mymagic

YALE it is! Found out yesterday that I've been accepted. Thanks everybody for all of your help!!! This forum has been AMAZING! Over the next few months I will be trying to apply for as many scholarships as possible to help cover the cost of attendance. Thanks again everybodyyyyy!!! Best of luck to you all and please feel free to reach out if I can help!!! :loveheart:

Sure. I'm a financial consultant for Booz Allen. Been with the firm for a little over two years. Before this job I worked for my local branch of the NAACP. I graduated in May 2008 w/my B.A. in Economics. 3.56 GPA. Yale interview tomorrow--preparing now. Wish me luck!

Hello there!! I haven't posted anything on this site since I took my GMAT about a year and a half ago (700 42Q/42V). Great to be back! I applied to five schools last month (Round 2): Wharton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Duke and have been walking on egg shells waiting to hear back until recently. Yale and Duke invited me to interview! Woo-hooo!! I just got an email today saying that I'm on Harvard's waitlist. Not the news I was hoping for but considering its Harvard--I'm in good spirits! LOL. I know that they don't place a large percentage of applicants on the waitlist so that is encouraging--but I also know its not easy to be admitted from this point either. Stay tuned folks! I will absolutely keep you updated! Now if I can only figure out my career path post my MBA lol....sigh...its always something!! -MyMagic

...and got a 5.5 out of 6 on the AWA :). Good luck guys!!!

Let me first say THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to Erin for this forum. Another thanks to everyone who responded to any one of my posts/questions. This score is for you too!!! While I do not at all advocate the study approach that I am about to describe below as it was long and painful for me--testmagic absolutely was a great resource for my quant preparation. A THOUSAND THANKS ERIN. My approach for cracking the GMAT was unconventional to say the least. I graduated in May 2008 from undergrad and started studying that fall roughly speaking. I just took the actual GMAT on Friday, September 17, 2010. That’s right--you heard correctly. I studied for two years for this test !!! In the beginning my study schedule wasn’t nearly as rigorous and set as it was during the last 3-4 months but I was studying fairly regularly throughout this period. I started out with the basics and literally had to work from the ground up..basics as in teaching myself how to add and subtract fractions!!! I’m talking basics here!!! To be clear---97% of the time that I devoted to preparing for this exam was on the quant side as math is my nemesis arrghhh. I did very little preparation for verbal outside of reading for pleasure for the past---ummm forever. I love to read so that prob helped. Anyways I found myself losing momentum towards the end of my period of independent study and I hoped to the high heavens that by signing up for a prep course I would find a sense of structure and inspiration that would guide the rest of my preparation. Indeed I did!!! I signed up for my class at the start of the summer and I will say that while some students don't need a prep course--some do. I'm one of them. My initial goal was to see if I could break 700 without signing up for an expensive class. While it didn't happen for me---I think it’s a good goal because you push yourself to get the MAX out of your independent study time. Nevertheless--before signing up for the class I was barely breaking 600 in my practice tests. A far cry from the 700 I was aiming for. As far as choosing a prep course--my main thought is that the prep course you choose will only take you but so far if you’re not willing to put in the work. Nevertheless my teacher was excellent. He made it seem easy lol--which it never was for me by the way! Anyways my first CAT at the start of my prep class was a 540. Ouch: 19th percentile Math, 85th percentile Verbal. I thought I had my work cut out for me which wasn’t entirely true. The thing was---my approach at the start of my prep course was spending forever on questions as I saw fit and just generally not sticking to the two minute time limit. I got a few higher level questions correct--BUT ALAS---if you can only make it through half the math section or even slightly more than half---and you’re faced with a string of questions at the end that you are forced to guess on or leave blank---you will watch in horror as your score goes off a cliff. Timing is everything with this test. At least for the quant side. For verbal--practice, practice, practice if you are not scoring as high as you need in the practice tests keep practicing until you get there. My experience is actually that verbal is somehow weighed slightly higher---i.e. a high verbal score/low quant score combo will get you a higher overall score than visa versa. While my quantitative ability probably didn’t improve all that much over the course of my prep class--my understanding of how to take the test did. I had to find a rhythm as I answered questions and accept this ONE SINGLE TRUTH THAT CAN MAKE OR BREAK YOUR SCORE: IF YOU CANNOT ANSWER A QUANT QUESTION IN 2 MINS OR LESS ON THE GMAT--YOU WONT GET IT RIGHT ON THE TEST. Unless of course you guess which I’m all for. The point is---let it go after two minutes!!!!! Once I got the hang of that my next practice test was a 680: 79th percentile quant/81st percentile verbal. Test after that was 720: 77th percentile quant/96th percentile verbal. The last practice test I did before the actual exam was a 670. I was down about the score but I remembered my teacher told me that there is about a 30 point swing for any given test taker. I.e...the same person can take the test on a given day and score anywhere within a 30 point range of what they actually will get on the test. Here was hoping that my score would be swinging upward and not down!!! True indeed it swung up to 700 on the actual test. ::WHEW:::My final words of advice are.... Get used to sitting through the entire exam--answering question after question after question and FORCING yourself to stick to a time limit. Along that same line of reasoning--when you are going through practice problems--time yourself AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. Conditioning!!! It makes a HUGE difference. Literally--have a stopwatch right there and force yourself to work under timed conditions. It’s a whole new world I assure you. OK...Best of luck each and every one of you!!!! Let me know if you have any questions about my approach!!! This forum has been such a huge help...Thanks again Erin. Seriously.

All--approx how many minutes do we have per question on the Verbal section? I recall about 1 min 20 secs per SC question but Im not sure for CR/RC. My approach is to list time intervals counting down from 75 minutes to 0 in one column and in a corresponding column to count from number 1 to number 41 for the total number of questions so that I can scratch off questions as I go and thus keep track of my time as I complete the test....Can anyone suggest time intervals? Ie 5 min intervals..7 min intervals? Does anyone use a similar approach for verbal and if so please share!:D

Can you explain why option 5 won't work? I would think that if option 4 was OK then option 5 would be fine as well...hmmm...;)?

How did you go from 5x^11 to 3^11 X 5^12? I'm clear up until that part...????;)

I'm getting A for this one. 9 works for statement B as well and that value is less than 10. Am I off here?

How did you get 1/a(a+b+c)+1/b(a+b+c)+1/c(a+b+c) from ab+bc+ca? This one went completely over my head!

How did you determine that Area = (s^2)*(3^1/2)/4???? Thats the line where you lost me...;)

For 4c2 wouldnt the case be such that there are indeed 6 ways to choose 2 from 4...but the remaining 2 leftover (since there are a total of 4 factors) can be arranded each as individual factors (ie 2 and 3 for example) or as one ie 6..Im confused here...I used the same approach but slightly different....PLEASE CLARIFY:eek:!!!!!

To find the length of each leg I would assume that you would take the difference of the x-coordinates (for the two legs parallel to the x-axis). For points (5,3) and (2,3) why, then, are we not subtracting 5-2? Anyone?:( Also, how do we find the length of the legs that are not parallel to the x-axis?

Anyone?;)

Finisher--what method did you use to solve? Looks foreign to me but it obviously works...do share :hmm: