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P.S. - Hey, Kee, congrats on the acceptance at UWO! I'll keep my fingers crossed for you for UofT.

Regarding the decline in CIS: There's a lot of truth to it. Departments all over the country are consolidating, renaming, dropping, etc. Overall, IS has dropped tremendously in prestige since the tech bubble burst. Check out this study from the AACSB (http://www.aacsb.edu/knowledgeservices/Home/SSExecSummary_05-06.pdf), especially Table 3, where you'll see a huge decline in IS hires since 2000, but also Table 5 (salaries for new doctorates). In short, if you're interested in academia, do something different in a B-School like strategy, marketing, finance, or accounting. Any B-School discipline will give you a much better chance of getting a good job in academia. Even HR and OB--the hardest B-School fields to find jobs in and the least paying--are considerably better than anything in the social sciences, including economics and computer science. There is some really cool action going on in "I-Schools" (Schools of Informatics/Information), but the job market there is still not as good as in B-Schools. In short, if you're really interested in both computers and a well regarded academic position, you're probably better served doing a PhD in marketing, accounting, finance, or strategy--and then doing your research on topics that lie at the intersection of IS and strategy/finance/marketing/marketing. Such research would likely be more readily accepted in strategy and marketing, but depending on the specifics should be fine in accounting and finance as well.

Hey Kee, Best of luck on the UofT application. It is a great school, and its B-School placements are getting better and better. Schools of that calibre are only interested in accepting PhD applicants who will help build their legacy--namely, by getting tenure-track positions at top-tier research institutions (Harvard, Cornell, Chicago, etc.). So, to the extent that you can convince them of your passion and ability to conduct world-class research, the better your odds of getting accepted. More teaching-oriented scholars, on the other hand, would be more welcome at places like Laurier. As for me, I'm actually waiting until next year to apply. I'm trying to decide between Strategy, where the job market is good, and Accounting, where the market is exceptional (at least from the academic job market perspective). I know I have strong interests in Strategy already, so this year I will be taking several courses to see if I would enjoy being an Accounting professor as well. Good luck in the applications!

Hey Kee, Congratulations! That's an excellent score! Given that showing, I would definitely NOT go to Laurier or McMaster. Where you get the PhD is hugely important if you want to be an academic (if not, ignore this advice), and a UofT or Western PhD (especially UofT) will take you a lot further than the other two. A Laurier PhD in OB or HR would effectively relegate you to the ranks of low-paid and overworked teaching colleges, while a UofT PhD would give you access to the upper ranks of academia--and assure you more than one job offer when you graduate. In effect, with your GMAT score, you'd be better than average at any of those schools, but you'd be selling yourself short if you go to the easier, lesser-know schools.

It is harder to find the time to study with kids, isn't it. If you're married and your wife is like mine, she probably limits the amount she lets you work, which is a good thing. :) So, take your time if you can and do lots of practice questions. I did find that the high-school math text helped a lot with getting me back up to speed on the core concepts. The most important thing, though, is the practice questions. I'm not sure if you've seen it, but you can download the old GMAT PowerPrep software (Google something like, "GMAT Powerprep software"). It's not only good for the two CATs, but there are a bunch of practice DS and PS tests there (easier than what you'll find on the GMAT, but still good practice). And if you buy the Kaplan book with the CD, you'll find the same thing. Those practice DS tests are harder and really help with the timing. Well, good luck on the test and your applications! Do you know yet where you're planning to go and what you want to do?

Hi kannn and p0001, No problem. I am a native speaker with a graduate degree in the social sciences. I never had to take much math in college except for one course in my first year of undergrad more than 10 years ago, which accounts for my relative lack of preparation on the Quantitative side. I'm making up for it now by taking Calculus this year, and plan to sign up for some graduate economics courses next year. The reason I took the GMAT is that I am considering a PhD in business. I will probably wait till next year to apply, but when I do I'll be aiming for Chicago, Cornell, Rochester, Wharton, or HBS. I'll keep my fingers crossed--those programs are highly selective, and usually only end up admitting 5% or less of all applications. Wish me luck!

Hi Amit, Sorry I can't be much help on the verbal. I have just always been strong on that. I can say that I improved on Sentence Corrections by writing down my errors and then learning any grammatical rules that I was missing. As I mentioned in my debrief, I had a problem with "dangling modifiers" that I was able to correct. Once I noticed that pattern of errors, I just Googled a few sites for "dangling modifiers" and "misplaced modifiers." That helped quite a bit.

I just finished my first (and last) crack at the GMAT yesterday. I am pretty happy about the results, and wanted to thank everybody on the forum for their generous help! Though I haven't been a frequent submitter to the forum, I did use it regularly over the past few months and thought I should post some thoughts in the event some of you find it helpful. The big caveat is that I think my advice is only useful for those who already have strong verbal skills but need a lot of work on the quantitative side. From the beginning of my studies, I was consistently scoring in the 95th - 99th percentile range in verbal but only in the 60th - 80th in quantitative. Consequently, I poured almost all of my efforts into improving my math score. Study Materials First, my study materials: 1) Kaplan GMAT Math, 2) OG11 (including verbal and math guides), 3) Testmagic forum, 4) the free material on the Manhattan GMAT site, 5) an old high-school math book I had lying around, 6) Kaplan CATs, 7) PowerPrep, and 8) GMATPrep. Quantitative Prep My approach was fairly standard given a lot of the debriefs on this site--I studied the basics from the Kaplan GMAT Math book (in conjunction with my high-school math text) for a few weeks, then took a GMATPrep to see where I was at. Afterwards, I continued to intersperse the materials below and take a practice CAT approximately once a week over a three-month period of studying part-time (I have a family and a full-time job). Now, here's what I thought about the relative usefulness of the materials I used. Kaplan Quantitative guide was a good starting resource for somebody like me who's been out of the "math loop" for a decade or so, but it is really only good for bringing you up to the 75th percentile or so. Nothing too complicated. Same with the math review in OG11. To improve my math skills beyond this (and re-learn a lot of arithmetic and algebra I'd forgotten over the years), I had to Google a lot questions I had about core concepts and usually found the answer I was looking for. I also used the high-school math text to learn about such things as the sum of arithmetic sequences, probability, and permutations and combinations. I also found the explanations given to queries (by myself and others) on this forum to be very useful. Lastly, I read over all the free "Strategy Series" articles on the Manhattan GMAT website. I found several of these very useful, too. Verbal As I mentioned above, I spent no time on Critical Reasoning or Reading Comprehension, but did spend a bit of time on Sentence Correction. Basically, all I did was some of the practice questions from OG11 and took note of any mistakes I did in the practice CATs. I then used those to make a list of any common errors I was making (for me, it was dangling modifiers and a few idioms). For me, that was enough. CAT Scores Kaplan diagnostic: 700 (85th% in Quant, 96th% in Verbal) GMATPrep CAT #1: 740 (Q47, V46) Kaplan CAT #1: 610 (Q35, V41) Kaplan CAT #2: 640 (Q34, V41) Kaplan CAT #3: 710 (Q39, V42) PowerPrep #1: 710 (Q 44, V42) PowerPrep #2: 730 (Q 48, V42) Kaplan CAT #4: 650 (Q37, V40) GMATPrep CAT#2: 760 (Q49, V46) Lesson: as almost everyone else has said, don't worry about your scores on the Kaplan CATs. I did find writing them useful, however. Just don't let them shatter your confidence. Test Experience My goal was to get into the 90th percentile in Quantitative (49 or 50) in the Quantitative, so I was disappointed to get only 48 (85th percentile). Don't get me wrong, I AM happy with my overall score, but given that I poured so much effort into the quantitative side I was hoping for better. I think part of the lower-than-expected score had to do with luck: the test kept throwing questions at me that I just COULD NOT DO! I had done a lot of practice questions, but the real test had 5 or 6 questions on it that left me baffled! Including the very first question on the test--yikes! That was something I was completely not expecting. I must have done something right on the rest of the test to get a 48, but the whole time during the test I felt I was either answering questions that were too easy or too hard. Verbal, on the other hand, was also hard but in line with what I was expecting from the CATs and other people's de-briefs. Believe it or not, I always found the Verbal section hard--requiring lots of mental energy--but I guess most of it comes naturally to me so I always end up scoring well on it. Lessons Learned In retrospect, I should have waited another two weeks to round out my studies. It was only in my last GMATPrep test a few days before the real test that I scored a 49 in Quant, but to guarantee at least a 49 I should have studied another week or so to make sure it wasn't a fluke. I don't think that practice 49 was a fluke, but as I mentioned above some of the real GMAT questions threw me for a loop, and if had studied some more I could have answered some of these. I also should have rounded out my studying a bit more. By the time of the test, I was very solid in word problems, probability, permutations and combinations, arithmetic sequences, geometry, and tough exponent, factoring, ratios, percentages, and absolute value questions --almost none of which (at least the more difficult ones) were on the exam! I felt that, if only they asked me a probability or permutations question, that I would have scored a 49! Unfortunately, they didn't, and I kept getting nailed with what I found to be difficult "is x positive" or "is y greater than x" -type questions in the Data Sufficiency section. In short, I should have kept practicing Data Sufficiency questions until I mastered them. This ties in with what is perhaps my best piece of advice for others who are in a similar situation to me. If I could have done it again and had two more weeks, I would have saved enough time to go through all of the questions in OG11 (GMAT) and OG11 (Math) instead of only a fifth or so of the questions (I didn't have enough prep time). Better still, I would have tried to do at least 40 questions per day over an extend period leading up to the exam (say, a month at least). I really think that would have helped me. I would also have tried to answer more of the questions on the TestMagic forum, and probably would have paid for the ManhattanGMAT CATs, which would have prepared me even further for the really tough quantitative questions. One last piece of advice. In the beginning, my worst problem on the quantitative section was timing. I would frequently spend 5, 6, even 7 minutes on the toughest questions. In algebra questions, I would always try to find the formula. While by the end of my studies I was much better at it, sometimes it's just better to backsolve or pick numbers. To improve your timing, do lots of practice questions! These not only improve your skills, but they help enormously with your timing and help you see the patterns in the test questions. By the time I took the real test, I had the timing issue solved, but I strongly feel that doing a few more weeks of practice questions would have assured a 50 on the Quantitative section. In a nutshell, I guess my advice to others in the same boat as me is to learn the basics and then do a ton of practice questions to perfect your timing, learn patterns, and continually improve your quantitative skills. Good luck!