anotherlooser

Friends.. I have described by interview experience elsewhere in the forum. The good news is that I was admitted to the UCLA FEMBA program end of August. I was on the waitlist since April. My recommendations had reached late plus I don't think I had a great GMAT and probably not very good work trajectory either. Anyways, it so happened that there was a cancellation in the section I wanted and I got in. I did send one letter to the admissions committe after they told me that I was waitlisted. I told them that I was very much interested and I am takig statistics courses. I don't know how much that helped. I was adviced to appear very interested but not persistent or pester the committee. Anyways, this is a 3 yr course and the people around me are as smart as whips. In fact, I am probably the lowliest person in the class. But that means I have to work harder. I had applied to Haas, Wharton West and UCLA. I was planning to apply for full time next year to other schools coz i wanted to get this MBA done and over with. But working and studying is going to be challenging, but hopefully without loss of income and freedom from debt. This forum has been of tremendous help. All the debriefings, all the problems and all the stolen time from work has helped. As I went through the introductory classes at school, i realised that GMAT IS actually just one of the aspects of a good MBA candidate. Also from my feedback, I did hear that if my score was around the average or near the median, the admission committe is convinced that you are scholastically able to do the work. Of course a high score will impress them, but a media or above median score means that you have passed on the GMAT scale for that school. Employment trajectory / history is not in your hands anymore. But essays, recommendations and interveiws are definitely in your control. Start working on recommendations very early. Also don't bother too much about the paperwork like transcripts specially from India. If you have copies of your marksheets, submit that. Tell them that transcripts will take time and they will admit you provisionally and give you grace period of about 1 month AFTER school starts to give them official transcripts. Also schools conduct a background check. So make sure that is clean. Also MBA is a lot about perception. How you come across is sometimes as important as what you are. Practice your interviews and work your essays to perfection. Sometimes what you think is ok for admissions is actually the minimum required. This is true if you are applying for a lot of school (more than 5) Make sure you have much much more that what the admission committe is looking for. Anyways..this has rambled. Good luck to everyone. See you in the boardroom or on the golf links.. peace -looser

There are various techniques. For me the best technique was to 'interact' with the passage. If I saw a passage about history or literature (about which I don't have much knowledge or more importantly interest) I did it mechanically.. The questions I tried to answer BEFORE I read the passage fully.. 1. How many lines? 2. How many paragraphs? 3. What's the subject? 4. Look at 1st line of each paragraph. If that is not helpful, then look at the last line of each paragraph. Most passages fall into some specific patterns. One pattern is some premise or data is given in 1st two paragraphs and conclusion in the third. Other pattern is a passage with long scientific names, words you will rarely encounter in normal reading. From my experience, long words are designed to throw you off so beware of them. While reading.. 1. Look for data, premise or conclusion. 2. Are any expert sources cited (e.g. According to the studies done by Hugh, Brackman and Johnson in 1889 on the primordial structure of mitochondria..) The main thing to understand that these 3 ppl studied the subject in 1889. 3. Look for parallel sentence structure..most often than not, there is a question about it. (e.g. Shifting sand dunes are due to high speed winds, camel hooves and snake movements) Remember your goal is to read the passage (twice or at the most 3 times) and answer the 2 or 3 questions based on it. If you read the question and hunt for the answer you will loose time. Lastly, and this sometimes worked for me, was to create a mental picture of the passage (visualize the passage) and try for the answer.

A lot depends on the school. Practically your worst chances are in the 3rd round. Also you should look at other factors like total number of seats versus number of applicants. Sometime applying for a 3rd round and getting rejected means you can better your application for 1st round of next year. Some schools like Wharton (west campus) will admit students until the last week before school starts. They reserve about 2 or 3 seats for what they consider outstanding students who were not able to get the application on time. From what I have heard and researched (online, info sessions) your chances are almost the same in the 1st round and 2nd round with a bias towards the 1st round. Also remember that B schools want diversity. So if you are in a field which is not overtly represented (like engineering) then your chances for 3rd round are actually better coz schools are looking to fill up the spaces with people of different backgrounds to round out the class profile. As again this is very school dependent. I would say that, do your due diligence, research your target school(s) well. Write your best application and apply. It takes a while to put together a good application and loads of time to put together a killer application. I apologize for the long winded post.. hope that helps..

Its when you get the questions wrong that is more important. So if you got 9 questions wrong in the 1st 20 questions, your score will not be 50. If you got 1 wrong in the first 10 and 1 wrong in the next 10 and 7 wrong in the last 17, you have a good chance of getting above 50. What's your answer spread? BTW, if you had seen the Gmatprep questions prior to the test (forums, practice etc) remember that its not an indicator of how you will do in the actual test. I did the PowerPrep software tests 6 times and from the 3rd time kept getting scores above 720. This was because I had seen the questions earlier and i was able to solve them (no element of surprise). This created a false impression in my mind that i was prepared for the actual test. Of course on test day, all questions I saw were new (except about 3 in quant and two on verbal) so I didn't do so well. Gmat/ETS has thousands of questions and a false positive on diagnostic tests is dangerous.

Most MBA schools will start in Fall 2007 (Sept/Oct). Few schools have rolling admissions and start either in Fall or Winter (Jan 2008). Most schools' first round deadline is in Sept/Oct 2006 for Fall 2007, about 10 to 11 months prior to start date. 2nd round deadlines are typically in Dec/Jan and 3rd round deadlines are March to May. Typically you stand a better chance when the number of applicants are lower, typically in the 1st round. 3rd round is typically on a space available basis. Very few schools treat each round independently. No school waits for all applicants before making decisions. 2nd round is the busiest so some schools have more seats reserved for 2nd round. There's a fair number of reapplicants for 1st round. Some applicants apply for the 1st round and if rejected apply for the part time course in the same school (UCLA, Chicago, Berkeley etc) for the same academic year. Applying to more than 5 schools in the same year is tough though not impossible. When you are spread so thin, it may mean that your application is not the best you can crank out. Devise an application strategy. HTH..my two cents..

Abhijit.. Some things to try out.. Analyze your test by looking at the following.. - How many did you get wrong in the 1st 5, next 5 and so on. Your score is roughly decided on the first 20 questions or so and fine tuned in the next 17 or 21. - Looking at your spread (M 41, V 23) its obvious that you need to concentrate on the verbal. In my experience, concentrating solely on the weak areas is dangerous. Keep working on all areas simultaneously but concentrate more on the weak areas. - For verbal, questions come in patterns. There are patterns for each verbal sub-sections. Learn to figure out the pattern for each. They are not that many (about 5 or 7 for SC, 5 or 6 for CR and about 6 or 7 for RC). - No study material will take your score above 720. However, OG 11 and Kaplan tests will take you in the 650 - 700 range. - Interact a lot on this or similar forum. Solve the questions which people post and post your explanations and read other's explanations as well. - Do AT LEAST 5 full length tests before your actual GMAT. Do not skip the essays. When you solve just the quant or verbal sections, its like doing a sprint while training for a marathon. The essays are designed to sap your energy and concentration.

Hello Vivek... Your best preparation comes when you are self guided and motivated for GMAT. Without that a prep course is useless. Depending on when you are planning on applying (Fall 2007) and the schools to which you are applying, figure out how much time you have to devote to GMAT. The other aspects of admission (essays, recomendations, money) are as important and suck up a lot of time. IMHO, the best option for a beginner is this... - Buy OG 11 and start solving the problems. - Interact a lot with this forum by solving the questions and posting your own. - Study all sections simultaneously. You will do well if your overall performance is better rather than a top performance in quant and an average performance in verbal. Admission committees look for balance in your score. - Try and not get a score of 800. That's a sure shot way of getting dinged from Stanford (just kidding..) - Buy the Kaplan book and the Manhattan book and do the exercises and practice tests. The tests results can be analaysed at different levels to figure out which parts need work (or what you should concentrate on) - Most study material is useless if you are aiming for a score above 750. The material is geared to bring your score in the 650 to 700 range. Above that you are mostly on your own, meaning whatever works for others may work or not work for you. - There is PowerPrep and GMATPrep software available that is a good way to gauge your progress. - Read up on what others have done and what has worked for them. A community intelligence in some form or the other is a good teacher. Finally, whatever course you choose, you will have to practice and work hard. I have heard (no direct experience) that Kaplan and Princeton are pricey. No knowledge about PowerScore or Veritas. Good luck on your journey... -anotherlooser

BigGame, the question asks for a 'single line segment of finite length' so for D, we have two line segments. HTH

E as well since RenCo expects its employees to quit earlier than the other company. So RenCo doesn't do testing since it has no financial stake in keeping its employees healthy in the longer term.

Yikes...this is a very tough one... Let's look at the assumptions. 1. Celebrities are willing to be gawked at by customers 2. Celebriites do not sit at tall tables (since they want to be seen) 3. Gawkers sit at tall tables. 4. Gawkers will not linger if they sit at tall tables. 5. Putting more tall tables will not reduce celebrity traffic to the restaurant. There are other assumptions as well. This is what i could think about. Smarter people will think up more of these...anyways..let's look at the statements. a: Celebrities sit at tall tables. Contradicts assumption 2 above. b: celebrities order expensive meals to compensate for higher turnover. No info about meal pricing in the stem of the question. c: Customer at high table will not linger. Similar to assumption 4. Probable answer. d: Meal pricing: No info about this. Rejected. e: Tall tables will block regular height tables. Will more tall table prevent celebrities coming to the restaurant?? No idea. I think the best answer is C. What's the OA?

E for me as well. I think for A, B, or C to be correct, we need a 'that' before mandated. So it should read "A New York City ordinance of 1897 """that"" regulated" Without 'that' its not grammatical (dunno why). So the other options are 'regulating...' After that its a simple case of parallelism. Ans is E. Geeky's explanation is spot on.

HEre's the analysis... 'have found evidence that' is the most correct way. That eliminates C, D, E. stat B, changes tense 'has suggested' (past perfect) versus present tense in the initial part of the sentence. Best answer is A. What's the OA please?!

We require 'has'. So the two choices are C or D. In D, the phrase 'from how it has been' is awkward. To make it more correct it should read ' from what it is was' in the last century, since 'it' refers to status. Best choice is C. My two bits..

In A, B and C, the comparison is incorrect (river to river or cities to San Antonio). Stat D changes the meaning. Stat E is the best by POE.

Another tuffy from dementor...mmmm... As XXX happens, YYY are hard-hit, and these YYY can no longer qualify to buy homes, and rising PPP ..... From my analysis... the 1st fragment gives us a situation (housing affordability gap widens). 2nd fragment gives us the effect ( middle-income families are especially hard-hit) and the rest of the sentence is the explanation why families are hard hit. In this scenario, 'and' which joins the first two fragment with the underlined portion is incorrect. Between B and C, the two end words 'furthermore' and 'yet'. Yet signifies a comparison. e.g He reached the exam hall late, yet he managed to finish the exam. So 'yet' is analagous to 'inspite of' 'Furthermore' is sort of adding more reasons on top of each other and in a sense extends the explanation as to why middle-income families are hard-hit. I think 'yet' in this case is incorrect. If the sentence read .. 'yet, they are buying homes' that would be correct. Final answer 'B' OA please..