I just Beat The GMAT!

Thanks GOVI,

I just booked my interview and tickets for saturday. made a lot of phone calls to my relatives(ISB alumnus etc) and deduced that jain GMBA is a top brand in India(9th in asia).

And besides their interview process is awesome lasting 6 hrs , so a good training all in all with a RS 2500+flight tickets+48 hrs time investment on a weekend :mrgreen:

I might think again before accepting their offer(if I get one),


One BIG problem->I do not remember completely what I filled in their application form. And we cannot access the form now !!. I was having a few drinks with my friends and I recall I had ticked IT as my 1st choice and Finance as 2nd. now thats gonna give me a foot in the mouth in a personal interview given my current profession. but i do have knowledge on balance sheets, sap IT etc. So should be fun.

bblast wrote:Rishi, have u researched SPJMIR dubai /singapore program ? I got an interview call out of nowhere. I had just casually filled out its form couple of days back.
Is it worth taking a flight from Delhi to Mumbai for the same ?
I asked a good friend who is in COX school who has a lot of knowledge on bschools. He discouraged me and suggested that I try in better bschool next year rather than going to SP Jain global mba.

Congratulations,Pushkal for getting your first call of the season. I do have a good amount of knowledge about SPJain GMBA because I had an admit from there last year. If they would not have changed the venue, your interview will take place at Bharti Bhavan ,the SPJain Mumbai campus. You'll firstly write an essay. Then there is going to an entire round of document verification And then you'll have an interview.In all, it will take you around 6-7 hours. I was pretty much grilled in the interview but finally got selected .However, I decided not to join the program after doing a lot of research. I spoke to an alumnus of the college and he gave me a frank first hand opinion about the school. Here's my take

PROS:
1. The academic program is quite rigorous.
2. It is just a one year MBA program so you start earning earlier as you will be out of the workforce for only 1 year(the typical advantage of a 1 yr MBA program )
3.The prorgam spans Dubai/Signapore .This will provide you good exposure.
3. The quality of faculty and students is quite good.

Cons :
1. The program cost is around $38k which is not a small amount of money. It makes more sense to add in a few more ten thousand dollars and go for a more reputed school .
2. The brand name is still not well established. The alumnus told me that he intends to do a second MBA after working for another 4-5 years. He said that if you're aiming for the top jobs, a SPJain MBA wouldn't help you much or rather an MBA from a second rung business school does not help much. He intends to go for a second MBA at INSEAD after working for four or five years. I spoke to a few other people and they also didn't have a great opinion about the school. SPJain Dubai/Singapore has been till now considered a second rung brother of its Mumbai Campus. So based on all the opinions about the school, I decided to wait and look for better options. However, I think each individual is different and what might not suit my requirements, might suit yours, so you may wanna research further.

The good thing is that the school has broken into the top 100 schools in the latest Financial Times rankings, so that may provide a great boost to the overall reputation of the school and a lot of new recruiters may be willing to visit the campus and offer better roles, and compensation.
I think that you should for the interview and if you get through then you may decide whether you want to take up the offer or go to some other school.
By the way,when are you going to hear from the Canadian schools you have applied to ?

@Rishi- the canadian and US schools will update me in the last week of march and SP Jain wants payment by 21st march if I make through everything on the 5th :/

Did u also opt for IT management at jain ? I have been rampaging pagalguy for some material for the 6 hour grill but did not find anything for IT. Do u remember any specific questions ? case study ? essay topics ?

@Pushkal.
No, I didn't opt for IT management. I had opted for Marketing. They grilled me like anything. For which which domain of Marketing do you wanna get in ? Which company's marketing strategy did you like the most lately and why ? Then the topic switched to cars and I was asked the difference between a Mercedes and a BMW (even the full form of BMW ,which unfortunately till that time I didn't know ).There were the usual questions also such as Why MBA etc but all in all it was not a stereotypical MBA admission interview in which you are asked the same old set of questions which they ask to every candidate. Post-MBA, what kind of profile you're looking at ?IT Consulting ?

what did u wear on D Day?? people on pagalguy are too serious about the interview and all are coming in suits :/.

As I was already on a business trip to Delhi I am not carrying many clothes, I have a white straight-slim fit benetton trouser and a crisp purple striped shirt. hope this will do ?? I don't wana spend any more money for this interview and shop for perfect business formals now..

also did they question u on the second specialization u chose ? i dnt remember wat i ticked in the second specialization. :roll:

did u apply with the current gmat score ? or spjat cat score ?

@Pushkal,

I didn't have a suit, so went wearing a plain shirt,trouser and a tie. If I remember, around 60% people had come in suit and the rest 40% were without suits. Though a suit definitely makes you look smarter,and more professional, but as long as you dress smartly, I don't think that not wearing a suit will be any kind of hindrance in your selection.

Like you,I don't remember what was the second specialization I had chosen. I hadn't taken the GMAT when I had applied. I used both the CAT score and the SPJAT score. Given the number of entrance exams we Indians take, we seem to be obsessed with tests.Don't we ? By the way, Do let me know how did the interview go. I'm all excited to hear from you. Al the best!

Great score rishi raj. congragulations!
I remember reading your post a few weeks back and then I lost it! So could not post back. But, I remembered the books that you had suggested v- RC 99 and SC grail. I bought both of them and I must say they are awesome!

I have a question for you on the CR strategy : For me, CR accuracy is about 85% only if I note down things, as the MGMAT book says, if i dont note down anything and try to do it mentally, i get 50% wrong!
so do u think it is a bad idea to continue with this strategy given that it takes time almost 2 mins for each ques? i have my test this month

@Nehs
No, it is not a bad idea to take notes while doing a CR questions but it is definitely a bad idea to do so in every question. Note taking is a very effective method but the flip side to this method is that it is time consuming. You should use this method mostly in questions in which you have difficulty understanding the argument. In dfficult questions, this method will save you the time of re-reading the argument and will not let you get confused in options. So this indeed is a very POWERFUL method of tackling questions. However, you should not become overtly dependent on this method. A lot of the CR questions can be done without taking notes. I used to avoid taking notes for Strengthen/Weaken type of questions as most of the times I knew what kind of option should I be looking for . However, for assumption and Inference questions,I found note taking to be a more effective method. Remember, whatever be the case, you should not be spending more than 2 minutes on any CR question. For some CR question, you may end up spending 2.5 minutes, but you should be able to balance out the time by taking lesser time in some other questions.
Don't experiment what I have suggested in a practise CAT as you may have difficulty figuring out when to take down notes and when not to. Rather pick a block of practise questions from the OG or any other source, and do the experimentation there and see where you need to fine tune.

rishi raj wrote:@Nehs
No, it is not a bad idea to take notes while doing a CR questions but it is definitely a bad idea to do so in every question. Note taking is a very effective method but the flip side to this method is that it is time consuming. You should use this method mostly in questions in which you have difficulty understanding the argument. In dfficult questions, this method will save you the time of re-reading the argument and will not let you get confused in options. So this indeed is a very POWERFUL method of tackling questions. However, you should not become overtly dependent on this method. A lot of the CR questions can be done without taking notes. I used to avoid taking notes for Strengthen/Weaken type of questions as most of the times I knew what kind of option should I be looking for . However, for assumption and Inference questions,I found note taking to be a more effective method. Remember, whatever be the case, you should not be spending more than 2 minutes on any CR question. For some CR question, you may end up spending 2.5 minutes, but you should be able to balance out the time by taking lesser time in some other questions.
Don't experiment what I have suggested in a practise CAT as you may have difficulty figuring out when to take down notes and when not to. Rather pick a block of practise questions from the OG or any other source, and do the experimentation there and see where you need to fine tune.

rishiraj, thanks for ur reply.
looks like it is natural to get most questions right when we take notes I have made this a habit now and without note taking im not able to concentrate or attack the problem. however, if it were just taking me 1:45 mins then it is fine but unfortunately this method takes me more than 2 mins and consequesntly i have to rush on 3-4 questions to complete the section on time. i will try to see if ur strategy works for me. will do some easy quest from OG without taking notes and see if it works. thanks!

hello raj!

I will start reviewing RC passages in the verbal review. I am planning to work through 2-3 passages per day.
Both my RC performance and accuracy are low
Do you recommend me to work through the passages in order - with or without pacing?

If now possible, this will be an attempt to increase the RC score 20days before real exam. thanks!

bkw wrote:hello raj!

I will start reviewing RC passages in the verbal review. I am planning to work through 2-3 passages per day.
Both my RC performance and accuracy are low
Do you recommend me to work through the passages in order - with or without pacing?

If now possible, this will be an attempt to increase the RC score 20days before real exam. thanks!

I think I can probably help you out with RC if you can just give a quick review of your approach while doing RC passages .Maybe you are not approaching RCs the right way-the way you read passages ,the way you approach questions etc.
By the way, weren't you supposed to be taking the exam by 15th March ?

rishi raj wrote:

bkw wrote:hello raj!

I will start reviewing RC passages in the verbal review. I am planning to work through 2-3 passages per day.
Both my RC performance and accuracy are low
Do you recommend me to work through the passages in order - with or without pacing?

If now possible, this will be an attempt to increase the RC score 20days before real exam. thanks!

I think I can probably help you out with RC if you can just give a quick review of your approach while doing RC passages .Maybe you are not approaching RCs the right way-the way you read passages ,the way you approach questions etc.
By the way, weren't you supposed to be taking the exam by 15th March ?

Things change - So do GMAT dates. =) The reason why the test date was postponed was simply because I did not feel confident at all with verbal and that I was in the middle of the knewton course I am taking. However, the appointment is now last of March.

At knewton I have been thought to try to look for these things when I read the passage for the first time:
M (main point of the whole passage)
A (author's attitude, negative, positive etc.)
P (purpose, why was it written?)
S (structure)

So I treat both long and short passages equally starting with writing
M:
A:
P:
S:
on my note board. After this I start to read through the whole passage from start to end. I am quite slow on RC so lately I have only worked the structure S: above.
I take notes for S as I am reading each paragraph, and try to in short write important things from that passage
example
S:
p1: introduction to the iron age
this is different
p2: other author believes this
p3: the main point from last paragraph here

After this when I have skipped M A P, I start working the questions. And often I even struggle with primary purpose questions.

What I have found to be a problem time it takes for me to work through a whole passage and all it questions. I maybe take 1-2 more minutes than I should for working the passage and answering all the questions.
When I read, especially under real test conditions such as CAT tests, my brain seem to be fried and go idle mode so I find my self reading e.g. a sentence without actually thinking of what I am reading (no processing). When I find myself go in "idle mode" for a sentence, or that I did not grasp a sentence, then I go back and re read that sentence from start and try to really focus more and take notes.

--

Now, I have heard that long and short passages can be treated differently.
LP: structure is often the same?
P intro..
P facts..
P conclusion/facts/contrast

And for main point questions I should start working the passage as:
* read first paragraph carefully
* read the topic sentence of each paragraph and just skim/skip everything else.
* come up with what you think is the main point BEFORE watching at the available answers.
* if the last paragraph contains a distinct contrast/opposite view point that is is different from everything else in the passage, do NOT include it when coming up with a main point.

Neither for other questions types nor answers do I have any approach?

Short Passage: I simply go with MAPS, read the passage, take notes, and try to work the questions. Especially for fact question I have to go back and spend a quite good while trying to find out what what I think is the answer.


Today I started to work 2-3 RC passages in the VerbalReview. I do time all my passages, and it is taking just to long... :.(
Since, I have my test in about two-tree weeks I have planned to only work through the VerbalReview RCs, and those that are available in knewton's practice questions which is probably 5-10 more passages that I have scored poor on too
Although I have a the Economist magazine, I have no plan to read it now... this might be wrong? But I have kind of prioritized my VerbalReview RC passages and CR in VerbalReview.

I don't know if I can improve my RC (and CR...) in 15-20 days, and right now I feel kind of clueless and confused. I have tons of log documents, probably +40pages of problems I have got wrong while preparing. It is logs from both quant and verbal. I am afraid that there will be limited time to review those error logs when I try to focus on RC (and CR) now.

Am I completely out of luck, or do you think I can handle RC (and CR) with the right passage reading and question answering approaches? Thanks Raj!

@bkw
I have messaged Ron to reply to your post as I think he'd be able to handle your query as it is quite specific.For some reason, the message is not getting delivered and is still there in my "outbox" instead of the "sentbox". In the meantime, go through the following videos,if you haven't already, which are a part of the "Thursday with Ron" series . I am sure that you'll find them useful even if you know a lot of strategies

Go through "August 19,2010" video for Long Passages
For Short passages, you may wanna go through "September 9,2010"
Since you're struggling with the primary purpose type of questions, go through "January 6,2011" video in which Ron gives tricks to tackle RCs.

Rishi I am back with a different agenda, but I believe this discussion will be healthy for a lot of readers :


I am planning a retake with 3 months of solid study Starting 1st april 2011.

As u know, I have already appeared gmat once 47/34-5.5, looking for a high 700 now and apply to ISB/Insead/Nanyang this year(2012-2013). studied only 37 days last time over for a decent splitted 650. Got calls from a couple colleges this year but not taking it up.


Profile by august 2012 : Professional experience - 4 years
2 yr top IT firm-SAP analyst.
2 yr entrepreneurship-managing a manufacturing plant(Operations).
1.5 year TEO(the earth organization south africa)-NGO-exec head operations- India.
Engineer from Univ of Pune, decent grades all over.

I am a good writer of essays/sop's. I reviewed the GRE sop's of a few friends and my personal goal essays are also surprisingly good as per feedback of most people who read them.

Also this year I had applied to all colleges for OTM(operations and tech management). I dont think its intelligent for me to get back to IT after a long break of 2 years.

How is OTM at ISB/Insead ? DO you know abt employment opportunities that come up for the same? I dont wanna come back to own business immediately after an MBA. At least a coule of years back at employment with a huge firm is gonna give me a lot of business exposure.

I am planning eveything in advance for next year. This year I went with a slack approach and screwd up eveything.