openeye

anyone :D

well you dont seem to have (or mention) extra curriculum activities. without those, i would doubt you will have much chances of getting into any of the top schools... as for the rounds: if you are ready for the first round, meaning no rush towards the deadline with essays, etc. take the first. the earlier the better. also try to submit it BEFORE the deadline. this should give you not only an earlier decision date, but also make sure you actually can submit it (i.e. IT problems, etc.) btw. how did you manage to improve your score that much? any suggestions for me?

there should also be a thread with more detailed explanations here somewhere

oh yea one last thing tho. make sure you are prepared for the multiple choice questions. thats what counts the most and the awa is only there as a small bonus if top, or to drag you down a bit if very low. so unless you are totally prepared for the test i wouldnt spend the next two weeks on writing essays ;) also make sure you can write essays including making an outline within 25 minutes (5 to allow reading over it etc.) thats certainly the hardest part

well just make sure that your intro doesnt provide any arguments up front. its supposed to introduce your essay ;) also, a good advice i got from other prep sites is to write the intro and conclusion at last. that prevents the ugly mess of having to reword the intro/conclusion because of new ideas popping into your mind. well im actually already done with my essays for now so i wont be writing any for a while. though i wish you good luck with yours! as for mine, i got a 5.5 by sticking to a quite simple pattern with transitions and i think about 3-4 body paragraphs (therefore ideas) + intro & conclusion. my paragraphs were usually about 3-4 sentences long, one as an intro to the paragraph (opening statement), supporting ideas (i.e. examples) and closing sentence and transition to the next paragraph. When I used counter arguments, I always put them in the middle to not to leave a counter argument as last. hope that helps.

Thats why McGill is so interesting for me. They have a dual approach and teach both common and (french) civil law. you therefore also get a dual degree in law, a llb and bcl (bachelor of civil law). as for the work xp, at least mcgill has actually lifted their work xp requirements for joint degree applicants, probably because it is a different group of people they are targeting and people probably dont feel like going to law school after some full time work xp. also, unfortunately law school here in europe doesnt seem to be an potion for the most part since they are usually primary degrees and also take like 5-6 years at least. i will surely have a chat with the admission office whether the 650 mentioned is actually a cut off point or just the average. if it is the latter maybe i still have chances of getting in. thanks a lot for your feedback!

hey, is there any ranking of the difficulty of questions? i.e. algebra is generally considered easier as probability, statistics, etc.?

hey, first id like to give you a link which i found quite useful for my awas. GMAT CAT Essays - Answers to the Real Essay Questions i think it gives a pretty good idea of what to look for and so on. as for your essay, i find your introduction a bit too long and that it consists of too many points and information. also try to avoid run on sentences (i tend to do that as well once in a while). i see a very long one in your intro and i am sure you can put that into two better looking ones if it is really necessary. another thing is to avoid using the same language / words. i think you use equipped about 5 times or so in your essay. this certainly will be raising a red flag about your vocabulary, especially for the computer. as for your transitions, they seem ok though i would try to use a bit more creative ones. especially for the middle paragraphs i dont think its necessary to use secondly, etc. there are much nicer words such as in addition, furthermore, etc. just look for some transitional words on the internet. (but i dont think its that important, just my personal opinion) try to keep a clear structure. within your paragraphs, make sure your opening and ending makes sense. as for this, read the two essays on the website. lastly, i wouldnt put a counter argument in your conclusion. if you would like to use this in your essay, which i certainly would to prove that you understand possible flaws or counter arguments to your own opinion, do so in the middle. i know that i pointed out more the things that i dont like and didnt pay much or any respect to what is good. your essay really isnt bad, but i found it more important to point out things i dont like rather than the ones i like :) hope this helps

yea. its like if you pick cards or anything from a certain set to give you a more familiar problem. the probability of picking X out of set S with n cards/entries whatever is 1/n therefore, if you would like to pick a second time, the total number of cards is n-1 as you already took one. to come back to this problem, you have two cases. you pick josh first, then jose or you pick jose first, then josh for both cases, the odds are 1/6 for the first pick and 1/(6-1) for the second one. as the total probability is the sum of those cases, it is 2 * ( 1/6 * 1/(6-1) ) therefore 2* (1/30) = 2/30 = 1/15

just look at the 80% / average scores published. There is no real score. and from what you say, 20-50 schools will vary a lot in their scores since if you go down the lost from 1 to 50, you will see not a small decline in the scores..

Well gmat and lsat are not that much apart and from what i have recently noticed i find the gmat reading passages actually more demanding than the lsat ones. i found that its a different style of writing and questions and you dont have the SC for which ppl prolly prepare most on the gmat.

Well as I just started recently as well, it seems to be really a lot of practice. Especially fast and at the same time critical reading. If you get used to reading fast and still getting the details, that helps a lot. Also, for logic games practice, practice, practice. From what I have gotten from the previous practice tests is that its a very similar pattern. So its really about making the connections quickly between your conditions.

honestly, from what i have heard it is quite difficult or impossible to do that. the reason is simply because most of the ppl who study in london are sent there by their companies as its just too expensive to afford it yourself. Also, LSB offers loans with banks and such, but financial aid is not really a possibility from what i have heard, sorry. after all london is not one of the most expensive cities in the world, but the UK also a country which is very high up there in general..

or just look at the scoring table of the gmat paper tests. they should give you an accurate estimation of what your score is like. you simply have to compare your scaled scores to raw scores and then see what improvement of the raw score you need to get up the latter

one question: i did the verbal and quant separately. is there any difference to the official guide, which is one book?

you cant find a numerical value as you are missing one equation since you are dealing with 3 variables. so you can only get a proportional solution by multiplying whatever you have for c * whatever you have for d

Two different groups of test-takers received scores on the GXYZ standardized test. Group A's scores had a normal distribution with a mean of 460 and a standard deviation of 20. Group B's scores had a normal distribution with a mean of 520 and a standard deviation of 40. If each group has the same number of test-takers, what fraction of the test-takers who scored below 440 belonged to Group B? A. 1/9 B.1/8 C.1/6 D. 4/17 E. 4/21 ok im gonna try to go thru it a bit more detailed: the says that the scores are based on normal distribution. for those who don't know what that is, i would actually highly recommend you do some background reading as it will likely be a part of the upper math questions. to keep it simple, it is essentially a belly curve where you have most results in the middle (towards the average, so called "mean") and fewer the more you go away. as for the standard deviation, this is also an equation you might want to do some background reading on for upper math questions. in this question you simply have to know how the standard deviations affect the normal distribution. by definition, within the range of one standard deviation (hence z=1) you will find 68% of the results, or you will NOT find 32% of the results. This is essentially the first part. As we deal with a belly curve and it has two sides, we have to divide this by two because we are only interested in the lower side, we know that as for A, 16% of its results will be found below 440 (460 - 1x20). Now turning to B. We essentially have to get to the same number again, 440. For this, however, we need to get away more than one standard deviation from the mean. In fact, it is two standard deviations (z=2). As for this, by definition, app. 95% of the results will be found within this range, or 5% will NOT be found. Therefore, the same deal again, since it is only one side of the curve, it is 2.5% of all results of B which are below 440. Now you only have to take the fraction of 2.5 to the total number of test takers below 440 which is 16+2.5. Hence, 2.5/(16+2.5) = = 0.135 which is closer to 1/8 (0.125) than 1/6 (0.167) hope this helps. openeye //edit what is referred to as "68-95-99 rule" is simply that for 1,2 or 3 standard deviations from the mean, 68,95 or 99% respectively, will be found within this range. but again, do some background reading as you will probably find some questions about means and standard deviations.

Hey guys, I just got my AWA score: 5.5 seems quite alright to me though I am wondering how to analyze what I could do better if I repeat the test (overall 640) and if its actually worth it to spend time on preparing more on this section. Also, do you think that it might be a good strategy not to get your brain burning in the awa section to prevent running out of energy in the later sections?(after all you cant eat and stuff and 4.5h is a ****ing long time)

Alright, thanks for your feedback. Despite your opinion on joint programs, do happen to know any ranking for those? Also, I'll probably wait until I get my LSAT done and then start studying again for the GMAT. Is there any study method in particular, besides the great tutorials offered here, you would recommend? So far I have been mainly practicing with the official guides for quantitative and verbal and just got my AWA score of 5.5 yesterday (very fast after all, took them less than 3 days to correct it). So I guess what I am especially looking for is to improve my Quant with hard questions and more importantly the verbal sentence correction one. Thanks again for your help! I'll certainly stick with u guys here for the future! openeye

Hey Gmatbong, thanks for your quick response. The one thing I dont know is if schools in NA consider the applicants background as well, i.e. what might have influenced a certain score, whether they look at the age distribution at all or even have specific groups of applicants other applicants are compared to based on citizenship, race, age etc. Would you be able to give me a list of some joint programs which are worth going to? So far I have recognized the names Harvard, Stanford and Yale among the ones I found. Thanks again! openeye

Hey guys, I just got my result from the gmat today and I dont think there is need to say that I am quite disappointed. I actually expected to get close to the 700 but simply ****ed up on the test, especially on the verbal section. Result: 640(78%); Q46(78%); V32(65%) Now besides of course the consideration to retake the test to improve my score, there are a few other things on my mind. I just looked at the statistics of the previous 6 years and saw that only a very small fraction of the test takers was under 20, in fact only about 100 people per year or less than 0.1%. When I compare myself to this age group, i suddenly reach the 95th percentile of the 2001-2006 mean, and the 99.9th percentile for 2001-2005 (z score of about 8.5). What I am not sure if top us schools and also canadian ones might consider this uncommon situation of being one of about 100 test takers a year who are below 20 years of age, and achieving a very good score for that group. As I am actually European, I do have very good back up schools here in Europe, who actually offer guaranteed admission with scores above 600. My goal/dream is however, to do a pursue a joint Law/MBA in the US or Canada. As for this, I am considering specifically McGill in Canada. Unfortunately they seem to have a hard cut off point at 650. So to come to the basic question, do you guys think there is any chance with this score to get into any decent joint MBA/Law program in the US or Canada? Thanks a lot for your help! If I had found the forum before taking the test I am sure it would have helped me quite a lot :) openeye