Hi All,
Not long time ago, I got back from my interview to Ross, which went pretty good. So thank you for your support and kind wishes.
I got so many questions in private. Most of them are similar, so I figured out it will be easier to write another post so that the rest can benefit (and I will save a lot of time).
So let's start:
Quant strategies:
Many of you questioned me about my quant strategies. Frankly speaking, I never had problem with the Quant section and my scores ranged between 48 and 51 (in practice tests and the real GMATs). Please read my response to fareenj. But in short - I have good tips that I recommended some of my friends which worked well for them:
- 1. Register to GMATClub and become a follower of their Quantitative famous moderator - Bunuel - who consistently answers about 5-15 questions a day, providing detailed explanations.
- 2. Next, Check bunuel name signature that has links to summaries of many topics in Quant. I think it's the best Quant material you can find - fully detailed, with examples, and it provides many math shortcuts to solve questions, the kind of tricks the GMAT is looking for.
- 3. Also, GMAT Club provides 25-30 Quant tests, the hardest I've found. Worth every penny.
I usually finished Quant about 5 min before the time so I don't have insights here apart from practice a lot to be able solve every question in every level. The quant concepts, for me, were the easiest to master (either you solved the question correctly or not).
RC
I got many questions regarding my RC strategy. Here it goes. As soon as you get RC question, you write down the following table with number of rows equal to the number of paragraphs.
In the structure cell you write few words that describe the structure of the idea presented in the first 1-2 sentences (such as: point of view, a discovery, general idea, an experiment results, etc) and in the keyword cell you fill all the keywords from that paragraph (dates, names, etc). Then, skim the rest of the paragraph and find transition words that point to important ideas (such as: another experiment, a counter premise, exception to the experiment results, contradiction to common beliefs, etc). You do that for each paragraphs. At the end, review quickly the table and make sure to understand the theme of the passage in general .
DETAILS ARE NOT IMPORTANT at this point!! Don't waste your time trying to remember. This approach is very hard to master, because you feel you don't understand the passage at all when you start to answer the questions, but believe me, it is working. When you see a general questions - such as main point, author p.o.v, paragraph function, etc - use the table to answer the question. For specific questions - identify the relevant passage (sometimes you need to use your common sense to locate the passage, it won't be so easy, but with practice you'll get better), read it through and answer the question.
As for extra reading material - I forced myself to read on daily basis at least 1 hour the nytimes, the economist, and science news. I downloaded these applications to my iPhone and just read in the morning and before I went to sleep.
Irene contact details
As for Irene - since I got MANY private requests for her details (more than 50 requests
), I will send her an email and ask if I can publish her contact information and see if she is OK with that. Either way, she is travelling right now in Africa and have limited access to means of communications (and in general she is very busy tutor) so don't expect to have a lesson tomorrow. It will take some time to get in touch with her.
Error log
I didn't really use one, but I reviewed once every week my mistakes from the last week.
CR
I read PowerScore CR bible. It helped me to realize the types of questions and the types of errors I need to expect on the test day. Here I've noticed something that Ron Puerel talked about - the more I tried to formalized the process of answering those questions, the more I answered questions incorrectly. I was so obssessed with decomposing the argument to elements (premise, conclusion, transition words) that it affected my understanding of what I am reading. So, I formed my own approach that worked perfectly for me (I barely made CR mistakes) - I read the question stem first, understanding the question type. Then, I read the argument slowly and after each sentence I moved my eyes from the screen and paraphrasing it in my head. I didn't rush to the answers. Throughout the process I identified the conclusion and verified I understand it. Only after that, I read the answer choices and the answers usually was very obvious to me. In my opinion, good grip of the argument is 90% of the solution. During my preparation time, I used Ron study approach - whenever I answered CR question incorrectly, I dedicated significant time to write a parallel argument and answer choices with the same logic (but with different elements and topics). It really helped me to take my CR understanding to the next level.
Q&A (to some of your questions)
Vidhya16 - what was the breakdown of your score? I also thinks mastering the concepts and answering correctly the questions is important before taking the real GMAT.
Vin - as for my SC learning style, I solved SCs in batches of 10 questions, and then went over each question and analyzed it thoroughly. I wrote detailed solution to each answer choice (errors tested, what I notice and what I didn't, whether there was a faster way to solve the question). I tried to repeat what I originally thought when solving the question and understand how I could have done it better or what I did wrong.
Hope it helps! Promise to post following Irene's reply.
eladshush
