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GMAT 2.0 Reloaded - SREAK's Blog

by sreak1089 » Fri Jan 01, 2010 6:55 am
Folks,

Wish you a Happy Near and welcome to Sreak's blog.

My stop-start GMAT journey is still in "Present Continuous" mode and hope to have a "Future Perfect" score on Jan 29th :) Here's a bit of history. I started my GMAT journey last year, March, prepared for 5 months and took GMAT 1.0 and bombed with a 570 (Q48, V21). Since then I have really worked hard especially on Verbal and seeing some improvement now. Following are my recent scores in CATs:

GMAT Prep # 1 - 680 (Q48, V36) - 26/11/2009
GMAT Prep # 2 - 620 (Q46, V30) - 30/11/2009
MGMAT # 6 - 670 (Q45, V36) - 13/12/2009
MGMAT # 1A - 670 (Q43, V38) - 20/12/2009
MGMAT # 2A - 690 (Q47, V37) - 27/12/2009

That 7xx figure is still ellusive though. Have another 27 days to and my target is Q50+ in Quant and V40+ in Verbal. Hopefully, its not beyond my reach.

My study plan for the next 27 days, coming up in the next post.
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by sreak1089 » Fri Jan 01, 2010 7:14 am
Quant:

My weak areas are Geometry, word problems, mixture and allegations and of course Permutations & Combinations. Number Properties I thought is my stronger area, but my last two MGMAT CATs reveal few chinks in the armour, had only 29% accuracy. I noticed that I am troubled with "Divisibility and Primes" problems. I need to focus on these. Among PS and DS, I feel more comfortable with DS :) It might surprise you, but not so much for me coz, for a lazy guy like me, I don't have to solve the problem completely and find the answer, I only need to figure, if I can solve it or not :)

My Quant Strategy is to:

a) Work on the weaker areas
b) Study the "Advanced" lessons from MGMAT strategy guides for Word Translations, NP and Inequalities.
c) 99 percentile problems from Zuleron
d) Review OG 12 incorrect answered problems
e) Review MGMAT CAT incorrectly answered problems
f) Of course, solve 2-4 select problems from BTG

I am contemplating whether to buy 250 Challenging problems from MGMAT or not. I am currently inclined not to buy coz I think I have enough material for tough problems.. What say Guys??

Verbal strategy coming up in next post...
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by sreak1089 » Fri Jan 01, 2010 7:32 am
Verbal

As you would expect Verbal has been my weakness, but now a days, I keep telling myself, "Verbal is your new Strength, Verbal is your new Strength". I do this especially during my CATs, in the break time after the Quant part. Seem to be working for me :)

Here's what I am doing and planning to do on each of the Verbal areas:

Reading Comprehension:

Reading Comprehension was my weakest area during my first attempt and it still is, but to a smaller extent now.
What am I doing different this time? First, I have been reading a lot. Especially economist.com, scientificamerican.com
and Economic Times (Indian Business Daily). Second, I scribble key words while reading the passage. I never look at what I write, but some how it makes me feel I am reading actively now than I used to do before. Third, practise two-three passages per day, not necessarily every day, but most days in a week I would do this. I have seen an improvement in hit rate from 50-60% during my first attempt to about 80% hit rate now.

SC, CR coming up ....
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by sreak1089 » Fri Jan 01, 2010 7:58 am
Sentence Correction

I found MGMAT SC guide just a week before my GMAT 1.0. I could not make best use of it then, but since then it has been my best companion. Here is how I approached. I studied MGMAT SC guide completely once. Then started reading it all over again. This time, I did all the excercise problems for OG guide pertaining to each topic. This helped. Still relatively simple terms such as "Past participle", "Predication", "transitive and intransitive verbs" etc use to stumble me. This is when I decided to study a Grammar guide. I bought Wren and Martin English Grammar book and I am currently going through few of the topics from this book. I have couple of chapters to left after which, I will switch to MGMAT SC Guide. I will do another revision of SC Guide, I will go through each of the chapters, and will do 10 problems each from the OG guide. What next? I am not sure .... Should I study 1000 series? I doubt...May be I will practise ETS tests...

Critical Reasoning

Critical Reasoning - I am studying from LSAT PowerScore Critical Reasoning. Ofcourse, I have done OG 12 once. I am studying PowerScore CR along with practise from OG 12, have completed 50% so far with 87% accuracy. My current plan is to complete the PowerScore CR as much as I can ( I have studied 5 chapters so far). I need to study Conditional Reasoning, Cause and Effect Reasoning, Weaken, Strengthen and Numbers and Percentages chapters. Then revise and have a crack at few LSAT CR Qns. Revise OG 12 incorrectly answered ones. That's it I think !! Oh, I forgot, I need to find a source for practising Bold-faced Qns..Where can I find some?
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by sreak1089 » Fri Jan 01, 2010 8:03 am
Friends, suggestions, comments, reviews most welcome :)

Will keep you posted on my progress.
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by sreak1089 » Mon Jan 04, 2010 4:03 am
I am not able to find reliable source for 700-800 qns for Sentence Correction. Any pointers please????
Also, I find it very difficult to recognize a 700-800 question for Sentence Correction. On MGMAT Qns, I find some questions I am able to crack easily and later find they are 700-800 qns :)

For RC, so far I have gone through only OG questions and a daily dose of economist.com and scientific american. Any advice on resources for addition practice?
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by sreak1089 » Fri Jan 08, 2010 2:39 am
I haven't taken any full length CAT last week. Took a bit of break post Christmas. Haven't studied much lately, just been able to study at most an hour per day. Currently studying Conditional Reasoning from PowerScore LSAT LR guide..sloooooow progress :(

Another 3 weeks to go .........................
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by sreak1089 » Fri Jan 08, 2010 8:27 am
No comments for my posts bah :shock: :(
It's so boring talking to myself here :(
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by sreak1089 » Sat Jan 09, 2010 8:08 am
I have a doubt on Conditional reasoning problem that I studied in PowerScore CR.
Basically, it is about identifying Sufficient and Necessary condition.

Statement is: "People who excercise have an increased life span."

From the above statement we need to identify Sufficient and Necessary condition.

According to me "Sufficient condition" is "Increased Life Span" and necessary condition is "People must excercise".
Thus in PowerScore CR convetion, equation would be ILS --> E (ILS indicates Increased Life Span, E indicates People must excercise".

However, in the book, it is reverse, the Sufficient condition is identified as "People who excercise" and Necessary condition is identified as "Increased Life span". I am not able to understand why. Can any one, please clarify..
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by sreak1089 » Fri Jan 15, 2010 4:59 am
I completed studying Conditional reasoning and Weaken questions. Currently studying Cause & Effect Reasoning.
Also studied Verb tenses last week. Haven't studied Quant much apart from solving 16 PS or DS questions per day from OG guide and 99%ile GMATPrep questions. I took MGMAT 3A yesterday and scored 640 (Q42, V36) :( My quant scores are fluctuating wildly while my Verbal scores have been stable.

My Quant scores are ranging from Q42-Q47 on MGMAT and Verbal are ranging from V35-V38. I scored very poorly in Data Sufficiency in MGMAT 3A, with just 33% accuarcy................
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by Osirus@VeritasPrep » Fri Jan 15, 2010 7:17 am
sreak1089 wrote:I have a doubt on Conditional reasoning problem that I studied in PowerScore CR.
Basically, it is about identifying Sufficient and Necessary condition.

Statement is: "People who excercise have an increased life span."

From the above statement we need to identify Sufficient and Necessary condition.

According to me "Sufficient condition" is "Increased Life Span" and necessary condition is "People must excercise".
Thus in PowerScore CR convetion, equation would be ILS --> E (ILS indicates Increased Life Span, E indicates People must excercise".

However, in the book, it is reverse, the Sufficient condition is identified as "People who excercise" and Necessary condition is identified as "Increased Life span". I am not able to understand why. Can any one, please clarify..
"People who" introduces a sufficient condition. Let me see if I can list all of the sufficient condition indicator words off the top of my head, this will be good practice

Sufficient Indicator words:

If
When
Whenever
All
Any
Every
People who
in order to
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by Osirus@VeritasPrep » Fri Jan 15, 2010 7:18 am
We have the test around the same time. I am also taking it at the end of this month. Good luck to you, let me know how it turned out.
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by sreak1089 » Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:34 am
Yes, you are so very right. I interpreted the question wrongly as "If (you want to have increase life span) then you must excercise", while the correct interpretation I guess is "If (you excercise) you will have increase life span". Yes, "People who" is a sufficient condition indicator.

osirus0830 wrote:
sreak1089 wrote:I have a doubt on Conditional reasoning problem that I studied in PowerScore CR.
Basically, it is about identifying Sufficient and Necessary condition.

Statement is: "People who excercise have an increased life span."

From the above statement we need to identify Sufficient and Necessary condition.

According to me "Sufficient condition" is "Increased Life Span" and necessary condition is "People must excercise".
Thus in PowerScore CR convetion, equation would be ILS --> E (ILS indicates Increased Life Span, E indicates People must excercise".

However, in the book, it is reverse, the Sufficient condition is identified as "People who excercise" and Necessary condition is identified as "Increased Life span". I am not able to understand why. Can any one, please clarify..
"People who" introduces a sufficient condition. Let me see if I can list all of the sufficient condition indicator words off the top of my head, this will be good practice

Sufficient Indicator words:

If
When
Whenever
All
Any
Every
People who
in order to
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by sreak1089 » Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:54 am
How is your prep going on mate? Good luck to you too.. !!
osirus0830 wrote:We have the test around the same time. I am also taking it at the end of this month. Good luck to you, let me know how it turned out.
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by Osirus@VeritasPrep » Fri Jan 15, 2010 9:39 am
Prep is going ok. The last 50 points is definitely the hardest to get. I hope to raise my score 50 points from my last practice test, but in two weeks, I don't know if that is enough time. Sentence Correction and data suffiency are my arch nemesis...lol
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