Moving Ahead ...

After a brief period of patting myself at the back for the good show in GMAT I am now ready to take the next step.

I have been working in office and partying with friends, watching movies and having fun. I am also learning french :) It sure is a lot of fun to learn about someone else's culture and traditions and the language. A few more interesting people in my class would have made it an even better experience :)

I have downloaded the essay questions of most of the schools in Top 30 and plan to download their applications as well.

I would now be researching the schools I would be interested in applying.

The more I read about the MBA application process the more I realize that its very unpredictable and a long and enduring process.
The key lies in differentiating yourself from the others. I need to improve my writing style to make it more interesting and crisp.

Best of luck to all the applicant who are waiting for the results or are on waitlist.

First Step of my Journey :)

I am really happy that I did as I expected on the final Day and sored >720, which I think should put me in a good position. I am planning to apply for fall 2007.

I need to figure out how I can make the most of the time I have at my hand. Any suggestions ?? Things which could help me make a stronger case for the top B schools and add value to my application.

How to start researching the schools etc etc :)

Thanks to all you wonderful people. Your blogs have been a great source of inspiration !!! Thanks for the wishes and the tips too :)

Incase anyone has any questions regarding GMAT I would be glad to answer. I have benifited a lot form the fellow bloggers and would sure want to give back to the comunity.

9 days to go...

After a 740 in GMAT prep1 a score of 720 was not really very encouraging but still I think it was not really bad.

Now that I am done with both the tests I can start working with the Official Guide. I have high expectations from this book so lets see if it lives upto that.

I have started taking kaplan Higher score tests and plan to finish them soon. Got 640 in the first test. I think the standard of RC was really tough and I made a lot of mistakes.

I think CR is the only area where I have mainained a good accuracy rate in all the tests.
I was doing well in RC also till the last test in which RC was a big disaster.

In gmat prep 2 tests it was SC which bombed :(

But still on an average I am making around 7-10 mistakes in the verbal section.
In quants I have been a bit disappointed as so far I have n been able to get a 100% accuracy rate in any test as I am maknig some mistakes in data sufficiency. This is the biggest area of concern as I think if I can get all correct in quants then even if I do average on verbal I will get a good score.

GMAT Prep Test 1

Finally I got the Gmatprep cd from my friend and I sat down with the test. I was a little nervous as I wanted to do well on the test because people say it is the true replication of the actual test.

I gave it with full concentration and score a 740 (Q 50 and VA 40)
and was pretty happy to see the score. Nevertheless, I could have done much better as I realized I had made many mistakes.

I plan to take the next test tomorrow and then get started with OG as I have only 10 more days to go :)

Slow progress

I am done with the Kaplan Verbal workbook and almost half of kaplan 800.
The difficulty level of questions in Kaplan 800 is surely much better and it has helped me increase my accuracy in Critical reasoning and sentence correction.

Maths was fine, no great about the difficulty level.

Took another Princeton Review Test and scored 730 this time with a raw score of 46 in quants and 45 in verbal.

The good news is that I am scoring well in verbal and making around 8 mistakes in a full length test. The bad news is that I am still unable to put a check on the careless mistakes I am making in Data sufficiency.

I need to focus more and go a little slow in the maths section. I finished it with almost 40 minutes to spare.

Verbal i need to improve my focus and concentration level and that would help me push my score further up.

From where I am right now a simple zero error score in maths would get me a 750 plus and I need to focus on getting this right. After that even if I do just fine in verbal i will get a good overall score.

inching closer to the GOAL

I am feeling much better now and am in aposition to sit and study without much of pain :)

I have almost finished the kaplan verbal workbook and right now I am working with kaplan 800 and it is an amazing book.
have done only Critical reasoning from the book and it sure is pretty tough.

I have also takem 2 full length tests in last few days.
First one was the Paper based full length test in kaplan book.

I got 4 wrong in Quants and 10 wrong in Verbal section.This fetched me a score of 660 according to the scoring formula given in the book.

In Verbal I made only one mistake in CR and 5 in Sentence correction and 4 in Reading comprehension.

Yesterday night I took Computer adaptive test from Princeton Review and managed a score of 680. Here again I made 3 mistakes in quants and 9 mistakes in the verbal section. Out of these 9 I again made 3 mistakes in Sentence correction and 4 in Reading comprehension and 2 in Critical reasoning.

Was a bit disappointed as I was expecting a score of above 700.

So now what i feel is that I am doing good in critical reasoning and I need to improve my accuracy in sentence correction and reading comprehension.

part of it can be done by concentrating better and being aggressive while eliminating the answer choices. In some cases I did not read all the answer choices carefully, in someother read the question wrong.

Quants is where I am strong and I need to get rid of the careless mistakes I am doing. As all the 7 mistakes I made in the 2 tests were very simple ones and I made the mistakes because fo trying to hurry up.

I still have not started with my OG and I think doing that should also help me improve on my scores in sentence correction.

I am all pumped up and want to hit a score of 750 plus. Lets see if I can push myself hard enough to do that.

What a start :) The going just got tougher.

I was down with fever for past few days and was avoiding a visit to a doctor. When the fever just refused to go away even after 3 days I finally went to see a doctor and it turned out to be something more serious than a normal fever and have been advised bed rest for minimum 10 days. And guess what the previous night only I had booked my GMAT test date for March 14th :)

I think god thought testing me just on GMAT would be an easy thing to do, so he increased the odds against me :) and here I am now with only 4 weeks for my GMAT and out of which the next few days are gonna be bad with fever, weakness and many other things :)

I flew back home and am off from work till I get well. That means good food and care at home :)

I have carried along all my gmat books. The net here is real slow so I wont be able to take too much of advantage of the various online forums etc. Need to register for VIP membership of scoretop. Anyone with an idea how good it is ?


Have been working with the Kaplan book for the last 2 days now.
The way I see it, I hardly need to do anything about quants.
I am also finding CR pretty straight forward, sometimes the weaens and strengthens questions get a little tricky but most of them are in black and white with no grey areas.

Sentence correction also I am improving slowly and my accuracy level is up to 80% now.

Reading comprehension was something i used to think might be tough, but to my surprise i made only 1 mistake in 24 questions I attempted so far from the kaplan book.

Once i finish this I would also take the full length practise test and then move on to kaplan verbal workout and then to kaplan 800.

Right now I am feeling really weak so studying in short slots of half an hour types.

Lets see if i crack under adversity or make a record :)

One month is all I have

It has been long time that i have been going slow on my preparation for GMAT. Finally I have decided to put my foot down and set a date for myself.

March first week is what I am aiming at, I still need to find out if there is any free slot available during that time.

I plan to get cracking with the kaplan book by this weekend.

Next would be Kaplan Verbal Workout and then Kaplan 800.

Once I am done with these I am sure I should be ina good shape to take the cd tests and would move on to OG.

Lets see how quickly and vigourously I get cracking on this.

Got Tagged :p

Starting here, the game hit KV who in turn tagged Mr D.Spiral and then wannabe and finally hitting me.

So here I go

Four jobs I've had in my life:
Ok I have been working for a few years only so dont really have 4 full time jobs :) But anyhow some of the jobs I think are major ones are

Placement Coordinator at College
Software Engineer at my previous organization
Programmer at my Current Organization :)
Fund Raising coordinator at a Not for Profit Organization

Four movies I can watch over and over:

Forrest Gump
Notting Hill
The Matrix
Munna Bhai MBBS its a hindi comedy :)

Four places I have lived:

Hissar
Bangalore
Hyderabad
Gurgaon

All in India and none of them is my hometown

Four TV shows I love to watch:

Young Turks
India Business Hour

I cant really recall any other TV show which I watch regularly..


Four places I have been on vacation:

Pondicherry
Shimla
Kodai kanal
Kullu manali

Four of my favourite dishes:

Kheer
Halwa
Aloo Parathas with curd
Pizza

Four websites I visit daily:

Pagalguy
business week
Orkut
My yahoo gorups

Four places I would rather be right now:

At home with Parents
Sipping coffee and reading a book
In the Gym or running
With my friends

Four bloggers I am tagging:

I am a new kid on the block not really sure if I know 4 bloggers who would respond :)
Lets see if I can continue the game :)
Forrest
Vibhu
Ash

What if it was Real GMAT Verbal Section :)

Yesterday was a good day, it did a lot to boost my confidence level. In the monring I read the Sentence Correction section from the Kaplan book.
It was good, but I would say the Princeton Review Verbal Workout was much better to get the basic right.
Kaplan did give a bit of information about the 8 different types of error GMAT tests you on and gave some examples about that too.

I did not attempt the sentence correction exercise at the end of Kaplan as I was expecting them to be a little tougher and want to keep them for a little later.

I had read the sentence correction from PR Verbal Workout and attempted the sample verbal section test give in it. The test had 41 questions and I timed myself to get a feel of the actual section test.
The questions werenot tough, but still some of them were a little tough and I had to choose between the two choices I was left with.

In the end I was surprised to see that I got 38 correct out of the 41 questions.
I treated myself with an ice cream :) and dint study after that :)

From today back to studying !!!

Being is almost always incorrect on GMATLAND

A good improvement from the previous score in Sentence Correction.

I was might disappointed with my performace in sentence correction of the crack gmat diagnostic test i took. I sat down with Princeton Review Verbal work out and read about the 8 different types of error which are usually tested on GMAT.

It had some exercises as well for each type of error, it really helped in improving my ability to identify that error.There was a test at the end of it with 22 questions and I got only 4 wrong out of them, which I am sure is a great improvement over my previous performance.

Being is never correct in GMATLand :)
intent on is correct idiom intend to is correct to
Always try to underline the subject and the verb in a sentence and then see if they agree in number.This can be made complex by adding a lot of additional info in between the sub and the verb.
so much ..as is correct idiom

Process of elimination is the best way of tackling the problem. Going forward I have planned to solve all the questions witha scratch paper in which I will have a square for each of the choices and would write the reason as to why this is incorrect.This I believe will help a lot in gettimg more conceptual clarity.

Would I get one too :)

Got this from http://bschoolorbust.blogspot.com/


HBS Admit letter from the BW forum
(if I am violating some copyright law, please inform me and I will take it off)

Dear Ms. xxx:

Congratulations!
On behalf of Harvard Business School, I am delighted to offer you
admission to the MBA Program. Your admission recognizes your outstanding
record of accomplishment and your potential for future success.
Each year, the MBA Admissions Board selects a class from among the
brightest and most accomplished young individuals in the world. We
aspire to find leaders like you who have the highest standards of
integrity and who understand that leading is a privilege.
The Harvard MBA Program offers more than just an academic degree; many
find it to be a transformational experience. By immersing yourself in
the case study method, and by working with distinguished faculty and
students, you will teach others as you learn. You will build deep,
practical knowledge while developing your leadership capabilities. In
joining our community, you will become part of an influential worldwide
network of alumni who will support you throughout your life.
We hope that you will accept our offer and want to make sure that you
have all the resources you need to make this important decision. Our
Prematriculation Web site will be your main source of information over
the next few months. It will direct you to key activities that will help
you learn more about HBS, such as Admitted Students' Weekend; in
addition, it highlights key requirements and logistics related to
joining HBS. You can immediately access the Prematriculation Web site by
using your username: xxx, email domain: mba2008.hbs.edu, and password:
xxx.
Your offer of admission is exclusively for the MBA Class of 2008,
entering in 2006, and it is contingent upon the verification of your
transcript(s), verification of your employment history, a signed copy of
"Joining the HBS Community" (a document that highlights our Community
Standards), and a tuition deposit.
We believe that you have the potential to make a real difference in the
world and hope that you will decide to become a part of the Harvard
Business School community.
Sincerely,

Brit K. Dewey
Managing Director, MBA Admissions & Financial Aid

CRaCk GMaT

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


http://www.crack-gmat.com/gmat.htm

I happened to visit some blog where I got this link to take a free online Diagnostic Test. I had been wanting to take one full length test for long time. As I took the first one a while ago and left my preparation in between after that.

So basically its a fresh start I am making and wanted to know where I stand before I formulate my strategies.

Todays morning I took this test and the result was not very encouraging. But it wasnt really abd either.

It started with the Quantitative section through which I was able to breeze through. I finished it much before time and got 34 right out of 37 and it showed me a scaled score of 50.

The second section was verbal and this was the one which gave me a shock. I managed to get only 22 right out of 41 and 19 mistakes.

The bad thing was I had mistakes in all parts of verbal test.

SC was the worst and i got 5 right out of 14 questions I attempted. CR was equally bad with 4 right out of 9. RC was relatively better 8 right out of 13 questions.

Now I think this is a real bad show in verbal and there is a lot of effort I need to put in before I even get close to my target score of 750.

But one thing I was surprised to see was that despite of it the test showed me a score of 610 and it saud the score of the actual test would be a 100 points more than your score here as this test is relatively tougher.

But I am not reading too much into this last statement and would make sure I improve on my overall verbal score.

I had been doing some work on this already and its not good news that it dint help me much. I had taken a few tests from LSAT critical reasoning, was reading some verbal notes and frequenting various gmat forums like testmagic and sentencecorrection.com

looks like it is a long road ahead, but then I love challenges and its going to make it more interesting.

Small Steps to begin with

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
--Robert Collier

I have spent my last few days trying to gather information on whats the best way to start my preparation and what should be my strategy to attack the test.

There is so much of information available out there and at times it got really confusing. I just wanted someone to come and tell me that do this and this and it would be done. But then it aint so simple, I finally tried to come up with my own plan of action and this is how it looks.

To start with I am going through some of the Verbal Notes complied by people who have done well at GMAT.
Sumeet Thakur's Verbal Notes

is a very good compilation and its helping a lot.
At the same time I have started visiting
testmagic.com
scoretop.com
pagalguy.com
sentencecorrection.com and they seem to be real good place to get your doubts clarified and learn new things.

Next I plan to start with Princeton Review Verbal owrkout and that should give me a good standing to get cracking on sentence correction.

Side by side everyday I plan to spend some half an hour on RC/CR form LSAT material I got from some forum. This would help me get in good shape for CR especially.

As of now this is what I have planned. Once I start implementing this I would have a fair idea of my strengths and weaknesses and I would be able to decide the future course of action.

I have plans to do Kaplan , Kaplan Verbal Workout and OG after this.

Missed by a whisker!!!!!

The sotry begins !!
So far i was a little lax with my prep as I was a last minute participant in the race for CAT, Commaon Aptitude Test conducted for selection to the Indian Institutes of Management (for those who dont know about it, i doubt it though)

Quantitative (% Score) 31.75
Quantitative (Percentile) 96.07
Verbal (% Score) 36.00
Verbal (Percentile) 96.05
Logic & Data Interpretation (% Score) 23.73
Logic & Data Interpretation (Percentile) 85.48
TOTAL (% Score) 30.96
TOTAL (Percentile) 97.58

This is how my final score card reads :)
Missed by a very small margin.. in DI I shuld have made may be one more mark and I wuld have got atleast one call.

Anyway its over and I want to move ahead and take my plunge for GMAT now, it gives me all the more reason to go all out and crack it and give it my best.

I have finally decided that i will take GMAT by March mid and have started my basic preparation and information gathering.

Hope I would be able to achieve my goals this year.

I am back and I am here to stay !!

I have been off for a quiet long time now and I am sure some of you must be thinking the blog is gonna be dead, but I am back. There was a little change in my priority and had to concentrate on something else for the last few months and now that I am done with it I am all rearing to move ahead and go all out for GMAT with even greater enthusiasm.

I have not yet started preparing again but I am planning to start it now and would take GMAT around Jan end or Mid Feb.

In the meanwhile I have still kept my eyes and ears open to all the information flowing around regarding the various schools and GAMT preparation.

I attended the World MBA tour last week and had a chance to talk to some of the school’s representatives. Few of them I talked to were Darden, Wharton, Hass, Queens and Ross school of Business.

I was really impressed by how patiently the lady from Queens Admission committee took all our questions and explained to us about the Queens philosophy and what it is looking for in the candidates and what makes it a special place. I was attracted towards it more because of the relatively lower cost and its inclination towards technology. It also emphasizes on team work and the smaller class size lets the students share a special bond and know each other well.

Ross school of Business hosted a presentation and I had a chance to attend it. I found that as the most interesting talk on the day. They shared a lot of information about the school, its culture, teaching methods and community. There were two alums from the school who made a great effort to share with us their experience. It had so much information which one can never find on any website or forums. Now I know how it helps to talk to alumni and how much helpful it can be. This is one school I am surely applying to. I have Stanford on my list for sure as well and that’s mainly because of the focus on not for profit and social entrepreneurship. I can take a lot of learning out from the courses for non profit offered their and can work with some of the esteemed faculty on a social entrepreneurship project as well. Over the next few months I am sure there will be many more additions and deletions to the list J and a lot depends on the GAMT score.

Target CrITiCaL ReasOniNG

Have been going real slow with my Prep so far as I was involved with some community work and also was over loaded with work at office.Now I have finished the community service project I was working on and also my office work load will be a bit lighter for next one month or so.

I have planned to attach the sections where I can attain 100 percent accuracy rate. I have identified Quants and CR as the two sections where I can aim at giving my sore aboost. For quants I am not doing anything specific as of now but I am pretty sure that with a little bit of practise and a great amount of concentration while giving the tests I will be able to avoid the careless mistakes I might make during the test.

For critical Reasoning I have started with practising the questions given in the LSAT. I read it on scoretop.com that LSAT CR is tougher and if we can practise with LSAT CR questions we can surely do good in GMAT CR.
You can go to scoretop.com and get loads of practise sets from LSAT to practise CR. So next few days I will be doing just CR and will also keep working on sentence corrections.

Somehow I feel that I will end up with 2-3 mistakes each in RC and SC and CR each. So if I can get all right in Qquants and decrease my mistakes in verbal I would be in a very good shape.

For SC I have finished Princeton Review and the Verbal workout of Princeton Review. I gave a test but still ended up with 10 mistakes in verbal section. I have to see how I can improve on Sentence correction in particular.

Some good information

Below is the post I got from http://brit-chickmba.blogspot.com . Found it really good. Might be of help to some of u as well.


What I'm looking for
Before talking about each school, I thought it would be useful to post the lists I made of why I want to do and MBA and what I want from a programme.

What do I want to achieve?

Equip myself to lead an nfp organisation in the future, by:

* developing skills in strategy and leadership
* gaining a deeper understanding of the issues affecting nfp orgs
* building more generalist skills and knowledge onto my specialist skills, knowldege and experience.
* acquiring enough knowledge of other specialisms to understand the issues and ask intelligent questions
* gaining knowledge and skills in the 'hard' areas
* building on my knowldege and skills in the 'soft' areas

What am I looking for when chosing an MBA

* Core courses with a good mix of 'hard' and 'soft'
* Opportunity to lok in-depth at leadership, strategy and nfp issues
* Ability to have both breadth and depth in course taken
* To learn from experts working at the 'cutting edge'
* To learn from my fellow students
* To be able to put theory into action
* To be in a co-operative culture
* Opportunity to work and study with people from a wide-range of backgrounds
* To be somewhere I'll enjoy living and studting
* Good links to nfp orgs and consultacies
* Interesting extra-currics
* Interesting people
* A firm foundation for future professional practice and development
* A well-regarded course
* A mix of teaching methods, used effectively
* Opportunitied to sing (a long-term hobby that I want to continue)
* Finance available for international students
* A loan forgiveness programme
* Decent transport links with the UK
* Not too big, but not too claustrophobic
* Excitement!

The above aren't in any particular order. I'm going to go through them at some point and divide the criteria into 'essential', 'desirable', and 'bonus', and probably add in some more that I think of along the way.

Edited to add: In response to requests, anyone wanting to use this list elsewhere is very welcome to do so, but I'd appreciate it if you could credit where it originated. Thanks.

Now, as promised, my thought on each school:

Yale
What makes it stand out

*Very good reputation for its nfp offerings.
*Interesting nfp focussed resources and courses (e.g. Programme on Social Enterprise, Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures, Nonprofit Organiosations Clinic.
*Social Entrepreneurship course
*Strong offerings in the strategy area.
*Strong offerings in the leadership area (including Chief Executives Leadership Institute, Creativity and Innovation course)
*Intersting joint offerings with other schools, particulalrly liked the look of 'Business Ethics and Sleeping Well' with the School of Divinity.
*Small school.

Concerns

*New Haven
*No university housing, how difficult will it be to find accommodation when I'm coming from across the Atlantic and have no local credit history?

Stanford
What makes it stand out

* Overall profile and reputation of the programme
* Location / weather
* Centre for Social Innovation and the nfp course oferrings
* Centre for Leadership Development and Research and the leadership and strategy courses
* Leadership DEvelopment Platform
* Process of Change Lab
* Management communication Programme

Concerns

* Location - west coast makes time difference with and travel time to the UK that little bit more

Before I visited, I'd listed 'reported arrogance of students'. I've now deleted that, but replaced it with 'very high competition from extremely able applicants'! But if you don't ask, you don't get, and the worst they can do is say 'no'.

Kellogg
What makes it stand out

* Centre for Nonprofit Management
* Offering of noprofit leadership non-credit course, early on in the year
* Social Impact Club and Conference
* LEAP
* Well regarded programme, both generally and for nfp's
* Very team focussed
* Good leadership and strategy offerings
* Board Fellowship course

Concerns

Slightly larger programme than the other two

One Down....dont know how many more to go :)

I have been really keen on seeing what my score would look like if I take a full length test. But I had been restraingning myself from taking a full length test so that I dont waste one test cos of this temptation.

I did some basic stuff like reading the strategy to crack sentece correction and critical reasoning questions. I also did the Princeton review Verbal workout for sentence correction.
So finally I thought I should og ahead and take a full length test and I took the Princeton Review first cd test.Was taking it on my friends comp and it asked me to enter first word in Acknowledgement section for authentication, had to go back home and get the book.

So i did finally start my test.

First section promted to me was AWA and I dint even think twice before skipping the section :)
Next to come was Maths. I told myself not to hurry up through the section and give it with extra caution so that I dont make careless mistakes. I was pretty confident that I will get all of them right. Dint face any conceptual problems in any of the questions. But i guess that must be the case with most of the people. being an Indian male with Engineering background puts me in a good stead on my math skills.

The next section was the one where I really wanted to judge where I stand today so that I can plan my strategy accordingly. I was careful with the first 15 questions and gave them some extra time and went slow. I was trying to be careful and was also trying hard to keep my concentration level good. But looks like it dint happen :(

After finishing the test I was prompted if I would want to upload y score for which i said yes. But then my PC dint have anet connection so it dint happen. It then showed me the table where it listed out in each section which questions I got wrong and which ones I got right. Now here culd I find my score :(
Now I am still not surer how bad or decent my current status is. If you guys can help then here are the stats :

Quants 3 Wrong out of 37 and all of them were wide aprt and all after first 15 questions. Careless mistakes :(

Verbal wasnt as good as I wanted it to be. Anyway I know its the area I need to work on:
3 wrong in SC3 in CR4 in RC
so total of 10 wrong out of 41 :( But the good thing was no mistakes in first 10.

Any clues on how u think I stand at this point of time.I know it wont make much difference as neither will I get over confident nor complacent but still I had this curiosity to know the score.

Anyway I know the areas I need to work on now. So I will try harder to cut my mistakes there and be more careful in quants and not commit any careless mistakes.

Today is saturday but we are officially working as we have a release coming up soon :) Listening to Enrique One night stand have a grt day guys

Its not that bad after all :)

Hey guys the sentence correction doesnt seem as tough as I was thinking after going through the rules in the Princeton Review.
I have practised a bit about how to identify the common GMAT errors and have been made good progress atleast in the tests given in the Princeton Review book.

I know it might be relatively easy and not a correct reflection of how the actual level of difficulty of sentence correction may be in actual GMAT. It has atleast helped mke get rid of phobia of Sentence Correction.

Going forward I plan to finish Princeton Review Verbal Workbook and then move on to kaplan and then Kaplan verbal workbook.

Last would be the OG :)

I hope this is the correct approach and should help me ace the SC questions on GAMT>
I am right noe concentrating only on SC as I was most scared of this.
I tried Quants and DS and I am sure with a bit of concentration I can get most of them right. That leaves me with SC and CR and RC to concentrate on.
Planning to take my first full length test over the weekend. We have along weekend ahead as we have a holiday for Independence Day on Aug 15th .
Happy Independence Day !!!