kaatrin

Hi Mariah, I took the classroom course at Kaplan - Advanced GMAT. I liked it. I think it gave structure to the process. I think a good idea is to concentrate on official GMAT materials - some of the questions from the materials appeared on my test! I would do the official online tests at least 6 times - every time you see some new questions and those questions are the closest to the real thing. Good luck!

In my school, I have 15h RA in the first year, no TA. In the second year I have TA/RA with 4 hours of teaching. The intensity of the RA assignement depends on the professor you are assigned to. Some people do literally nothing and some work hard.

I am in my second semester. I am taking four courses (this is 12 hours a week) and attend two seminars a week (about 3 hours). I have 15 hours RA assignment, but it is in reality less than that. I have to read 6-8 papers a week (this is on average 3 hours per paper = 18-24 hours) and prepare for classes (whatever time is left). I used to work all the time, which was taking a toll on me, and had to accept that I cannot do everything. I usually take it easy Friday night and have a nice dinner with my husband and on Saturday do not do more than 4-5 hours. Otherwise, yes, it is more demanding as a "regular" jobs that I held before.

Well, doing MWG before starting the program sounds like torture (I am reading it as we speak). I think I would go with something more compact, like Varian, just to develop intution. I am not familiar with Simon/Blume, but any amount of math you can digest is going to help.

You will most likely end up using both packages. SAS can efficiently deal with larger datasets. I usually prepare my dataset in SAS and then when it gets more manageable (For example I collapse it, remove variables, merge etc.). Then I transfer it to STATA to do econometric analyses. For learning to use STATA, I liked the introductory book "Data Analysis Using Stata, 2nd Edition" by Ulrich Kohler and Frauke Kreuter.:)

I am in the first year of a PhD in finance program. I did not really have strong math background, so efore I entered the program I went through Chiang's book and it was definitely helpful. Even if your math is good, anything that you do before the program will be beneficial and will make the adjustment to the crazy workload in the PhD program smoother. I f I were you, I would familiarize myself with SAS, STATA and read some econometric theory. The book by Verbeek "A guide to Modern Econometrics" is great for developing some intuition.:)

Columbia (GSAS) did not receive my GRE scores and all the other programs did. I am becoming frustrated. It seems that the fact, that I changed my last name (because I got married) is too much for them to process. I had to contact all the programs one by one to explain the situation, although I indicated all the name combinations on my application.

Call them and settle your nerves. I called Columbia University today with the same worries and they told me that they are swamped with applications (they have 900+ for PHD in econ!) and told me to get back to them next week.

I contacted the school I am applying to today and they told me that math part is somewhat low and it does not disqualify me, but it will put me at a disadvantage relative to applicants with better math scores :mad: It is too late for me to repeat, my apps are due soon.

Not a bad score after all. Could have done better though. My test center experience was very bad. During the quant section I had to ask for a pen replacement 4 times. They simply did not work. I got really stressed out because of this. I also had to exchange the pad they gave me, since it had moist(!) spots which made writing on it virtually impossible. They told me not to press the pen down so much... I really did not! :mad: The verbal was not too bad (and I am a non-native speaker). I gave up making notes for my RC, (Kaplan teaches you that) since I could not deal with the stupid pen anymore. Also, I really thought I blew the quant so I was not too stressed and finished my verbal 20 minutes early. As for my prep, I took the Kaplan Advanced course, took 4 of their CAT's and the GMAT Prep. I also studied with the OG for the verbal section.

Hello Abu Mohammad Omar, I do not think that the admissions offices will cause any problems. Just to be on the safe side, you can send an email to the admissions office to let them know of the problem.

Wanna1600 - Yes, this is the one. If I were you I would do all the practice tests from the PowerPrep CD and go through all the tests in the ETS book. It really helped me a lot. You will see some this material on the test for sure. Good luck!

I must say that one really should pay attention to Powerprep and ETS book - the questions were very close, some even the same. Also, I used Kaplan 'vocabulary in the box' flashcards and I really saw many of those words on the test. I think that for me being a non-native speaker living in the US only 3 years 640 is a great achievement. As to quant, I was going for 800, but I guess 790 is good enough:tup:

I got V640 Q790 today.

Congratulations, ARGilmore! [clap] Great success! My big day is tomorrow! I am a little worried, because I caught a cold and I am pretty stuffed up :(. Cross your fingers for me! My practice tests so far: Kaplan CAT1 Q760 V560 Kaplan CAT2 Q720 V650 Kaplan CAT3 Q720 V690 PowerPrep1 Q740 V710 PowerPrep2 Q800 V540