amitg_ind

Congrats Safazal, Which schools you are targetting? All the best for the Apps, which seem more daunting than GMAT. :(

OA: D. I am really sorry for delay in OA but I forgot :( Thanks teinphong for reminder.

For the same purpose I had created a group because sharing on individual basis would be difficult for me :( There are tons of Material you can find on the "gmatnetwork" group on YahooGroups and Good thing is that other people have also started to share. I advice you to join the group and search the Files section. Amit Gupta.

IMO, Its good :) One comment: For all reasons In Conclusion,

I am a JAVA guy and no exp in Python. Anyway, Would definately like to help to anyone.

YahooGroups take time before it start showing the Group in Search result....Now You can find it. :)

I guess there is some problem, Send in the request to gmatnetwork-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Or check http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gmatnetwork/ I will try to find the problem and update you all....:( Amit

thanks aragorn, Really appreciate your help. Site: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gmatnetwork/ Email: gmatnetwork-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Thanks, Amit

This is strange as I recieved many requests for the same. Anyway, can u PM the emailid you wish to ADD or send. I will add it. :)

I had updated the Group with many files in carefully created categories. Request you all to save the time & money of our fellow by making this initiative more better. Please suggest to make it better :) Also, those like CTG1983 are already done with the GMAT, I don't expect anyone to reply EVERY MAIL but where you think that 5-10 minutes in your mail can save 5-10 Hours of effort of other - I guess the Effort is WORTHY enough. One more suggestion. I had Posted about the Manhattan Guides and Test...Could anyone take the same initiative for the Kaplan and other tons of material available in the market - KAPLAN/PRINCETON - Needless to say - I have not done all....:)

To beat the already established Manhattan GMAT and Kaplan, I would defiately need help of guys like you :) Thanks for support. You can help in the following way: --> Join the group --> Check the Files section and see if you can add MORE to it. --> Let all know so that more people could be helped instead of spending money recklessly....:) Thanks, Amit

There are many individual queries,which needs help in form of material, guidance...And few of the queries overlap each other in scope. I have an idea :idea: . I have already started on it. I had created a YahooGroup, which will be used for:- Sharing Material {which at first seems to be very Limited for GMAT} Experience in form of guidance on ONE-2-ONE basis. - This is much needed apart from the debriefs which we read because, IMO, debriefs are generic, while the ideal thing for the prep student would be to get the best advice for his case. My AIM is to beat all these fortune cost Manhattan/KAPLAN and other courses, which sometimes charge $100/hour. I am starting alone in this project, please join me to help other to achieve better than ourselves. How I plan to use the group: à Post your problem to the group. Before that do your homework and identify your strengths and weakness and frame the post, which takes least time for anyone to understand and respond. BE SPECIFIC. Highlight the FACTS, time left for your DDAY etc. à Anyone can reply either directly to the person or to the group. Its your discretion whether your piece of advice could be useful for individual or everyone. You don’t need to be a maestro to reply/advice/share. à Post the problems regarding your strategy, your frustration in your continuous failure to improve your score BUT NOT for individual questions. It will be difficult to manage. The subscription for that group is gmatnetwork-subscribe@yahoogroups.com I plan to keep some basic material in the files section. Let me know your thoughts as how WE can improve this concept.

Thanks a lot to everyone. Next, there are many individual queries,which needs help in form of material, guidance...And few of the queries overlap each other in scope. I had an idea :idea: . I had already started on it. I had created a YahooGroup, which will be used for Sharing Material {which at first seems to be very Limited for GMAT} Experience in form of guidance on ONE-2-ONE basis. - This is much needed apart from the debriefs which we read because, IMO, debriefs are generic, while the ideal thing for the prep student would be to get the best advice for his case. My AIM is to beat all these fortune cost Manhattan/KAPLAN and other courses, which sometimes charge $100/hour. I am starting alone in this project, please join me to help other to achieve better than ourselves. How I plan to use the group: à Post your problem to the group. Before that do your homework and identify your strengths and weakness and frame the post, which takes least time for anyone to understand and respond. BE SPECIFIC. Highlight the FACTS, time left for your DDAY etc. à Anyone can reply either directly to the person or to the group. Its your discretion whether your piece of advice could be useful for individual or everyone. You don’t need to be a maestro to reply/advice/share. à Post the problems regarding your strategy, your frustration in your continuous failure to improve your score BUT NOT for individual questions. It will be difficult to manage. :doh: The subscription for that group is gmatnetwork-subscribe@yahoogroups.com I plan to keep some basic material in the files section. Let me know your thoughts as how WE can improve this concept. :hmm:

Here is my debrief: Background: Indian Engineering background and hence a neglect towards the Verbal was there from the very beginning. Started for the GMAT on previous occasion as well but had to drop it because of professional and the personal reasons – Last year 2005. Used this forum but not religiously. Most of my posts are split in two time frames – Last Year Sep-Dec and this year from june-july. Anyway, Last year I identified the SCs and RCs as my worst nightmare and after a gap of four months, I had to include CR in that group as well L. I came to NY/US in May this year and was taken aback with the hectic lifestyle. Finally I decided to apply in one Indian school which had apparently the last date as Aug 10. So after settling out in NJ, I searched for the available dates ASAP. It seemed that 31st July was the possible date for me. Moments after registering for the GMAT, I logged onto Amazon and ordered Manhattan SC, Manhattan CR/RC and 11th Official Guide to GMAT. So in nutshell, Target: 700+ Time: 6-7 weeks Arms & Ammunition: 1000SC/1000CR and all the guides. This was continuously updated going forward. I knew three things had to be followed. Kill SC. Kill RC and Kill CR. Maths was not a problem. Only thing was that I needed to work on my silly mistakes. Anyway, prep material came by mid june and I started with the Manhattan SC. Honestly, I didn’t find it much interesting. KILL SC Strategy: I made my SCNotes on top of PSahil and Spidey Notes and incorporated the Manhattan SC fundas which were not there in these two notes. Next, I started hunting 800Bob and Erin posts. More often than not, you will find a rule attached with an explanation. That’s the key. Copy-Paste all the relevant discussion and highlight the Erin/Bob’s explanation. Similarly, I made an Idiom Notes on top of an already existing Idiom List and jotted/collected all the SCs which I got wrong because of the Idiomatic usage. These notes, I revised weekly and in the beginning I revised the Idiom Notes – at least every alternate day. However, all this didn’t improved my accuracy level in SCs drastically. It was the solving/pounding 1000SCs which helped a lot. But before pounding 1000SCs, I made sure to cram every rule, every idiom, every *** I can and then solve it. Only to see that still there are rules which needs the attention. KILL CR and RC Strategy: Anything which appeals to logic is not difficult. This belief alleviated the fear of CR but RC’s persisted as I had never been a consistent reader. I started pinging the gurus in this forum left and right and one advice I would like to quote from stucco-“What would you do if you take part in Olympics? You prepare more than what you are required to do on the D day?” Hence he suggested to direct my CR energy to LSAT material. I found this most logical and upgraded my arms and ammunition with few LSAT papers. I procured them from scoretop site. There were some 20 but I had time for only 5-6. However, after solving those 5-6, I was comfortable in RC and CR and more important than anything, I was confident. I can say this because there was a change of attitude when I solved 1000CR after practicing LSAT material. Not to mention-attitude was positive. J. Try this and if you are not satisfied, Let me know. I will definitely try to help you out. J QUANT: I practiced quant not with the objective of understanding quant but with the motto of working on my silly mistakes – specially DS. I had some material which was supposed to be the toughest in GMAT-Some Math archive of Manhattan and I solved that first before starting with the GMAT level. Again, there was a top down approach for the difficulty level as practiced in Verbal. Battle Prep: All this battle preparation left only one week before I could identify another less popular problem – the stamina syndrome. I had given only one full length test {and omitted the AWA part in the test} only to discover that concentration was abysmally low in the last 45 minutes – supposedly most crucial for Verbal. So final problem was identified as stamina. To mitigate the risk due to this problem, I gave in 6 Full length exams in last six days. Three Manhattan and Three Kaplan. Score doesn’t matter but the ability to sit consistently for four continuous hours did. Here are scores anyway. Manhattan 670/700/690. Kaplan 570/640/590. And in the last two days-Sat/Sun. I decided not to give any test, against the popular consensus of giving at least both the GMAT Prep test-at least. G Day: Sitting for two and half hours of test after your full office day is nothing more than trying your sadistic instincts on yourself. But in process, I had been prepared for the worst. I could not find any lack of concentration till the end. One more thing, for AWA, I read the most neglected part of Official guide-AWA and its two sample solutions and referred 800Awaguide.pdf a little. The end of exam cam surprisingly early, it was 26 minutes to spare in Q –EXPECTED and 26 Minutes to spare in V-HRADLY EXPECTED. Deviation from the normal - I didn’t received any boldface CR in the entire exam and I received 4 RCs as compared to normal three with four questions each and last one was having only 3 questions. I didn’t counted but felt that there were more SCs than CRs and CRs level were normally tougher than OG. Anyway, after seeing the score, I felt like – “Never won the battle but finally won the war”. Final Words: Strong believer of Open Source Foundation and really hate when courses like Manhattan, Kaplan charges fortune for nothing. Would like to help anybody in terms of material/guidance/assistance/support. Not to mention I have plethora of legal and illegal material for every part of the exam, which even I could not complete in the brief time period. Anyway, doesn’t matter. So please let me know whether I can be a help to you in anyway. I think, I can specially help people, who have a weak VERBAL instead of QUANT as for QUANT, I don’t feel the problem. Only condition for the help is that you in turn have to help others in a similar fashion – basic premise of open source.

Just returned from my Test Center and a decent 730 :) In totality its an ok score but in addition to the fact that I somehow zoomed across the Verbal section and finished the section 26 odd minutes before, it could have been better. In the Verbal section - achilles heel for me - I always feel pressure for time. I started with the Normal pace but then when I looked at the clock/questions it showed 36Mints/37 of 41. Anyway, will post in detail more sometime later. Thanks for all the support. One more thing. People use this site primarily for SC and CR and RC are much neglected forums. But they can be also used. Lots of good people come here, who are not only good for SC but for CR and RC as well. Thanks, Amit Gupta.