770/99%/6/87% - V47/99% Q49/88% - 10/11/08 - Int'l Student - The Beat The GMAT Forum

shawnWharton: Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts; Posts: 3; Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2009 7:48 am; GMAT Score:770

770/99%/6/87% - V47/99% Q49/88% - 10/11/08 - Int'l Student

by shawnWharton » Tue Feb 03, 2009 8:20 am

hi guys,

I'm currently applying for MBA progs (Wharton Lauder R2 fyi) and discovered this forum. after browsing through some of your posts (esp. the stickies) I realized that I was really fortunate to get the score I did considering my relative lack of preparation.

So I'm not sure how much help I can be but I'm happy to assist anyone with questions.

1st Try: 690/88%/6/87% V41/92% Q42/63% 8/27/08
i had a bunch of logistical problems getting here but finally arrived about an hour early and took the test right away. did not stop for breaks. I also had the wrong impression of the cat scoring system so i emphasised getting answers right as opposed to answering all the questions. this resulted in me missing out on 4 or 5 of the final few questions of Q. however, V i finished 1/2 an hour early. breezed through.

2nd Try: (the score you see above)
it was a blessed day. I arrived in a different, unfamiliar testing center and would almost certainly have been late had i not decided to hitch a ride (yeah, stick your thumb out and pray) to the testing center in WAYNE PENNSYLVANIA (idk why i'm telling you this, just that i'm a lil superstitious and hope that it brings you good luck too) barely 10 mins before the test was scheduled to begin. Good luck continued from then on. I just guessed my way through tough Q's and made sure to finish all the Q's, and similarly breezed through V's with 1/2 an hour to spare. when the guy at the desk congratulated me on my 770, i was muttering "i hope that's enough".. shows how much i knew about the whole mba applications field then.

prep: literally i can tell you everything that I did
1st Try: 2 days before, try the 2 computer tests provided by GMAC. note problematic areas and do the additional computer tests again provided by GMAC on those topics. the night before, bought cheapest kaplan book i could find to do some random questions in those weak areas. Got some sleep.
2nd Try: I actually did this in the midst of some very seriously involved extracurricular activities (as in, >60 hours a week type deals) but i think the distractions put the whole GMAT trial in perspective and actually made me less stressed as I went in to the exam. That plus my self-assessment that the biggest thing I did wrong on the 1st try was to not answer all the questions, so I simply resolved to make good on that decision. Did not do any computer testing, did some more kaplan exercises on the weak areas while on the train to the place (and finding out that I would have to hitchhike further in to the center! NO TAXIS WTF) You will also notice that my verbal improved from the first time - no idea why that happened except that I got extremely comfortable with the questions and had *got* into the tester's mindset and was looking at the questions from the tester's point of view so it got increasingly apparent which answers were there to just throw you off.

i guess if you ask me the big takeaways are that although i know exactly how you GMAT takers are feeling, try your hardest to keep some perspective in mind and know that the GMAT should only be a small part of who and what you are althou the big bad agencies would have you dedicate your life to prepping for the damn thing (how else would they earn their keep). And because you aren't so worn out by the whole prep process, you actually think better and clearer for the unique new questions that tend to come up only on the GMAT and nowhere else (unless you signed up for that scandalous GMAT site a while back). Also, finish all the questions (Kaplan fooled me the first time giving me that bloody useless "binomial tree" model of CAT scoring, which is total-well, ok, partial- Bull if you ask me). I was a little worried about the AWA but I just read through some of the mindless prattle offered by the Kaplan book I had and resolved to simply outdo the cheap argument devices on display. (I should caution that I don't have much of a problem with the English language...)

ok i hope i don't come across as cocky, i just want to give you the confidence that i feel many of you need to survive this sometimes grueling process. After the GMAT comes the actual applying for schools.. now THAT took me about 2-3 months. oh and a 690 is fine even for superelite schools, i just felt that given the circumstances i detailed above it might be worthwhile to see what I should've got if I had known that completing all the questions was that important.

ok yup i'll try to reply any questions posted here, hopefully this msg board's email notification thing works. if not, find me on wharton's S2S.

good luck to one and all. diamonds are only forged in the hardest and harshest of conditions.

Quote

gosh u guys are fast.

received quite a few PMs on verbal strats so thought I'd share them all here.

Thanks for your well wishes btw =) waiting to hear back from schools is quite stressful and I appreciate any opportunity to distract myself.

VERBAL
What I did for Verbal prep
did some exercises on RC, my weakest question type

Total hours used to study
2-3 hrs total

Materials I used
the GMAC-provided computer tests (did them all) and some quick questions from the cheapest kaplan 2009 i could find (i think it cost me about $18 in all)

Study Timing
night before/on the way to the test

Did I use solved Q's in OG in sets or something
I don't really know what OG is, sorry.

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RC pointers

DO THIS QUESTION ON YOUR OWN BEFORE READING FURTHER. TIME YOURSELF.
WHILE DOING THE QUESTION WRITE DOWN THE PRECISE STEPS YOU TOOK AND LOGICAL PROCEDURES, and then COMPARE THOSE TO MINE AND SEE HOW YOU CAN SYNTHESIZE THE TWO TO CREATE YOUR OWN tres AWESOME VERBAL QUESTION SOLVING METHOD.

Sample Question
Schools expect textbooks to be a valuable source of information for students. My research suggests, however, that textbooks that address the place of Native Americans within the history of the United States distort history to suit a particular cultural value system. In some textbooks, for example, settlers are pictured as more humane, complex, skillful, and wise than Native Americans. In essence, textbooks stereotype and depreciate the numerous Native American cultures while reinforcing the attitude that the European conquest of the New World denotes the superiority of European cultures. Although textbooks evaluate Native American architecture, political systems, and homemaking, I contend that they do it from an ethnocentric, European perspective without recognizing that other perspectives are possible.

One argument against my contention asserts that, by nature, textbooks are culturally biased and that I am simply underestimating children's ability to see through these biases. Some researchers even claim that by the time students are in high school, they know they cannot take textbooks literally. Yet substantial evidence exists to the contrary. Two researchers, for example, have conducted studies that suggest that children's attitudes about particular cultures are strongly influenced by the textbooks used in schools. Given this, an ongoing, careful review of how school textbooks depict Native Americans is certainly warranted.

Which of the following would most logically be the topic of the paragraph immediately following the passage?
• (A) specific ways to evaluate the biases of United States history textbooks
• (B) the centrality of the teacher's role in United States history courses
• (C) nontraditional methods of teaching United States history
• (D) the contributions of European immigrants to the development of the United States
• (E) ways in which parents influence children's political attitudes

Prep strat:
1. First of all to all you non-native speakers of English out there, I'm quite native so bear this in mind. However, you are competing with the rest of us native speakers when you take the GMAT so this is no excuse to concede defeat. You have to work extra hard just to be on the same level because you're using a second (or third) language. So don't just think you can get by with, for example, a slow reading speed. you should have completed scanning through the above passage in +/- 30 seconds. If you took longer, you need more practice speed-reading. Remember you are only reading for certain things (see the next section) and you couldn't give a rat's ass if the Question was about "Native american cultures" or about Oprah's hairdo.

2. So remember that the testers just want to try to throw you off as much as possible. Maybe a good way to get into their mode of thinking is grabbing any random op-ed from a newspaper, extracting two paragraphs, and applying the same questions that you have seen in your practice tests. Then, come up with 1 right answer and 4 close but misleading/just plain wrong answers. In other words, BE the tester, use the tricks that you see them using.

Keep in mind when doing the GMAT RC:
1. Every RC passage has a thesis (even this para I'm writing has one). Look it up if you don't know precisely what the word means. Theses can take a variety of stances depending on the subject matter. Doing well in RC's require you to correctly identify these two things. For example, in this question the thesis cue couldn't be any more obvious: "My research suggests, however, that..." and "I contend that they..." You should be able to mentally highlight (at speed, you have no time to do anything else in the real test) the words "testbooks...distort history" and "textbooks evaluate... without recognizing other perspectives." Use this insight to solve questions like "Would the author agree with..." and so on, and for goodness sake FOCUS on every key word and don't be careless.

2. This thesis is loosely connected to the passage's argument structure, which for all intents and purposes you should treat as an entirely different variable. The structure cue is also pretty blatant: "One argument against my contention asserts that" and "Although...I contend that". So this is an example of the classic "straw man" argument - state your thesis, set up some really very lame and contrived valid objection, and then totally demolish it, ultimately proving the truth of your thesis by the utter and complete destruction of your defenceless straw man. In fact this is what the featured question specifically requires: The first two have been done - it remains to demolish and restate the thesis. How do you do so? Is the thesis identified in (1) supported by option B? It focuses on textbooks, not teachers. Option C? again, textbooks ONLY. FOCUS. Option D? (What? how is that relavant?) Option E? Again, textbooks, not parents. I know how dumb I'm making this sound but it really is that simple. Don't get into that psychological panic attack when you see this question.

3. A quick clue to completing the entire thing in under 30 seconds is to ignore the entire first paragraph except the last sentence, and then ignore all other paragraphs except for their first sentences. This is the vomit-inducing formula they teach in US college writing courses that defines Good Writing and RC's use these a. lot. The last sentence of the first para is usually the "essay condensed into a sentence", good for predicting both structure and thesis. and little else. but i digress.

And there you have it. Keep in mind that GMAT passages are the simplest of creatures - in any real-life essay, options A through E are feasible in the context of a much longer dissertation on the failures of the US educational system. The best way to rationalize this is to tell yourself that these essays are meant to stand alone as 3 or 4 paragraph short essays, so it wouldn't really do to keep introducing new factors into the equation.

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CR pointers

DO THIS QUESTION ON YOUR OWN BEFORE READING FURTHER. TIME YOURSELF.
WHILE DOING THE QUESTION WRITE DOWN THE PRECISE STEPS YOU TOOK AND LOGICAL PROCEDURES, and then COMPARE THOSE TO MINE AND SEE HOW YOU CAN SYNTHESIZE THE TWO TO CREATE YOUR OWN tres AWESOME VERBAL QUESTION SOLVING METHOD.

Question
The cost of producing radios in Country Q is ten percent less than the cost of producing radios in Country Y. Even after transportation fees and tariff charges are added, it is still cheaper for a company to import radios from Country Q to Country Y than to produce radios in Country Y.
The statements above, if true, best support which of the following assertions?
• (A) Labor costs in Country Q are ten percent below those in Country Y.
• (B) Importing radios from Country Q to Country Y will eliminate ten percent of the manufacturing jobs in Country Y.
• (C) The tariff on a radio imported from Country Q to Country Y is less than ten percent of the cost of manufacturing the radio in Country Y.
• (D) The fee for transporting a radio from Country Q to Country Y is more than ten percent of the cost of manufacturing the radio in Country Q.
• (E) It takes ten percent less time to manufacture a radio in Country Q than it does in Country Y.

Think:
First sentence says: Q = Cheap 10%
Second Sentence says: Q - import cost = Cheap <10%
A says: Q Labor Cheap. Nah.
B says: Y radio = 10% of Y employment
C says: import cost <10%
D says: import cost >10%
E says: manufacturing time - Q<Y => no NECESSARY indication on cost

E may be true (its probably there to throw you off again, evil testers they are) but C is the only one that is necessarily true.

GMAC says on its website https://www.mba.com/mba/TheGMAT/TestStru ... efault.htm
"Critical Reasoning questions are designed to test the reasoning skills involved in making arguments, evaluating arguments, and formulating or evaluating a plan of action. Questions are based on materials from a variety of sources. No familiarity with the specific subject matter is needed."

The last sentence is bullshit. Be familiar with basic microeconomics, and logical fallacies that every student learns in Philo 101. If you are quant-oriented, often you can reduce arguments to mathematical statements like I did in the example.