jjaacc

Ok...so I"m planning to retake in Sept. I've not visited this site for 2 months, as I've been busy with work. Has anything changed much on the GMat? Any new insights, especially on how to conquer the verbal? Cheers.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, D_C. I am going to focus on my essays now, and if I do have spare time, then retake the GMAT. I guess I just want to be as good as possible in all areas of my application. Good luck on your applications!

Ok updated the gmail account with RC1000, SC1000 & CR1000

Anyone know anything about http://www.stacyblackman.com and http://www.mbaexchange.com

Ok login to gmail: id: tmforumster@gmail.com password: tmforumster123 I've uploaded the following: 1) my own math notes 2) CR notes from others 3) SC notes from others 4) RC notes from others 5) various tests... Ok will upload more the next few days. Please leave a msg on this forum if you've downloaded them and found them useful. I'm just curious as to who reads this. Cheers.

Earplugs - provided by the test centre. Frankly they didn't block out all the noise and were kinda useless for me coz my test centre was so quiet anyway. Sorry - I've been trying to upload my files, but it keeps giving me the error msg that my filesize is too big. And I've already zipped it. so.... I'd still be happy to answer questions tho. Or if someone can find some free online server thing I can upload everything to.....

AWA template as attached. Erm...does anyone want my collection of notes? My score doesn't do them justice. But given that my main piece of advice was DON"T GO AROUND HUNTING FOR MATERIALS NONSTOP, I guess I should provide a one-stop kickass depository of materials.

Oh...a little late in posting but I only just checked - and I got a 6 for AWA I have to admit I'm surprised - I didn't even finish the Issue essay and I thought my examples for the Issue one was crap. For the Argument essay, I didn't think I made solid arguments mainly because the reasons why the question stem was wrong were repetitive in nature. Anyway I hope this 6 proves that my verbal really isn't_that_bad!!!!! I don't have much advice for the AWA part because I only practiced 4 times and read the papers often and never had trouble with writing. And I type fast. I memorised a template for the sake of having beautiful opening and concluding paragraphs. The other thing I did was memorise 6 types of common argument errors just to make sure I covered everything possible. I think one important point I picked up from reading others' debriefs is to write as much as possible. I did like 7-8 paragraphs, about 4 lines each paragraph for each essay.

Thanks all the encouragement and advice. I do realise 710 is average....but the competitive streak in me can't take not having a solid score :p I'm still thinking about whether to retake or not, and frankly am surprised that most people are telling me not to, and to concentrate on essays instead. Are essays really that tough????

I found Gmat SC more difficult than Gmatprep SC actually. GMatprep SC is slightly similar to that on TM forums. I don't know if practice 1 is easier to practice 2. If so....I'm weird. For practice 1 I scored v41. fOR 2, I did v46.... I suggest not focussing so much on scores, but on practicing more questions!

Kellogg - disinterested students, career admissions staff that refused to talk to me and told me to buzz off and the general feeling that everyone tehre was being so academic focussed. Wharton - one extremely chauvinist male student host who didn't treated me badly, the only female amongst a group of male prospective applicants....disinterested students (during class visit), realisation that the student hosts doing the info sessions and lunches were all from non-traditional sectors. started wondering how the traditional sector people were helping out then.

Do you mind explaining to me why I should not focus on Gmat now? Just trying to understand your POV further, as I have been getting extremely mixed advice on whether I should retake or not. I visited all these schools last Nov, and had bad experiences at Kellogg and Wharton. Trust me, I was surprised. Before I checked out the schools Kellogg was my first choice based on their website and what I had been reading about the school.

http://www.wobestellen.de/skat/6000-8372.htm Check out the adidas sweaters. Thats what I wore.

Yeah there was. I saw one which was posted on the TM- PS forum!

Q1) Insead (assuming fulltime MBA) Q2) Depends on what jobs you're looking for, and definition of success.

Advice needed Ok I know the purpose of the debrief is for me to give you guys advice on the test, but erm I also have a question for everyone who reads this: Which set of materials do you think would best prepare you for Verbal now, now that we've established that Verbal now is kinda different from previously? I'm asking this because I did - TM forum, OG 11th ed, Kaplan minitests on CD, about 3 lsat tests......and I still could not conquer verbal. So part of my decision as to whether I will retake or not will be based on whether I did actually adequately prepare myself for verbal. Cheers.

Guys, I forgot another thing... I was not allowed to wear my sweater in the testing room. The proctors said the temperature is cosy anyway and I wouldn't freeze. Erm so dress warmly enough!

I felt that the SCs were more difficult than the ones in the OG 11th ed. OG11th ed was similar to the ones I did in the forum (the more recent ones) Main concepts in SC? Mmmm definitely meaning of the sentence. Like how if you switch two words in the sentence around, how does it change the meaining. For a supposed native English speaking person.....man I was stumped! And then there were what I call "distracting questions" where they put many tiny phrases with commas in between so that you have to figure out which is the referent noun. Parallelism - I saw what Erin calls the complex kind...no simple ones at all. I still don't know the proper grammar rules (ok explains my score I guess) so there were some which to me were unclassifyable. Quants - look out for number properties. Loads of those. The quants in TM forum are on par/more difficult that the difficult questions I got in the GMAT, if that helps. Thanks Shud....I'm trying to decide between sufficient and a competitive score....given that I think application essays are not out yet, I might give it one more shot, I don't know. Yes to 10 min breaks each interval. Under ETS was 5 minute breaks. The silly thing is that once you're back at your desk you have to begin the next section immediately. So to max out my 10 minutes I'd look at the clock as I was signing out (fingerprinting)...drink water, head to the washroom, come back, pace around till like 2 minutes before...do the fingerprinting thing again, and start the test.

Post-exam analysis There are a list of things I wish I had done differently, and here they are: - Found this forum earlier and started looking at people's materials and doing the questions earlier. - Focussed less on getting material for notes. I was reading many debriefings and downloading all the notes I could find. On hindsight, I should have put an earlier cap to that, as doing the questions would get me all that I needed to know too. - Not panicked so much during the exam. - Had better time management during the exam. - Spent more time doing the starred SCs. - Found a study buddy, at least someone to ***** about this painful process with :P - Do the Kaplan CATS just to practice time management and sitting down for 4 hours I realised that my bad time management during the test was because I was checking my answers instead of pressing yes, confirm once I had solved the question. When I was doing the gmatprep tests I never bothered checking my answers.

The few days leading up to the exam Its been really tough going so far as I am project managing a USD100k strategy project right now (I know thats not huge but project managing really isn't easy) and my final deliverable is due on Thursday *gulp*. So far doing all that I posted previously alongside with work has been making me really tired. I cut back on my social life quite a lot, the only thing I can cut back on really. I was unable to take leave leading up to this exam due to work...by Friday last week I was just dead fed up. Did my ETS that night btw. Saturday - tried to read some essays for AWA. I had my template down pat - a combination of various people's templates and what I felt worked for me. Memorized it, didn't worry about reproducing it accurately because words are interchangeable. Also read through all my notes, which took about 3 - 4 hours. Started looking at the SCs whihc are ranked 5 stars. Night time - enough was enough - did a nice dinner, went out clubbing. Sunday - woke up late, met a friend for lunch, watched X-Men. By the time I got to work on GMATs it was the evening . I really needed this break though, staying at home would only have been unproductive. I did some workwork. And then looked at more starred SCs and some PS/DS on TM. Monday - panic time :P Looked at more starred SCs and PS/DS. Read through some of my notes in the evening. Tuesday morning - flipped through my notes quickly, practiced my AWA template and then zoned out. I know the general consensus here is that you shouldn't do anything the day before the exam, or on the exam day itself. But that just doesn't work for me. As you can see, I partied hard when I had to (ie when I was deadfedup and knew I would be unproductive)...and then worked when I had to (like on Monday). I walked and took the subway to the test centre on purpose, giving myself time to clear my head and dream...was quite effective really. Ok maybe too effective. I went into the test centre thinking that my mind is not clear, its a blank. But I know that the subconcious 'remembers' things so somwehre in my mind all those formulas still existed. The exam Filled in the schools I wanted, everything else was filled up already I think, because I had done the registration online. AWAs were fine...I had only practiced 4 times before the exam, but felt confident enough...since I'm generally good at writing essays. Ran slightly out of time for the Issue one though...didn't finish my last paragraph. I don't like the issue essays very much. 10 minute break - drank water, went to the washroom, stretched a bit. Went back with 2+ minutes to spare. Had to start next section immediately. Quant - started out BAD. First question was super easy but I couldn't solve it. TOok 5 minutes. Realised its because of the markers and transparency sheets. My cube looked like a 5th power, and that messed things up. Sidenote: I hate the grid sheets and the markers! My hands are blackish now...and trying to do math workings on top of fine grid sheets is a PAIN. Looks terribly messy. Difficult to see my own workings. I thought I flunked quant actually. I did that last 6 questions in 6 minutes. The questions were NOT tough at all, just tricky. Only one combination question and extremely easy. Lots of co-ord geom questions. Oh also in my nervousness, I wrote the data sufficiency directions wrongly. The - if I is correct remove B,C,E etc....thankfully I checked before I started the quant section properly. 10 min break- did the same with first break. went back with 3+ minutes to spare. Had to start next section immediately. Verbal - erm you see my verbal score. The SCs were very tough. I either narrowed the choices down to 2 and couldn't decide, or thought all 5 were wrong. A few SCs were ok, but really just a few. Had one boldfaced CR that was easy. RCs, which I usually get all right were okish. Except for one which seemed to be a RC-CR combined; that was a pain. CRs were mixed. I admit halfway through verbal, when I realised that I was 5 minutes behind schedule, I thought of giving up. The fact that I thought I had flunked the quant before that didn't help too. But USD250 is frickin a lot of money for me....so decided to persevere. Also decided to go on because of all the debriefings that said LOOK AT YOUR SCORE EVEN THOUGH YOU THINK YOU"VE FLUNKED. I had about one minute per question for the last few questions, and chose the right answer for the last SC but didn't get to press confirm (damn). Went through pages of stuff to fill, but it all been filled up already coz I did my registration online. When it got to the page that said show scores or cancel scores I pressed next without even reading the page, and got prompted to pick a choice. Picked it, held my breath...and there it was, the score.

Thank you all for your kind words. I still feel like crying...and I can't believe you guys want to know how i prepared given this score. I'm not sure how much this will help....but here goes: Whole gmat thing started off for me last year, sometime in July/August maybe, when I took the ETS test without knowing what GMAT is, what they test etc. Scored 590. Spent hell lot of time trying to figure out the data sufficiency instructions. August, September, October - too busy with work to do anything. November - went backpacking in the US to check out schools. (Ok this doens't have anything to do with GMAT, but let me strongly emphasize that if you can do this, DO IT. My first choice schools from lookign at webpages and talking to people changed so drastically after I visited the schools and sat in classes) Dec/Jan - started doing OG 11th ed and Kaplan 2005 (handmedown books). Took the Kaplan test in the book, scored 680 (not accurate coz verbal answers were written in by previous owner and kinda difficult to block them out when you're doing the test) Feb/Mar - totally stopped Gmat. no time at all, too busy at work (i'm in consulting). Problem with this I realised is that once you stop, you forget all this GMAT stuff. I had to start from scratch again, doing the OG all over again. End Mar - found TM, Gmatclub, Scoretop whilst surfing randomly online. Did not know such forums existed. Started reading debriefings....felt ambitious and wanted to do questions on both gmatclub and TM but there were way too many and I was busy with work. Decided to stick to just TM. Chose TM because forum interface is much easier to use than other forums. Also I love the "star-ing the thread" thing, because I can easily check back for replies to questions I was having problems with. I couldn't find study buddies in where I live...and not really online too. But people who posted regularly became sorta buddies. I think they helped me more than I helped them though, especially Manish and Gmathelp. Their step-by-step math explanations, and patience with my stupid questions is amazing. Apr - looked at Kaplan 800. Not too bad for math, but sucky for verbal (as I think commented by the gazillion others on this forum). Did the small tests on the gmat 2003 cd, but did not do the CATs. Also downloaded a LOT of material from the debriefings and started assembling my notes. I tried to do the SCs and CRs on this forum too. I was more confident of my math and thus did not look at it so much. My main problem was the SC...this one really drives me insane and I think I'm supposed to be a native English speaker. May - took the Gmatprep tests, scores as reported above and the ETS tests. In between I did more SC and CR on the forum (it was getting lots of fun actually) and attempted the PS & DS. I was also did 3 lsat CR tests and 1 lsat RC test. And then I took my exam today. Ok I'm goign to break the posts up coz this is getting tiring. Next posts will be on - what i think i did good in my prep and what wasn't so good - the few days leading up to the exam - the exam itself

Erm I live in Singapore and don't think much of the MBA. Frankly you don't need an MBA to get a job in Singapore.

Hey guys, I know countless of people have asked this question, and I never thought I would have to as well - but should I retake my GMAT, based on the schools I wish to apply for? Score was 710 (94%) - with breakdown Q49 (90%) V36 (81%). Verbal was a huge shock to me as I'd been scoring 41-44 on the Gmatprep and ETS software. The schools I'm applying to are Harvard, Stanford, Chicago GSB, Columbia, Duke - Fuqua & Tuck. The two that I really really want based on my school visits are Stanford GSB and Chicago GSB. I know schools don't look solely at gmat scores, but I was aiming for a competitive score and right now, I just don't know if its good enough. Some background history, if it helps: Work - 1 year Goldman S&T; 2 years Deloitte Consulting (strategy, financial services industry, promoted after a year in consulting) School - in Singapore, GPA 3.4, 2nd Upper Honours in Economics. Demographic: Singaporean Chinese Female Post-MBA plans: strategy consulting in US. I'm still trying to figure out if I need to take TOEFL. I understand non-native English speakers need to take it, but the definition of a non-native English speaker gets a little fuzzy at times. Thank you in advance for your advice.

Hi David, Thanks for helping out at this forum. I just took my GMAT, and would appreciate some advice on whether I should be looking to retake it based on the schools I'm applying to. Score was 710 (94%) - with breakdown Q49 (90%) V36 (81%). Verbal was a huge shock to me as I'd been scoring 41-44 on the Gmatprep and ETS software. The schools I'm applying to are Harvard, Stanford, Chicago GSB, Columbia, Duke - Fuqua & Tuck. The two that I really really want based on my school visits are Stanford GSB and Chicago GSB. I know schools don't look solely at gmat scores, but I was aiming for a competitive score and right now, I just don't know if its good enough. Some background history, if it helps: Work - 1 year Goldman S&T; 2 years Deloitte Consulting (promoted after a year in consulting) School - in Singapore, GPA 3.4, 2nd Upper Honours in Economics. Demographic: Singaporean Chinese Female Post-MBA plans: strategy consulting in US. I'm still trying to figure out if I need to take TOEFL. I understand non-native English speakers need to take it, but the definition of a non-native English speaker gets a little fuzzy at times. Thank you in advance for your advice.

Score's above. I don't know what to say for this debrief. Saw the score and felt like crying. Still, many thanks to Manish & Gmathelp on the quant, and 800Bob, Erin, Gsch, Shud etc on verbal. You guys have been a great help in explaining things to me. Gmatprep /ETS scores were the following: Gmatprep 1: 710 Gmatprep 2: 770 ETS 1: 720 Never scored so low in verbal before. My verbal score tended to hover between 41-44. And I think I managed to answer some (most?) of the questions I attempted in this forum decently. I really need advice now guys....please....should I retake? I know bungholic posted the link to Manhattan GMAT that stated that you shouldn't retake if you're above 700. But this score is kinda disgusting....and for the schools I'm applying to I'm not sure it'll work. Don't laugh. The schools I'm applying to are Harvard, Stanford, Chicago GSB, Columbia and Duke. The two that I really want are Stanford and Chicago GSB. Would really appreciate advice and feedback on this. Thanks.