that answer choices will have all the possible ratios :-(
5. Data Sufficiency
- You read the statements in the given order. By the time you are analyzing option B, you will use the information provided in A ( ofcourse you wouldn't notice that) and mark the answer as B.
- There are less questions with A as the correct answer choice ??
- You think C is the correct answer? Think again!! This has troubled me sooooo many times.
6. Inequality Trouble
- You get two values by solving a given inequality and mark the answer. Hmm.. think again.. Inequalities do not necessarily have two different roots. One of them may be not a valid root of the equation.
7. Lacking in fundamental Concepts
- Some questions are just tougher.. need more practice.. time.. energy.. :-(
8. Lost Concentration
- You start loosing focus towards the end of the test. :-(
Monday, April 21, 2008
How to use POE effectively?
So, I adopted this trick in a different way. While reading the SC/CR/RC, I just mark "N" for the answer choices that are surely WRONG ones and mark "K" for the answer choices that, I think, could be RIGHT answer choice. The advantage of this method is that I can mark this anywhere. I don't worry about the question number or row/column on the answer grid. All I need to ensure that I don't move my pen/marker from the place where I'm writing. I have been practicing this for the last one week. This seems to be working..!!
My POE entry on the answer sheet for any question would look like "NKKNN". This means the answer choices have narrowed down to B & C. Read the answer choices B and C again, identify the correct one, and move on.
So far so good..!! If you think this is a good approach, or you use some other approach that you find helpful and don't mind sharing the trick, Please leave a comment here.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Mastered CR? Oh man, how wrong I was..!!
So, I decided to try LSAT sets and see whether I maintain the same level of accuracy. I took up one of the LSAT test sets today (Test - I, Section - I & IV). The questions were much tougher than GMAT sets and are much lengthier too. The results are not encouraging. I did too many mistakes in both the sections. Here are the details..
Test - 1, Section I - (Total Q# - 25, Time - 43minutes, Mistakes # 6)
Test - 1, Section II - (Total Q# - 26, Time - 41minutes, Mistakes # 11)
Some of the observations/learnings
1. Time pressure did me in! Many of the mistakes happened because I didn't read the argument carefully and missed some important keyword (what MLIC calls modifier words).
2. Conditional reasoning is damn comfusing. Identifying the necessary and sufficient condition is not as easy as I think. I need to go back and read the Critical Reasoning book once again.
3. I need to work on Formal Logic concepts. There was a Question that could be solved using the Some Train to draw inference.
4. I took more than estimated time in some questions. I had to hurry during the last questions. This resulted in 5 consecutive mistakes in the last set. I must have done something like this in my last GMAT attempt.
5. Practice to use POE in tougher questions where the argument isn't clear to me.
6. Practice to focus more right after a question where I'm not confident of my answer choice. I MUST avoid consecutive mistakes.
I will try focussing on these mistakes and continue taking tests everyday.
Good Luck!!