kuriang

Hi Sambazone Nice to see a different post ! Alchemy is a fantastic read ! Frankly telling you,the more I read about the theories of business school professors the more I think that they should be used as a contrarian signal ! With some rare exceptions, the academics are hopelessly out of touch with the marketplace. Remember what happened to LTCM ,where we had some Nobel prize winners ! Now, to see the latest professor to make a mockery of himself with his 'predictions'.....see this http://www.safehaven.com/showarticle.cfm?id=791 On the eve of a great bull market in 2003,using his theory of 'log-periodic components' this UCLA professor predicted a devastating bear market. :p The good news is that business schools themselves are aware of the limitations of the ivory tower theories.For ex Chicago has Prof Richard Thaler,a behavioral theory specialist, among its ranks to counterbalance the efficient market theorists.That said,the schools and the professors are not going to leave their old bad habits anytime soon,so the challenge is upon us to separate the wheat from the chaff,no matter what school you get into.

Hi pmane786 Look at the tennis stars,how do you think they improve their games ??? Ans:They practice with and learn from top notch players. Now, is that easy and a cake-walk ??? No. The same applies for GMAT. If you have trouble acing GMAT, you should painstakingly practice top quality materials. Now the best RC/CR material I know is the LSAT questions. Go thru that zealously and more importantly understand your mistakes. For SC, the easiest way is to learn the grammar.Not entire grammar,but atleast the areas usually covered by GMAT. Now the question is... 'How do I know whether I have enough expertise in the GMAT SC ?' Ans:When you can understand the [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip] grammatical explanations. There may be many ways to get a top notch verbal score in GMAT. But this is the only way I know....and I can attest, it works !

Hi Tobe The answer is (2/3*2/3*2/3*1/3*1/3)*5C3 = 80/243.

Hi RajKhurana Most people have got an assumption that to score well in SC they only need to finish [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip] 2-3 times.I used to believe that till I got burned the first time I took GMAT. As Benjamin Frankin says, The things that hurt instruct . Believe me, to crack SC you need to have strong grammar foundation atleast in the areas usually covered by GMAT. My major mistake in preparing first time, was to rely too much on instinct and practising hundreds of questions without bothering to find the grammatical underpinnings of the correct answers. ETS can eat you for lunch with their tricky questions,if you solely rely on your instincts. For ex if you are not strong on relative clauses ETS can easily fool you with questions such as these... She is one of the few women who have/hasclimbed Mount Everest. Which one is correct ?? have/has. You will know the answer if you have the understanding of how relative clauses work. These are the sort of subtleties which could bring you top points.So in short, what really matters is not how many times you do the [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip], but how well you understand the [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip] answers.

Hi thaiva I am still researching the schools. I am looking for stong finance schools that could launch my asset management career. I am not very keen to apply to the schools which are the hotbeds of 'efficient market theory, or which are fanatics of 'Modern portfolio theory'.My problem is that many top schools such as Chicago are proponents of these theories.For ex prof Eugene Fama,who coined the term 'efficient market',still teaches finance classes at Chicago and so are some other Nobel prize winners who are strong proponents of these theories.Similar is the case with Wharton,where the finance professor Jeremy siegel,the author of 'stocks for the long run',teaches the virtues of 'buy and hold' method of investing,a method which has spectacularly failed since the Nasdaq bubble popped in 2000. I have fundamental disagreements with these arguments and so don't want to learn all these 'ivory tower theories' and then unlearn all these in the marketplace. I am more likely to study with a school that teaches about exploiting the inefficiencies in the market place.A likely school could be Yale,where the prof Robert shiller, the author of 'irrational exuberance' teaches about the importance of valuations and about the irrational behaviour in the marketplace. That said, I have no background in Finance.I am an Indian software Engineer with around 6yrs experience and with work experience in India,UK and US.But so are hundreds of 'Desi Developers'. So it may take a while and some more success in the market place to convince the Bschools that I am a strong candidate ! So my search continues !

Hi hellogmat You are absolutely right with the probability question ! No wonder you got 50 in Maths !!:) I agree that this question is a bit tough to appear on an actual GMAT. But solving these sort of questions develop the lateral thinking capacity,which is crucial to crack the 50 level in Maths.

Hello everyone I am pleased to report my GMAT score (Quant:49 Verbal:40 Total:720). I had taken the exam earlier on 4th September 2003 (660 Quant:46 Verbal:34). So to all the TestMagicians who are upset with their scores,here is my message...'This test is beatable'. My GMAT experience: The essays were quite easy.I used a template for both the essays.I think that helped me to structure my thoughts quite soon. Maths section started with an easy question, a comparison of fractions. Then the next question was a Geometry one,relating to the sum of exterior angles of a triangle. Next one was about the intersecting points of a circle with a straight line.I had no problems with these questions.Then the questions started to get a bit tough, I got some tough standard deviation and number property datasufficiency questions.I think I got the first 10 questions right.Then the questions started to get progressively difficult. For ex I got some maths number property questions where answer choices were like a) I b) I and II c)II and III d)I,II and III etc These sort of questions consumed a lot of my time.As a result I had to do the math faster than I wanted.I had prepared my mental clock to give 2 mins per question,but these ETS questions were taking more than 3 mins and there were no easy sitters coming to make up for lost time ! I started to make up for lost time by resorting to short cuts. For ex there was a combination question ...it goes something like this There are 7 people in room.Two of them won't go together. How may ways to select a committe of 3 ?? With no restrictions we can select 3 people from 7 in 7C3 ie 35 ways. There was only one answer less than 35,so I picked up that(30)without resorting to the calculations.But there are only so many tactics you can use against the relentless ETS barrage.:) I think ETS finally catches your level by giving you tough questions one after the other like bullets and by making you run against the clock.So be prepared for tough questions in a row,if you are aiming for 700+ level. By the time verbal started,I was almost dizzy. Those tough math questions took a lot of my mental energy ! Sentence correction and Critical reasoning were fairly easy.If you can comfortably solve most of the SC and CR questions in this forum, you will take the ETS attack comfortably. Boy! what suprised me in verbal was the Comprehension questions.The passages were really condensed and I was having trouble focussing ! I think the passages were of the LSAT level,and strongly advise fellow TestMagicians to be overprepared for reading comprehension. Finally with all the courage I could muster, I voted yes for the score...I was quite pleased with the score :) ! I wish to thank all my fellow magicians who helped me achieve this score. Special thanks to Sujayath,BreezeThruGMAT,Hippo,Rajesh Talwani and HelloGMAT for the engaging questions and discussions we had. Finally TONS of thanks to 'Da BOSS' of TestMagic. Erin,you have made this site Sine Qua Non for the GMAT aspirants. I strongly feel that you should write a GMAT SC book for students aiming at 700+.We definitely need more questions like the famous 'Rail Road Parallel Construction question'. How to Prepare for 700+ I think I have gone through almost all the guides in the market. I recommend following resources; Official guide is the best resource for verbal and Maths(last 200 questions or so). For additional practice I recommend the following guides ... For Maths: Kaplan book. For RC/CR: 10 more actual LSAT tests For SC: Practical English Usage by Michael Swan. Kaplan 800 If you have money and time to spend try the Kaplan Online course. It is good for Maths and DataSufficiency practice. But the online Kaplan Math tests are way too easy for the GMAT. If you are aiming for 700+,Kaplan SC is not difficult enough to challenge you.Kaplan CR is good,but I would like more Bold face questions (I saw only two Bold face questions in the kaplan's course).But overall you can find lot of questions to practice on and hence my recommendation. To get a top score in maths you need to think creatively. For ex You might be able to answer this straightforward probability question; 'A die numbered one through six is rolled 5 times. What is the probability that on exactly 3 rolls the number of dots showing is no greater than 4 ?' But how about this question ?? A player rolls a die and receives the same number of dollars as the number of dots on the face that turns up. What should the player pay for each roll if he wants to make a profit of one dollar per throw of the die in the long term ?? If you can solve such strategic thinking questions within 2 minutes of time, you are well on the way to score 50 or above in maths. For verbal, you need to have thorough understanding of Relative clauses,Parallel constructions,reduced relative clauses,instances where subject needs to agree with object of the prepositional phrases etc. For ex you know relative clauses well if you can judge whether this sentence is correct . 'Sales of US goods to developing countries rose to $160billion in 1992, which is 14 percent more than the previous year and largely offsets weak demand from Europe and Japan'. Do read the explanations of the [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip] well.Remember if you can understand [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip] grammatical jargon, you are well on course ! Finally, don't give up. Self pity is the most useless emotion in this world. It makes you thoroughly useless to yourself and others. We have only one life to dream.So never stop building your dreams with sweat and blood. Let the Lady Luck smile on Magicians. :)

Hi DaffyDuck/Pavel Unfortunately,the author hasn't given the complete solution,just the key. ans is given as E.

'to be' in C changes meaning. 'leaving the highest denomination of currency to be the one-hundred dollar bill' Here 'to be' can mean 'to become'. 'leaving the highest denomination of currency to become the one-hundred dollar bill'

Hi Sujayath/Manish Doesn't 'itself' in option D refer to 'mass' as mass is the subject in that construction.

Hi gmatfordays I think the question should have been 'What are the values of 3 positive integers x,y and z ?'. This is an IIM-CAT question,reproduced from memory.

oops what I really meant was 1) A 2) B 3) B

My pick 1) A 2) C 3) B

My choice D. Author's support for claim: 80% of the severely injured were not wearing seat belts at the time of accident. Argument:by wearing seat belts, drivers and front-seat passengers can greatly reduce their risk of being severely injured . If more than half of the drivers and front-seat passengers in the survey do not normally wear seat belts at the time of their accidents,there is a chance that wearing seat belts can greatly reduce their risk of severe injury.

Hi Sujayath A progression need not continue till infinity. The minimum number of terms required for a progression is 3. ie 3,2,1 is an arithmetic progression with a common difference of -1. as Third term - 2nd term = 2nd term - first term. In our case,if we have a decreasing sequence of 3 numbers we will get negative integers(2nd term onwards).