MBA_Fall2004

Hi Raj, 2. I am an Engineer and so didn't prepare for Maths much. Can't suggest you there. 1. SC is not much tricky in terms of grammar. Tougher it gets, more difficult it becomes in terms of 'style'. There can be more than one grammatically correct choices, but one will be the best in terms of 'style'. Think 'verb+ing' form as opposed to 'simple verb' form -- simple present tense is almost always preferable to present continuous tense on GMAT. HTH. Thanks Niraj

Hi Jay, For CR, I followed the standard with/without assumption, argument-->conclusion basics. Did some exercises in Princeton Review book in the beginning. I revised all the questions in [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip] whenever I did them wrong. I would reiterate that [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip] is the best resource for CR too. Princeton Review's advice of reading the question correct in a single shot helped me save time. In the hindsight, I think that reading magazines especially 'Economist' helped me a lot. HTH. Thanks

Hi Raj, I went through your topic. I agree with Erin absolutely. Thinking of 'ETS profiling you' will not help you at all. It is good that you have a goal -- with the required effort you ahould be able to reach there. There is no magic formula to ace GMAT. You will have to find your weaknesses and work upon them. Finding one's own weaknesses takes time and courage. I wish you luck! If you have any particular question I can help you with, Please feel free to post. Thanks Niraj

Looks like your problem is similar to mine. I too had more problems in SC. I devoted almost 75% of time to SC. I am an IT Consultant so quant was not a problem at all for me. I believe if you know your weaknesses, you can definitely improve upon those by hard work. Best of luck!

Hi Venkat, I have already applied to Wharton, Duke and Rotman and am in waiting mode now. I selected my schools on the basis of my career focus and other factors. I basically drew a matrix to determine which ones are the best..:shy: Wish you all the best for your GMAT! Thanks Niraj

Hi Venkat, Don't know if you have already taken GMAT. Was just hoping around to find this post for one of my friends. The best advice anyone can give you to improve RC performance would be -- read as much non-fiction as you can. May be boring ones would help even more. One of the probable reasons we loose focus on RC is that the passages are boring and we are not used to those. HTH! Thanks Niraj

You are welcome :D

Yoyo, Thank you! Well.. this is how I think about RC. See if you agree; if you don't, ask specific questions again. RC questions should ideally be the easiest among all verbal questions - RC is like an open book exam. The answer is just before you; you have to find where. I'll tell you what my problem was and how I solved it. If you observe carefully, you can see that your wrong questions will have a consistent pattern; if you can't find it let your friends help you. I didn't practice much in RC but found something revealing about me - either I did almost 90% correct or 10% correct. I was frustrated but found out the reason with the help of a good friend. I was not focussing - I was tired and practising RC and getting 90% wrong. When I was fresh I was marking more than 90% correct. I knew the thing- I have to schedule the actual GMAT when I do best - in the morning around 10 o'clock. I did that and it helped.:) Take RC as just a new learning experience and you'll enjoy it. After all, you do read non-fictions elsewhere and enjoy, don't you? Wish you all the best! Regards Niraj

Venkat, I don't know the name of any American English grammar book; I can't help you there. [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip] is the only GMAT preparation book I referred to. Well... I read Wall Street Journal, New York times and Business Week regularly; they helped. To revise English grammar, I looked at the site suggested by Erin; you can search for them here. Site http://webster.commnet.edu/sensen/part1/index.html was all I needed for that. Thanks Niraj

Venkat(guessed your name from your id, I don't know if it's correct:D), Thank you! I think just revision of basic school grammar helped. I would recommend newsmagazine site www.economist.com besides various stories on www.aldaily.com. Economist has one of the best style in Intenational English writing; remember though that you might need to supplement it with a US magazine. After all, GMAT tests Standard American English. You can also see old and reliable 'Elements of Style' by Strunk & White. These sources will also help you in AWA. Also, as other TestMagicians say- [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip] is the only practice resource you can rely on. This time I didn't even touch Kaplan and Princeton review; they can be good for practice but don't come close to actual GMAT. I found Arco too divergent; some of my friends say Arco is good for CR, but I don't agree. Wish you all the best! Niraj

Hello TestMagicians, Finished my test yesterday afternoon. Didn't write here yesterday because I was celebrating with friends. ;) First of all, a special thanks to Erin for creating such a useful site; hanging around here has been a pleasure. And yes... thanks to all folks who are visiting this forum to make the discussions more fruitful. I had written GMAT in October 2002; had got 690. I had almost decided to give it another shot few months back. Entire July month, I studied regularly thanks to my instructor--I am generally a very irregular person. You know I am one of those IT Consultants who have one leg in India and one on Air India. :shy: I was weak in verbal and I knew it well; English is my third language. Revising school grammar and sentence correction questions discussed here helped me increase my confidence. I had aimed for 99 percentile total--got it. Can't tell how happy I am [dance]. I think I did make some mistakes in both the sections but not sure how many. Got one permutation and one probability question--they were easy. Some math questions were really time consuming but I pulled through. I think I could have done better in maths. Verbal was OK; 2-3 questions were difficult and time consuming for me. Wish me luck! I am thinking of applying to INSEAD, Rotman, Berkley and a couple more. Shoot me questions if you have any. I'll try to answer them. Thanks again and best wishes to all of you! Niraj

Thank you, Erin :D

Let me try.. I have answered first Q 30 at http://www.TestMagic.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5176&SearchTerms=Industrialists,from,the,country,Distop,. Q 31. E helps the motive of corporation, doesn't cast doubt. If geese move to other ponds, they don't create hazard for excecutives. The only feasible answer is A. A tells us that the method proposed would create other hazard in the form of uncontrollable dogs. Q 32. C, 'Cardiovascular response during an activity is an adequate measure of how beneficial the activity is for the heart.' must be true to validate the argument here. Remember that assumption is something, which if wrong, makes argument fall apart. Q 33. (B)'the drab workroom was designed to provide adequate space for at most 65 workers' provides an alternative reason for increased productivity. It tells us that productivity increased not as a result of the interest taken by researchers in the work of both groups but because drab workroom was spacious enough after only 50 workers were left out. D would explain why the productivity increased in colored room but wouldn't tell anything about the increased productivity in drab workroom. HTH Thanks

Hi folks, Can you please tell me what is wrong with 'B'? Thanks

vlee, You are right. Thanks for clarifying.

Thanks sample123, That explanation about 'forbid' was really helpful!

Sranju, You are posting good questions. Thanks for that. I have a request though- please underline the question stem where it needs to be underlined. Wish you all the best for your GMAT!

I have one more question for you folks: I find the construction 'hospitals tell Medicare patients of their' strange. Is 'tell of' idiomatic? Thanks

Gerund 'helping' needs a possessive pronoun. For instance, we can say 'My doing so is good for Vlee'. One important thing to note here- preposition 'without' needs an object; here the object is the whole phrase 'his helping us' and not 'him'. Thanks

Hi Maribel, I discussed this question with an expert friend. This is what I was taught ; I also think this is correct. 'doubling' would be good when used to 'modify'; it would also be good to 'add' to something already going on or in motion. Let us look at OG# 100 to see how it adds to something already going on: Wisconsin, Illionois, Florida, and Minnesota have begun to enforce statewide bans prohibiting landfills to accept leaves, brush, and grass clippings. --> Twice/double would be better in the context here. 'twice the number' is better and more succinct than 'twice as much as'. The answer we are left with is (E). I don't understand why (D) is better than (E). See if you can help me here. Thanks

Hi Linda, This is a good question; I also thought the answer is D first. Later I found that D is not correct. My Explanation: The important thing to note --> choices given are about persent day, westernized Black Africans . Now, D says that Blood pressures are low among the Yoruba who came from salt-scarced places. It doesn't help the researchers. Researchers need either of two types of examples: 1. Persons who came from salt-scarced places and now have high blood pressure 2. Persons who came from salt-abundant places and now have low blood pressure. Example in choice (A) is of type 2; A is the correct choice. Thanks

Let me try .. 1. "Everyone of us" is singular 2. The correct tense would be 'future perfect' here.B and C are possible answers. 3. 'thief was I' is correct. We can't use object after auxiliary verb; object follows main verb or preposition. HTH. Thanks

Hi Ron, The second sentence says Industralists didn't encourage intervention; the argument supporting this is- how can they support intervention if the cost of intervention born by government is more than the profit they(industralist) earned. The argument would be futile if we can prove that cost of intervention was not paid by industralist, but by someone else. Choice (B) exactly does that. It is similar to saying- Ron doesn't get enough from TM website, the investment on TM website is more than the value Ron gets from the website. -- Well, the thing is- Erin spends money on TM website, not Ron. :cool: How was that? No malice intended towards Erin or Ron; I apologize if I hurt you guys. A, D and E are out of scope. © tries to tell that money will be recovered from future profits, but again goes out of scope by talking about the stability of profit beyond war-time. Hope it helps.

Hi Bilu, The answer should be B) Schnitzler was arrested repeatedly for peddling.. Concentrate on 'peddling off and on'. Off when he was arrested, On again when released.. I too don't understand why the answer is ©. Thanks

Hi Vital et al, I still don't understand why (E) is the correct answer. Can you help me, please? Thanks