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My European friends do not give up.
Hi I am one of those lucky ones who got the score they aimed for. My dream schools are Tuck and IMD and I aimed for 740+ score when I started my preparation. Three weeks ago..I got exactly 740, 41 in Verbal (92%) and 49 (87%) in quant and I hope that this gives me a pretty good shot at an interview call from Tuck and IMD (their median GMAT is 720).

I am a mainland European who has been working for a major alternative energy company in US for the past 6 years in the area of wind farm design and execution. Alternate energy has always been a big business in Europe and is increasingly becoming a bigger business in parts of ASIA (China is investing heavily).Private ownership of wind farms is becoming more and more popular in Asia (even in Europe) and my experience here puts me in an ideal position to help wind farm owners manage their assets. I need a well-rounded MBA and probably some time out of work to work out my precise business plan. Hence the MBA.


My Quest for 740

I decided to go for my MBA in July 2010 and started preparing seriously earlier this year. One of my friends recommended BeatTheGMAT. I am glad that I joined this helpful forum. When I first started preparing for the GMAT I know that I would do well on the Math section given my background. However, I was slightly worried about the verbal portion. While I am a very good reader, have a good vocabulary and read over 50-100 pages a day, my grammar was awful when I started preparation. European (non - British) grammar and European English is very different from American English. For example, if one had to go and play sports, In Europe we would say “I make sport today” rather than “I will go and play today” Very different. Hence for me, RC was ok but SC was very scary for me. I was not sure how to separate right from wrong.

So I read the Kaplan Premier edition and gave my first Mock test as a reality check. Sure enough I got 550 45-47 in quant and 25 in Verbal. This was a wake-up call that I needed more guidance. I joined the Kaplan Classroom course. The course was good. They provided me with a lot of material to practice. Their tests were ok. For $1500 it was not very expensive either. My other compadres got 700+ with the course so it definitely helped them. For me the course was not detailed enough. With only 30-35 hrs of classroom instruction they could not focus enough on any one section like Sentence Correction. My score did improve to 650 so I did benefit from the course but I was still at 33 in Verbal. Sentence Correction was still my big problem. CR had started to worry me as well.

This was the time when I stumbled upon a review from Simunda. He increased his score to 730 from 560. He said

1) if you don't get the score you wanted first time round, don't give up. Work twice as hard and the reward will come.
2) if possible, try and study more intensively over a shorter period of time than let your study drag on making slow progress.

So I thought that if he could increase his score then I should be able to do it as well. I created a plan for myself. My first goal was to improve my English. I subscribed to Wall street journal, Economist, discover magazine. I would find articles that I like and read them while looking for modifiers, idiomatic usages, and parallelism. I would then go and look for similar usages in OG. Since most of OG questions are online I would just search for the usage and click on beatthegmat or GMATclub link. This helped me a lot with grammar especially idioms. I have attached a list of articles. I have probably more articles in my wsj account. Let me know if you need it. Wall street journal offers a free account for 6 weeks. I would recommend that everyone on this forum take that.


I also saw some good reviews for egmat http://www.e-gmat.com online sentence correction course. The person who recommended said that this course was designed for non-native speakers. The course was very cheap (only $39) but it was fantastic. It was perfect for someone like me. It started from the basics, refreshed the rules and then did the most difficult problems. They have a systematic process which helped me solve many more difficult questions correctly. Since it was all video it was very easy to do the entire course. It was much more detailed than my Kaplan course and covered all the basics. I also did their CR course which is good too. For me, this course probably added 5-6 points to my verbal score.


One more interesting find was the Jeff Sackman verbal book http://www.totalgmatverbal.com. This book is good RC practice. SC and CR are ok too. This quality of questions in this book are quite good. You can also buy this book from amazon. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1461153344/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

What next

I would start my applications process in 1 month. Right now I travel to Europe and Asia. I will probably visit IMD over there. I will also review Stecey Oyler’s Tuck School essay video. I have not seen the IMD essays discussed on this forum but will check in a month.

My thanks
To all of you on the forum for motivating me to not give up. Special thanks to Simunda for his motivating words. Also thanks to Eric and his team for this wonderful site. Also all the experts who have shared their knowledge through this forum. I want to do my part. I have included the article index that I talked about. This really helped me improve my verbal. Some of these articles require subscription so they may not work for all of you. Good luck

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Articles

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704302304575214043115581102.html#articleTabs%3Darticle
This is a great article about Jaguar. Lots of modifiers used in this article.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704584804575644773552573304.html
A great business article about electric Vehicles and Trucks
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704584804575644633158363078.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond
A patent litigation case. Lots of legal language.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125929343436366029.html
An argumentative article about whether medical tourists be charged more.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125745788725531839.html?mod=WSJ_hps_InDepthCarousel
A great article on neuroscience and genetics. Lots of modifiers
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703374304575623021064326114.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_management
Management article about various work cultures.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704658204575610593926104822.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_tech
My favorite cars.. how twitter is used to sell car. Focus on lists, parallelism, idioms.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704327704575614530026680288.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
Another article on pacemaker and defribillator. Good for revising medical terms, modifiers and idioms.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703848204575608621726607004.html?mod=WSJ_hps_editorsPicks_2
Another car article for the car fans.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703805704575594272052450174.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond#
An article on CT scans used for Lung Cancer. Medical terms, modifiers, some parallelism. Idioms.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704657304575540440173772102.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_health
An article on how the insurance system is screwed up. Lots of complex sentences. I read this one twice.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704847104575531894007324242.html#
An great article on home dialysis machines. Lots of complex sentences. I read this one twice too. Has some fascinating arguments.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703904304575497903523187146.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEADNewsCollection
A WSJ cover story on tracking on the web. Good article.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703915204575104222702359984.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEForthNews#articleTabs%3Darticle
An article about entrenepreneurship. I liked it.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704458204576073913850150324.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_health#
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125875892887958111.html