rd_eastbay

Should work fine for me but my time is not in my control since I am looking for a job. But yeah right now any time sounds equally good or bad :)

Thanks Karmaholic. I do intend to drop by from time to time. Feel free to post questions on this thread and I'll answer in turn.

And you can find the (corrected) answers in one document at http://www.www.urch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30007

All in one separate document with corrections from myself, 800bob and greycellz. See attached.1000_sc_answers.doc

Princeton Review CATs (from the crack GMAT CDs) have good verbal sections. However since they clone questions from OG (or similar), if one is familiar with the OG material, the verbal scores will not be representative. The math section is generally easier than the real test with the occassional question that doesn't make sense or is insanely difficult. Kaplan CATs have good math sections that I would rate harder than the real test. The verbal section however has some major problems. The RCs are vague with passages that do not mimic the style of GMAT passages (ursula points out something similar in one of her posts). The SC questions are not representative because Kaplan tests for concepts including idioms which differ from those in the official GMAT material. The PP tests are excellent but scores will not always be representative. Folks who have used any test prep material or read TM threads will recognize some questions on the PP tests. On the other hand, those who do put in a lot of effort in the time between taking the PP tests and the real test will automatically move their ability to a higher plane. Thus for a good number of people these two effect may balance out and the PP scores may correspond to what they get on the real test. Ofcourse this will not always be the case. My $.02.

Well done Alex.

As you may have read in my previous posts, my timing for the verbal section was off. What can one do to do better? a) Build more mental stamina. While I had taken a few full-length tests, they did not involve GMAT level Math, GMAT level Verbal and two essays combined. Thus in the last few minutes of the test I lost focus which hurt me on the section. b) For the section(s) that you are weak in, pre-prepare a last 2-minutes or a last 5-minutes strategy. One should have a good estimate of how much time it takes to answer each question if one happens to be clicking through simply to finish all the questions.

Thanks all. Here is the post I promised. But before I get into that, I want to thank TM posters once again for their contribution. I mentioned a few by name earlier in the thread but I am sure many others escape my memory : my apologies to them. Structure of my posts on this thread: I am going to post separate short messages on individual topics as I get time. My background : non-native speaker of English although I have been using the language for many years. I have a Bachelors and a Masters in Computer Science and am (relatively speaking) an oldie - have been working for ~9years or so. I took the test simply to open the door to business school even as I decide whether I am really going to go for it. As one may guess, the verbal section was a challenge for me. Thanks to the many posts on Verbal Strategy on TM, I could come up with a decent prep plan for myself. Even so I was a bit slow on the this section and had to randomly guess the last few questions as I ran out of time. I can't be sure but I think I got all the questions that I had the time to read correctly, right. I may not have finished the verbal section either : I thought I was on the last question with about 10 seconds left. I clicked on a random answer expecting the test to finish and was surprised to find another question waiting for me. I don't know if that was indeed the last one. Oh well. The math section by comparison was a lot smoother. The questions were not simple, but they were not very hard either. I had about 20 minutes left for the last 5 and finished at leisure. I am pretty sure that the questions that I read correctly, I answered correctly. More in other posts.....

Done yesterday. Very relieved. Just wanted to thank the current active posters (arjmen, piyusht, alex, 800bob, budhi, scoot, dimbulb) on TM for all the questions and solutions. And ofcourse twin, grey, lego and ursula for their excellent posts and debriefs and erin for his SC explanations. I probably won't bother with a full debrief as most things have already been covered here by other threads. I will however post a couple of lesser know points not covered by the other posters : probably in a couple days. Have to go resolve some major personal/professional issues before then.... Thanks TM!

The writer argues that government inspections of meat processing plants should be made more frequent. The writer bases his argument on a trail study that showed a 50% reduction in the amount of bacteria at a particular plant. Further the writer claims that consumers of Excel's products will be safe from infection because Excel's plants have shown the most improvement among the plants studies. While the writers argument makes some valid points, the argument as it stands is unconvincing. First, the reduction of the amount of bacteria in a sample may not lead to a decrease in the infection caused by the meat. This can happen if the amount of bacteria is already low enough that a further reduction has no discernable impact on the infection rate. Second, some critical cost data is missing from the argument. For example, there is no information on the cost to government or to tax payers of the additional inspections prescribed by the author. Without such data it is difficult to carry out a cost benefit analysis of the proposal. Third, the agument does not explore alternative methods of achieving the same goals. Government intervention is not always the most effective and cost efficient response to a problem. Granted some problems require that the government intervene. If this is the case with inspections, the writer needs to prove that there are no alternative cost-effective solutions available. Thus we conclude that the writers argument is weak. The data presented is only a part of a much bigger picture. Without the surrounding context, the writers recommendation is at best premature.

Good one. Agreed.

Perhaps I am not seeing something here. a^2 + b^2 = 8. This is fine. But how is 'h' related to a and b? h^2 + (one of the sides + something)^2 = (one of the diagnals)^2 But this doesn't give the length of the side. Additionaly we don't know which of the two heights is h (= sqrt(3)).

Agreed.

Agreed with OAs.

Agreed with D.

This one is ok I think. "The 90-mile trip" clearly implies that there is only one trip being talked about.

Indeed the question is ambiguous unless one could assume the meaning of an integer to be different from what it is currently when the test was adminstered.

Agreed.

Not really. While there are 3 equations from the stem and (2) and 4 variables, the data lines up so that total number of men can be calculated without solving for each variable.

Agreed.

Agreed. We are comparing goods "exported". Only C maintains parallelism with respect to "exported".

Congrats my man.

IMO, this is not quite true amor. In B "those" can only refer to the noun phrase "japanese unions". Not just "unions". And this completely distorts the meaning of the sentence.

I agree with this ofcourse but I wonder how this reconciles with the OA (B) in http://www.www.urch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25518&highlight=japanese+unions

Does anybody know the correct usage of "Because Y....., X .....". In the question above, I correctly picked B. But it is not clear to me why this sentence is correct when ETS english deems "Based on Y...., X...." to mean that X is based on Y. I asked a similar question (Hosea Hudson) a while back http://www.www.urch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28254&highlight=Hosea+Hudson but did not receive a convincing reply. Anybody care to clarify the correct usage of the of the patter "Because Y, X"?