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IamRamki
- Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
- Posts: 6
- Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2011 5:20 pm
- Location: SJC
- Thanked: 1 times
- GMAT Score:730
730 it is! (Q49, V41). But the real verdict is, if I can do it at 48, 25 years after I graduated, young guys and gals can with no sweat. All you need is an uncompromising determination. So...here goes my story. My dream to return to the academia one day, preferably in India, to teach entrepreneurship and management got revived last November. My classmates who are professors at CMU and other top institutions advised me to start working on my PhD (I have been planning for years now!) ASAP if I'm serious about my objective. My experience as the founder and CEO of a boutique management consulting firm for 15 years, they said, combined with a good GMAT score, will make me an attractive (of course with a few caveats) candidate for top ranking schools (SC buffs can check this sentence for errors!). However they cautioned me to take this effort seriously because they know I have never been serious about my education even though I graduated from reputed institutions in India. I told myself, 'The best time to take GMAT was 25 years back......but the second best time is NOW!'. This is a borrowed quote....not mine. FYI, I have a Master's in Industrial Eng and a Bachelor's in Mechanical dept.
My approach:
Due to my engineering background, I wasn't too concerned about the quantitative part. Moreover, I like Math but detest RC and SC. I have lived in the US for about 20 years now but the limitations of being a non-native speaker linger. So as a first step, I decided to take GMAT without any preparation (I did of course familiarize myself with question types, exam format and try the two GMAC prep tests) to establish a baseline...a 'zero calibration' as I call it. I truly liked the test. They have put in efforts to test not only your academic knowledge but also your decision making skills. The score was 650 with Q48 and V33. 48 in Math was personally disappointing. But what I learned from the test was more interesting.
Quantitative:
I found that I was approaching it like an engineer. I got obsessed with certain problems and spent more than 5 minutes per problem in three instances. My pride was holding me from moving on to other questions. Even though most of basic Math was green in my mind, I had to spend time drawing Venn diagrams and derive equations etc. ..wasting precious time. I was making innumerable careless errors in simple calculations and answered many questions without even reading the problems completely. I was trying to solve too many problems mentally as though it's an anathema to use the yellow pad. In DS, rather than using numeric values to simplify things, I was trying to conceptually prove and disprove. I was losing my cool when I encountered problems that I know I can solve but need more than 3 minutes to solve them.
By early February, I started my serious preparation. Having indentified my shortcomings, I decided to buy Manhattan's SC (more about SC later) book to get access to their 6 tests. I also bought 5 GMAT CAT from 800score. You don't prepare for GMAT quantitative the same way you do for advanced Calculus. I started using this forum on a daily basis. As I started taking the MGMAT and 800score tests, I saw my scores getting progressively better still exposing my areas of weakness. It finally boils down to this. How to correctly identify early that a problem is not worth attempting or continuing any further. It depends on where you are on the test (early part, middle or last few questions), how comfortable you are with the topic, your own personal shortcomings, how much time is left, how you feel about your performance so far, probability of making errors if it involves long calculations etc., because your objective is to maximize your score and NOT solve every problem you encounter. I'm sure guys/gals in 750 plus range will disagree. On the test day, I got to test my technique out. I skipped 3 questions even though I could solve them if given 4 minutes. Also, I learned to relax a little bit during the test. I took 20 seconds mental break.....twice and visualized the days I used to jog on the beaches of Florida and Dubai. In DS, by reading both the 'givens' before I attacked the problem, I could understand the problem better and broaden my thinking.
With all this, I could improve my score by just 1 point.......49 from 48. Go figure! But I have no regrets.
I will post my Verbal prep in a couple of days....a more interesting story! Beatthegmat forum .......as the name says it.....helps you really beat the GMAT!
My approach:
Due to my engineering background, I wasn't too concerned about the quantitative part. Moreover, I like Math but detest RC and SC. I have lived in the US for about 20 years now but the limitations of being a non-native speaker linger. So as a first step, I decided to take GMAT without any preparation (I did of course familiarize myself with question types, exam format and try the two GMAC prep tests) to establish a baseline...a 'zero calibration' as I call it. I truly liked the test. They have put in efforts to test not only your academic knowledge but also your decision making skills. The score was 650 with Q48 and V33. 48 in Math was personally disappointing. But what I learned from the test was more interesting.
Quantitative:
I found that I was approaching it like an engineer. I got obsessed with certain problems and spent more than 5 minutes per problem in three instances. My pride was holding me from moving on to other questions. Even though most of basic Math was green in my mind, I had to spend time drawing Venn diagrams and derive equations etc. ..wasting precious time. I was making innumerable careless errors in simple calculations and answered many questions without even reading the problems completely. I was trying to solve too many problems mentally as though it's an anathema to use the yellow pad. In DS, rather than using numeric values to simplify things, I was trying to conceptually prove and disprove. I was losing my cool when I encountered problems that I know I can solve but need more than 3 minutes to solve them.
By early February, I started my serious preparation. Having indentified my shortcomings, I decided to buy Manhattan's SC (more about SC later) book to get access to their 6 tests. I also bought 5 GMAT CAT from 800score. You don't prepare for GMAT quantitative the same way you do for advanced Calculus. I started using this forum on a daily basis. As I started taking the MGMAT and 800score tests, I saw my scores getting progressively better still exposing my areas of weakness. It finally boils down to this. How to correctly identify early that a problem is not worth attempting or continuing any further. It depends on where you are on the test (early part, middle or last few questions), how comfortable you are with the topic, your own personal shortcomings, how much time is left, how you feel about your performance so far, probability of making errors if it involves long calculations etc., because your objective is to maximize your score and NOT solve every problem you encounter. I'm sure guys/gals in 750 plus range will disagree. On the test day, I got to test my technique out. I skipped 3 questions even though I could solve them if given 4 minutes. Also, I learned to relax a little bit during the test. I took 20 seconds mental break.....twice and visualized the days I used to jog on the beaches of Florida and Dubai. In DS, by reading both the 'givens' before I attacked the problem, I could understand the problem better and broaden my thinking.
With all this, I could improve my score by just 1 point.......49 from 48. Go figure! But I have no regrets.
I will post my Verbal prep in a couple of days....a more interesting story! Beatthegmat forum .......as the name says it.....helps you really beat the GMAT!
