slow and steady ...

I received my official GMAT score report a few days ago. I got a 5 on the essays, and I can't really complain about it. I think it's good enough not to screw up my otherwise stellar app package :-)

I have made some progress on the school selection front. I have shortlisted 4 schools - Columbia, Chicago, Michigan and Tuck. All four are my "first choice schools" - meaning I don't prefer any one over the others. I will probably develop a preference later when I visit the schools. Regardless of my future order of preference, I will be delighted to attend any of these schools. If I feel confident of my application, I might drop one of the schools (not sure which one yet) and apply to only 3 schools.

I briefly considered adding MSU as a safety school but then dismissed the idea - I am going to do my MBA only once and I want to get the most out of it. I want a school with national (and international) recognition and with a diverse student body. Regional schools just don't have that.

I am making slow but steady progress with the app process. I hope to start my first draft of essays this weekend. I am doing it one school at a time - Chicago's seem to be the easiest to answer, so I will start with those. I have already approached one recommender and he was very supportive. I am yet to contact my second recommender but I am fairly certain that he will accede to my request. Neither of them is my direct supervisor, and I'll probably have to explain this in the additional info section of the application. I like my current job and am not willing to jeopardize it by telling my manager about my plans to go to school. I will eventually have to, but not yet.

Foreign languages

I recently came to know that some European B-schools require students to be proficient in at least one foreign language. That's an awesome idea! I would like to see US B-schools introduce such a concept. In today's interconnected global economy, it is very important to be able to work with people from other parts of the world and learning a foreign language (any language) is a step in the right direction. Obviously, mastering French will not be of much use when dealing with Japanese suppliers but the experience of learning a completely foreign language will certainly help managers step up their learning curve while dealing with a foreign client or vendor. English is the current lingua franca of international business but it always helps to be proficient in more than one language.

I tried to learn French many years ago but gave it up after getting bored. However a couple of years ago, I enrolled myself in a German language class and was absolutely fascinated by the language. I cannot explain why I liked German (but not French) so much. Maybe because it's more regular? I also had absolutely no trouble pronouncing the harsh German sounds (most beginners give up at this stage :-)). I am by no means fluent in German but I can hold a regular conservation. I am sure that a native German would appreciate my efforts to speak his language and would forgive whatever grammatical errors I may make while speaking to him. It's my dream to be able to read Schopenhauer's "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung" in its original German version. It will probably be many more years before my German is good enough to read nineteenth century German philosophy (how's that for setting high targets? :-)). But I am sure that it will be completely worth it.

GMAT recap

I wrote the GMAT some time ago and did pretty well, scoring 750+. I found many resources on the web that helped me a lot in my preparations, especially Beat the GMAT. I want to summarize my GMAT prep, so that others who are going to take the GMAT soon can benefit from my experience.

Number of days between deciding to write GMAT and actually writing GMAT - 39
Estimated number of hours of preparation (not including mock tests) - 40
Number of prep tests - 13 CAT plus one paper based test (another 40 hours)
Study materials used -

1. Kaplan 800 book - I started off with this book. I highly recommend this to anyone aiming for a 700+ score.

2. Kaplan 2006 GMAT book + CD - I didn't read the book. I got this only for the CD containing 4 CATs.

3. GMAT OG 11 - needless to say, this one is a *must* for every test taker. I completed all SC questions, and most of RC and CR questions.

4. Princeton review GMAT 2006 book + CD - I got this one too only for the CD. PR gives you 4 additional online CATs at no extra cost if you get the book. I ended up doing one test from the CD and three online.

5. GMAT Prep tests - downloaded from www.mba.com. Like the OG, these are also absolutely essential.

6. An AWA essays book (I forgot the title) - I spent only about half an hour the day before my GMAT going through the "tips and tricks" section and a couple of sample essays.

QUANT:

I had an advantage in quant because of my background (I am an engineer) and I never bothered to prepare seriously for it. My only math preparation was as a part of the mock tests that I took. My time management strategy was as follows: divide the 75 minutes into 5 segments of 15 minutes each and answer 7 to 8 questions in each segment. I tried to be more cautious at the begining, double checking my answers.

VERBAL:

My grammar is not perfect, and initially I struggled to cope with sentence correction. Fortunately the GMAT tests only a very limited variety of grammatical errors and with practice I was able to get the hang of it. I spent about 90% of my prep time on SC.

Here are my prep scores in chronological order:

Peterson 1 : 670 (Q : 50 (+ 30, - 7), V : 32 (+ 25, - 17))
Peterson 2 : 740 (Q : 50 (+ 31, - 6), V : 40 (+ 32, - 9))
Peterson 3 : 730 (Q : 60 (+ 35, - 2), V : 38 (+ 33, - 8))
Kaplan 1 : 740 (Q : 50 (+ 32, - 5), V : 41 (+ 33, - 8))
GMATPrep 1 : 760 (Q 50 (+ 31, - 6) , V 42 (+ 31, - 10))
Kaplan 2 : 660 (Q 50 (+ 32, - 5) , V 36 (+ 29, - 12 ))
Kaplan 3 : 640 (Q 50 (+ 33, - 4), V 34 (+ 28, - 13))
Kaplan 4 : insufficient questions in the bin - score not accurate! (BTW I scored 680)
PR 1 : 760 (Q 51 (+ 35, - 2), V 44 (+ 32, - 9))
PR 2 : 750 (Q 51 (+ 34, - 3), V 43 (+ 35, - 6))
PR 3 : 760 (Q 50 (+ 34, - 3), V 46 (+ 37, - 4))
PR 4 : 780 (Q 51 (+ 35, - 2), V 47 (+ 36, - 5))
GMATPrep 2 : 770 (Q 51 (+ 34, - 3) , V 44 (+ 34, - 7))

The difference between my GMAT Prep 1 and 2 scores is only 10 points but there was a HUGE improvement in my "comfort factor". I attribute that mostly to my increased mental stamina. I had a very simple strategy - keep taking mock tests - and it worked for me!

I booked the test only after I was confident of my preparation. I didn't want to prepare under a deadline (I have plenty of deadlines at work :-)). I definitely wanted to finish my GMAT by July, but I would have postponed it had I needed to.

A very important caveat - what worked well for me may not work for you; it may even prove to be counter-productive. You should judge for yourself what strategies work best for you. All the best!!

GMAT - check!

FSM, riding back home one sunny day on his motorcycle, realized that he wants to go to B-school next year. After many many hours of toil, he started to score consistently above 750 in his GMAT mock tests and impulsively decided to write the GMAT ASAP. His median score in all tests prior to the GMAT was 740 and his range of scores was 140. If his final GMAT score was five percent greater than the average of all his prior scores, how much did FSM score?

A. 555
B. 666
C. 777
D. 888
E. Insufficient data to answer the question

:-)

Yay! I am done with my GMAT! I booked the test only two days before I actually took it - luckily I was able to find a suitable appointment slot at such short notice. I got a score in line with my expectations (> 750). There were no surprises at all .. I guess I was kind of inured to whole exam process after an overdose of mock tests.

I spent all of 30 minutes preparing for the AWA section by going through a couple of sample essays that I randomly picked from a book (one each for the argument and issue essays). And guess what? I got one of those for my GMAT! That's a probability of 1 /115 :-) However I don't think that mattered much since I am a fairly competent writer and the essay questions are all quite "doable". I would like to reiterate what many others have said before me - if you are confident of your general writing skills, don't bother studying more than a couple of hours for the AWA. The only prerequisites to doing well on the AWA are good ol' common sense and a semi-decent grasp of English grammar.

The 10 minute break between sections is very useful. It is sufficiently long to recharge yourself for the upcoming section. I managed to exceed the break time on both occasions and lost some testing time. However I didn't bother about it because I felt completely refreshed before the start of each new section. I managed to finish both sections comfortably within the alloted time.

I had a very uneventful test session with no surprises whatsoever. Once I was done with the verbal section, I pretty much knew what score I was going to get (+/- 10 points). All in all, it was a satisfactory performance. I got the score that I felt I deserved, so I was neither delighted nor disappointed. The strongest emotion that I felt after the test was one of total relief at getting the GMAT out of the way, more so because my work schedule for next few weeks is going to be very crazy. I had to spend most of my vacation studying, but it was comptletely worth it!

In case you hadn't figured it out, the answer to the question at the top is E :-) (I am not disclosing my exact score because I don't want to compromise my anonymity).

PR tests

Warning - an excessively detailed (~ boring) analysis of my test performances lies ahead, proceed at your own risk :-)

Princeton Review Test 1: 760 (Q-51 (+35, -2), V-44 (+32, -9))

Of the 9 questions that I got wrong in the verbal section, 4 were from RC, 4 from SC and only one from CR. I am quite pleased that I have improved in sentence correction and critical reasoning. I am not too concerned about RC because I usually do well in that section and this test seems to be an aberration. The sequence of wrong answers was: 8, 14, 26, 27, 32, 38, 39, 40, 41. I had plenty of time left but still got the last 4 questions wrong .. the questions were just too tough. The was a very subtle difference between two of the answer choices in each of the four questions. I don't think any amount of practice would have helped me spot those differences, and unfortunately I guessed wrong each time! However the PR CAT algorithm seems to be very generous when it comes to answering incorrectly towards the end, so I wasn't penalized heavily.

The quant section seemed very easy compared to Kaplan and GMAT Prep. I did make a couple of educated guesses but got both of them right this time. Unfortunately I can't expect the GMAT quant section to be this easy!

Princeton Review Test 2: 750 (Q-51 (+34, -3), V-43 (+35, -6))

The quant section was a bit weird - I got a few tough questions in the mid twenties, and then all of a sudden I got a string of ridiculously easy ones. This was an online test, so I wonder whether PR had inserted a few "test questions" in between that don't count toward the score.

Princeton Review Test 3: 760 (Q-50 (+34, -3), V-46 (+37, -4))

Two very tough questions in quant - got both of them wrong after wasting 6 minutes on each of them! There is NO way I could have solved them within a reasonable amount of time. I am a bit disappointed with myself because I should have identified these questions as "unsolvable" and moved on quickly. Though I didn't get into time trouble in this test, spending 12 minutes on two questions and getting both of them wrong is atrocious. The adaptive nature of the test should allow me to max the section even if I get a couple of questions wrong. My aim is not to get every question right, but to get the maximum possible score!

I am absolutely thrilled with my verbal performance - I got only 4 questions wrong (2 SC, 1 CR and 1 RC)!

vacation!

Hurray! I am taking a few days off and getting out of here. Bad weather has ruined my original plan of riding to NYC. I could still drive there, but it's so much more fun on a motorbike. So I am thinking of going up north, to Ontario. I have this strange obsession with the idea of circumnavigating lake Superior, so I will probably do that. There are some great scenic routes in that region with very little traffic.

I don't like the idea of planned vacations - I just ride as long as I want to, and stop over at the first decent motel when I get tired. I usually take the back roads and stop frequently at small towns and chat with the locals over lunch or coffee. They offer the best tips on great places to visit in the nearby region - those that you would not typically find in coffee table books. This also means that my plans are super-flexible. If the weather forecast for Ontario is not good, I will go to Chicago (west), or Smoky mountains (south). I have one tentative destination in each direction :-)