3 yrs,4 attempts-Finally 740:The story of my metamorphosis

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by powerpuff » Fri Jan 21, 2011 5:30 am
Thanks a lot for putting up this amazing post. I agree with others. This is the most AMAZING post I have read here on this forum. Not that I have been here for very long,but out of all the debriefs I have read till now, this is the most insightful .
Thanks for taking the time to put up something so inspiring. All of us really appreciate this! Congratulations once again!

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by Empirestateofmind » Mon Jan 24, 2011 6:25 am
Heartiest congratulations on such a brilliant score. What a real metamorphosis you had. Truly respectable. :) By the way, which kinda of books did you read to help you ?

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by eternal_optimist » Wed Feb 02, 2011 6:15 pm
Empirestateofmind wrote:Heartiest congratulations on such a brilliant score. What a real metamorphosis you had. Truly respectable. :) By the way, which kinda of books did you read to help you ?
Sorry for the late reply. Office work doesn't leave much time to do anything else.
Regarding your question,I basically read everything under the sun. However, I could do that because I had a lot of time in hand.If you plan to take the GMAT within the next 3-4 months, you better be studying text which resembles more like the text you see in the passages on the GMAT. People here had recommended reading The Economist, The Scientific American ,Wall Street Journal or even TIME magazine,so you may wanna read them as all of them have quality articles.

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by ssgmatter » Fri Feb 11, 2011 7:39 am
your story is truly inspiring man.....i am too in the same boat and stuck at 640 and trying to take it to the golden cave....let us see......good luck for your applications....

i sent you a PM please respond to the same

best rgds
Best-
Amit

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by aspirant_mumbai » Tue Feb 15, 2011 2:24 am
Hi,

Congratulations. Your story is really an inspiration for all of us here.
I am also in the same boat though, I have a query.

Can the number of attempts have a negative effect on your application to B-Schools?

I will be appearing for a third attempt, so just wanted to know this.
Please help!

Regards.

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by sidnskid » Wed Feb 16, 2011 8:23 am
very inspiring post... congrats!!

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by saad.ahmed » Wed Feb 16, 2011 1:24 pm
Thanks for the great post and the inspiring debrief.

What strikes me is the help you gained from your "math whiz" friends.

Can you share some methods/examples of how they helped you verbalize a problem? I'd be curious to hear more about this approach.

Thanks

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by eternal_optimist » Thu Feb 17, 2011 4:18 am
aspirant_mumbai wrote:Hi,

Congratulations. Your story is really an inspiration for all of us here.
I am also in the same boat though, I have a query.

Can the number of attempts have a negative effect on your application to B-Schools?

I will be appearing for a third attempt, so just wanted to know this.
Please help!

Regards.
Usually, the schools don't have a problem with 3 attempts,but when it goes beyond that then they will obviously want a genuine reason as to why the number of attempts is so high.But at the end of the day each one of us is unique and if you're able to convince the Adcoms why you took the GMAT more than 2 times ,you should be fine.

@ sidnskid
Thanks guys for you wishes.
@ saad.ahmed
Ahh! The "Math Whiz kids" reminds me of those two guys. Till the time I had met them ,I was more of a calculation intensive kind of person i.e. I never used to observer things or patterns in Maths. They taught me to do that.For example, if you were to solve mixtures and alligations questions or set theory questions, you'd usually use the same old methods of approaching questions. How they solved these questions was that they tried to visualize these questions ,make it a real life scenario and then they used to ask me to find the answer and bingo I could answer those questions easily then. I think this really helped me in the way I approached questions as I became a more of visualization and observation centric person than a calculation or maths centric person.

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by forbidden » Fri Feb 18, 2011 7:57 am
take a bow optimist !
i sincerely wanna ask u this ?
did u ever use lsat material for r.c during your 3 yrs of preparation ?
i have a few pdfs on rcs frm lsat with me
gosh ! gotta tell u that they are too difficult to understand , forget about answering qns
wt do u sy

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by eternal_optimist » Sun Feb 20, 2011 7:50 am
forbidden wrote:take a bow optimist !
i sincerely wanna ask u this ?
did u ever use lsat material for r.c during your 3 yrs of preparation ?
i have a few pdfs on rcs frm lsat with me
gosh ! gotta tell u that they are too difficult to understand , forget about answering qns
wt do u sy
Thanks .Yes, I did go through some LSAT RCs but I found them very data intensive and weird. I did maybe 10-15 of those RCs but then decided not to do them further. I think the LSAT RCs are not quite like the RCs you're going on the GMAT.

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by forbidden » Mon Feb 21, 2011 5:58 pm
@optimst
so basically speaking u dont recommend practising rcs frm lsat

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by eternal_optimist » Wed Feb 23, 2011 7:48 am
gmathope wrote:You will inspire many GMAT takers for a very long time. Some debriefs just never dies. This is one of them!!

Congrats! You will do wonders..
Thanks a lot. It's great to see that my story has been able to inspire you. Hope you find the advices helpful

@optimst
so basically speaking u dont recommend practising rcs frm lsat
Yeah, I wouldn't recommend practising from LSAT RCs . However, that's just my opinion and you may definitely wanna consult some others who have used them.

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by forbidden » Wed Feb 23, 2011 9:06 am
i would certainly stick to ur opinion nd ruin my confidence by practicing lsat rcs .and most of all i just plan to do all the 3 editions of og itself and nothing else with respect to rcs would it be sufficient ?

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by forbidden » Wed Feb 23, 2011 9:06 am
i would certainly stick to ur opinion nd wouldnt ruin my confidence by practicing lsat rcs .and most of all i just plan to do all the 3 editions of og itself and nothing else with respect to rcs would it be sufficient ?

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by eternal_optimist » Sun Feb 27, 2011 12:55 am
forbidden wrote:i would certainly stick to ur opinion nd wouldnt ruin my confidence by practicing lsat rcs .and most of all i just plan to do all the 3 editions of og itself and nothing else with respect to rcs would it be sufficient ?
Sorry for the late reply. Yes, I think doing the 3 official Guide RCs should be sufficient. However, there are not many difficulty passages in the OGs and I remember the passages I got on the GMAT were quite complex ,so you prepare yourself accordingly. Are you also reading some journals or magazines ?