Shifty

Rockin' SCORE, Mad! Happy Easter!! -Shifty ps. where are you applying and for what year?

To anyone who can answer on this subject: Does rolling deadlines mean that the later you turn in your b-school app, the harder chance you have of getting accepted? Let's assume an applicant falls into the median on all the basic categories, like work experience, GMAt score, GPA. This question is regarding time within a round, too. Like if the last round deadline for a program is May 1st... if you turn in your app March 25th vs May 1st, is there a big difference? I've heard "yes" and "no" anybody know? -Shifty

I'm polishing up my resume for my USC app. Is it ok for a resume to be over 2 pages? Right now it's two pages, but I haven't added my summer work so it will leak over to a 3rd page. Is it taboo to have a 2+ resume? -Shifty Oh well I got a good answer from my friend. I don't know how to remove this thread so post here if anyone else has the same resume question. -Shifty

Hey Eddie, Congrats, dude! I'm applying to the MBA program at USC now. Who knows, I might see you there. Good to make contacts early, right? -Shifty

Mav I knew you could do it!!! You genius you. :O I'm happy for ya, man! Congrats!!!!!!! -Shifty

I don't know much about classes... but I do think you should get another book. I also personally recommend the Kaplan Verbal Workbook. It helped me a lot with grammar definitions even as a native speaker. Plus, there are 3 more practice sections of SC, CR, and RC. And it has good appendixes, too! -Shifty

Hi David, I must commend you for being so active on this forum for so long. Your invaluable advice has probably helped hundreds of us already. I was wondering if you could help assess my chances and let me know if I am rushing my app for this Fall or not. I am 30yrs old with a Bachelor's in Business Administration from Univ of Illinois - Urbana. GPA 3.1 I just got a 720 on my GMAT (2nd try) on March 11th. I've worked almost 10 years in retail. and more recently worked as a Associate Director of Financial Aid at a proprietary school for over year. I also have extracurricular activities like Small group leader for church. Here's the thing. I quit my job in November last year because I didn't want to be Financial Aid Director and was planning on going to school in less than a year anyway. So I amicably resigned and studied hard for the GMAt and researched business schools. My question is: With a 720 and 8 yrs work experience, will I still be penalized heavily by the admissions department for quitting my job so early? I honestly don't think I could have had time to study because that position was getting so draining and taking a promotion would have gotten me into a career I didn't want to be in. I'm applying to Stanford, UCLA and USC. I'd be happy with any advice you can give me. Thanks so much. Shifty

My profile: Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Univ of Illinois- Urbana 8+ yrs work experience, 1+ year management Industries: Telecomm, Proprietary Schools Yeah, I'm applying for all last round of UCLA, USC, and Stanford. Debrief: Study materials: Princeton Review: Cracking the GMAT 2005 Princeton Review: Math Workout 2005 Kaplan - Verbal 2005 OG 9th Edition (friend gave it to me) OG 11th Edition (bought it in 2006) PowerPrep (2 tests) GMAT Prep (2 tests) Princeton Review online (1 free sample test) Study plan: 1) Went through Princeton Review Math and Verbal a) Started with Math first b) Did Verbal review 2nd 2) Took Princeton Review sample CAT test online. a) I think it's http://www.princetonreview.com 3) Studied Kaplan Verbal (since my verbal score was so low on practice test) 4) Started doing OG 9th edition 5) Took GMAT in December 2005 (scored 570, Q44 V 26) 6) Took a 2 week break to get myself together 7) Finished all of OG 9th edition questions (verbal and math) 8) Went through Kaplan verbal IN DETAIL 9) Systematically went through all Verbal and Math probs in OG 11th edition 10) took GMAT Prep 1, reviewed answers (score 740) 11) More OG questions 11) took GMAT Prep 2, reviewed answers (score 710) 12) More review 10) Took test March 11th (720) There's my sequence of events. Obviously I can't say it was the perfect study method but here's what I found that worked. 1) Finishing all the questions in the OG. No matter how well you think you know the material, practice, practice, practice until it becomes like 2nd nature to you. 2) Kaplan Verbal Book has an EXCELLENT section on commonly used GMAT idioms and a great section on grammar review where they define things like clauses and modifiers so that you can understand the terms used in the descriptions for GMAT SC answers in the OG. 3) Practice tests are invaluable. 4) This forum is great. As soon as you get a hard math problem or verbal question and have no idea how they came up with the answer, post it in the correct section of this forum and you should get a descriptive answer quick. There are some brilliant people out there who helped me a lot. If I think of anything else, I'll post it here. -Shifty

Hey Tam, Don't lose hope, man. I scored a 570 on my first GMAT and was crushed. Plus remember that you did AWESOME on math. I can't advise on whether you should apply for fall 2006 or fall 2007, but either way it's the median, which really is good, like -milinsky said. If you do take the GMAT again, know that you're just concentrating on verbal. some people have to retake the test and improve on both (like me) Q: Did you do ALL of the verbal questions from OG? -Shifty

USC last round is due April 1st.

Sorry guys, it's been a busy day for a Sunday. Will post more tomorrow. I am a native English speaker, by the way. Do I write poorly? :P First, thanks so much for all these kind words. I gotta get through my Stanford app in the next few days so it's back to work for me. SmallFish: I used the Kaplan Verbal Study Guide for Sentence Correction, RC and CR. The Kaplan guide has a pretty good appendix on the basics of GMAT grammar. It goes through clauses, and verb tenses as they pertain to the GMAT. Also, the Kaplan guide has a decent list of commonly used GMAT idioms. As a native speaker these idioms were familiar to me. But also as a native speaker I am exposed to a LOT of commonly misused idioms, and therefore had to study the list anyway to know which ones were utterly not allowed. :) The list helped me get to know the kind of idioms where there should NOT be any other way to write it. Like the use of "Estimated" If you were to ask me what goes after "estimated," I'd say "to be" and I'd be correct. But when on a SC question I saw a few "estimated to be" and "estimated at" I used to think those were interchangeable. I knew what sounded right, but I didn't know if it was an idiom or not until I studied it. I hope that makes some sense. I'll answer more of the past questions tomorrow. Later, Shifty

I think you should send the scores to the schools you are applying to. It's like 5 free priority envelopes to top schools. If you leave them all blank on test day, score a whopping 780 on the test you're going to be sorry because.... then you'll have a great score that you didn't get to send FREE to any school. On top of that, you have to take another step and go to MBA.com or wherever, PAY $25 per school and then wait a little longer for the school to receive you awesome score. I'm thinking positive here. My 2 cents... -Shifty

Congrats on the score! You should be a shoo in for UT Austin. :) :grad: Shifty

It depends, yeah? It's definitely good that you have a goal. But you also have to know where you're at. A good way is to take a fairly rudimentary practice exam on the computer. An ok one is the one offered by Princeton Review on their website. Try it and see what score you get, then analyze what kind of mistakes you made, and what you need to work on. Then you can truly decide how much practice you need, and thus, how long it will take for all of your hardwork to kick in and translate into a good score. Good luck, man. Shifty

Mav, I took the test! Read my post and let me know if you have any questions. :) Cheers, Shifty

All, :D I can't believe I'm finally done. Done as in no more GMAT studying. What a relief! :tup: I took my exam at a Pearson Vue site in CA. Luckily there was a site that was only 2 miles away. The rest were 24+ miles away. What a blessing. Anyway, the test was at 8am. I got there around 7:20 and saw that there were a lot of people in the lobby of the building already. They were all there to take the GMAT except one person, who was there to take a practice GMAT. Man, I saw people of ALL ages. A Pearson guy came out of the elevator and led us up to the building in groups and when we were up there, we were escorted to the actual office. They were very professional, very nice, and quite disarming. The room was also nice and cozy. When I was checked in, I went over to a room where a lady gave each of us a felt tip marker, and erasable boards. Here's the skinny on erasable boards. Think laminated paper. The felt tip pen writes easily but also smudges a little. Being a lefty, I smudge a lot and am used to it. Nothing to worry about here. To be honest, I didn't think I did awesome on the essays. I already got a 5.0 on my previous AWA in dec so I'm ok. When I finished the first one, I made sure I had time to double check it and found a lot of typo errors and missed "the"'s. I'm so glad I did the proofreading part. The second went over decently. I was blanking out a bit because I actually agreed with the issue for once and was shocked. :) If anyone is worried about the essays, here's a good plan. If you've got a few weeks till, the test, spend every Friday doing 2 sets of Issue essays, and 2 sets of arguments. Within a few weeks, you will truly memorize your template. Templates will be the key to you feeling confident about this section. Using the templates speeds up your essay writing and it can save you enough time to proofread which can really raise your score, IMO. I took about 5 mintues of break. Drank some water, went to the bathroom and was talking to myself in the mirror a lot. I needed all the positive reinforcement I could get. :P Onto the math. The first question was kinda easy. But it's all relative because I was doing really hard math problems for the last few days. It seriously gets hard around #16 or so. I thought I was doing horrible and started panicking. I must admit I did guess a few and tried to finish strong by giving myself enough time so I would guess the last three. I didn't feel too strongly about the performance I did overall. But then I've had this feeling during practice tests and still did alright. Thinking back, I resolved to finish as strong as I could regardless of setbacks and this was truly what strengthened my performance in the end. I took my second break. This time I did eat a little. (note about snacks: Bring little bags of salty and sweet snacks. you'll never know what you're in the mood for) Sat in the lobby for like 1 minute, closed my eyes and meditated a little. Then I checked back in. For whatever reason. Maybe because this was the home stretch, I went through the verbal really fast. I actually had 5 minutes left over. The reading passages were shorter than I was used to, which was GREAT. Don't know if I got lucky. All of the SC, CR, and RC were of the same caliber as in the OG. So for anyone that isn't using OG, GET ONE NOW. Maybe Ebay has some cheap ones. Anyway, I finished, and hoped for a good score. After all the informational stuff, my score popped up. Q 48 86% V 41 93% 720 96% My prayers were answered because this was my goal. Thank God. Thanks so much to this forum and all the particpants in here that helped explain some math problems that I was having difficulty with. Thanks Erin for making this forum one of the most educational, informative, and ethical boards out there. I sincerely appreciate your efforts. I know this was a long post and I have tons more to write. I know I didn't ace the test, but I am happy with what I got and would be happy to give any advice to those currently preparing. Now for the application essays... Good luck everybody!! -Shifty

Just wanted you to know. I'm taking the test TOMORROW! I'm a little nervous because I this is my second time taking it and I want to improve my score. Fear of failure is my biggest concern... .. and being able to function at 8am on a Saturday. Good luck on your exam, Maverick. Tuesday, right? -Shifty

1) Range = 7 = 8 (highest remainder) - 1 (lowest remainder) But set of remainders could be: 1,2,3,4,4,5,6,7,8 or 1,2,2,2,2,2,7,7,8 or any similar combo. INSUFF. 2) nine conescutive integers, see what Man_on_the_Moon wrote. Couldn't be more concise. :) Answer: B

The numbers x and y are NOT integers. The value of x is closest to which integer? 1) 4 is the integer closest to x+y 2) 1 is the intger closest to x-y Where do I even start? Substituting seems like a nightmare. -Shifty

I can't figure this out! please help anybody Problem: Is the measure of one of the interior angles of quadrilateral ABCD equal to 60 degrees? 1) 2 of the interior angles of ABCD are right angles. 2) The degrees measure of angle ABC is twice the degree measure of angle BCD.

Can anyone help me with this? Problem: Marta bought several pencils. If each pencil was either 23 cents or 21 cents each, how many 23 cent pencils did Marta buy? 1) Marta bought a total of 6 pencils. 2) The total value of the pencils Marta bought was 130 cents. _____________________________________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ answers: I got c but it's obviously wrong. My question is, how can you spot that there is only one combination that could possible add up to the total 130 cents?

Just took GMAT Prep test 2: This is the score that spit out: 740 q49/v42 Math: 25/37 verbal: 31/41 I still think the scores are too high. Anybody have an opinion on this? -Shifty

hey bollocks, I, too already took the GMAT and did poorly considering the prep time I did. I got a 570 44q/26v. 5.0 AWA. So I did average on math but TANKED my verbal, which truly shocked me considering i'm a native speaker. I did have a lot of jitters. Anyway, don't mean to share war stories, but the Official Guide has given me a lot more practice for both verbal and math. PLUS, look for posts by the admin, Erin. That guy knows how to explain stuff. I just read a fantastic post on grammar breakdown that I couldn't have found anywhere else. Good luck, man. -Shifty

Hey Deus, I did read your first essay and thought it was pretty good. I didn't spot any run-on sentences and am not sure about the topic sentence critique. However, I do remember the Princeton Review book advising that one should write an essay with short and long sentences to make it easier for the reader to read and to make the essay "flow" better. I personally thought the essay was well written (it's pretty good for 30 min) but maybe that's what they were talking about. Maybe they think you'd get a 5.5 or 6 if you varied your sentence structure. Good essay! PS. I took the GMAT in Dec 05 and got an official 5.0 on AWA. :P -Shifty

I get it now, thanks! That part that I forgot was Z being -1 for n even numbers.... arg... thanks again. Shifty