Some Basic Questions

[GMAT Freak]

Hello,

I started preparing for GMAT a month ago or so. I bought two books so far:

1. GMAT Official Guide 11

2. McGraw-Hill's GMAT 2008 with 6 practice tests

First Question:

I asked all the business schools I am applying to and they said 650 is the average for their students. So, I think I need 700 to make sure I get in. how many questions I need to solve to get such score: (Q x, V y) AWA:z?

The question here, do I need to buy more books. All what I did during the last month is reading the chapters to get familiar with the concepts of the questions. I felt that I wasted my time reading instead of practicing on real tests. Do I need to read more?

I did some practice examples of each section (PS, DS, CR, SC, RC); though still struggle with half of the questions which made me really disappointed.

I feel that I need to practice a lot of tests before I reach such score.

So, do I need to buy more books? Which one?

Second Question: I read through some this forum and found that there is:

1. Flash cards.
2. a lot of practice tests mentioned like PR – Kaplan – 800 and so on.
3. Excel sheet to track my mistakes.

From where I can download these and how to use them. Also, I need a copy of all the practice tests available out there to exercise as much as possible. So, does anyone have all the collection to send it to me?

I would spend some time diving through this forum to get all of this information.

Third Question:
About the job experience, I worked as financial analyst in financial institution for one a half years or so. Is this enough?

Last thing,

Thanks for all the help

[beatthegmat]

A lot of questions there. In the future, can you break up these kinds of posts to one question per post? You'll get much better feedback from the community that way.

It sounds like you're at the very beginning of your prep. I recommend checking out this link, https://www.beatthegmat.com/resources.html

then doing some searching into the archives for your other questions. We've had rich discussion on your issues in the past.

Good luck!

[lunarpower]

wow, yeah, lots of topics. i'll take a stab at the following 2 parts.

one:

I asked all the business schools I am applying to and they said 650 is the average for their students. So, I think I need 700 to make sure I get in.

interesting. how did you conclude that you NEED a score that is 50 points ABOVE the average? (this is almost like a critical reasoning question: what assumptions are you making?) do you not have very many diversity factors - ethnic diversity, job diversity, diversity of work/life experience, and so forth?
generally, the less of these kinds of diversity you have, the higher your gmat score should be. if you're a financial analyst, then, unfortunately, you score low on the 'job diversity' scale, because all the other financial analysts are also trying to apply to b-school right now.

as for the specific #s of questions, you can google 'gmat scoring scale' (or similar search terms) and find this out on many different websites. there is no one magic combination of scores; the higher your math score, the lower the verbal score you'll need to combine for a 700, and vice versa.
the essays don't count toward the 200-800 score; all you have to do there is not screw up big-time, and you'll be ok. (in other words, there is really no added value in having an EXCELLENT essay score, vis-a-vis a GOOD one; this is of course totally not true for the actual 200-800 score!)

two:

About the job experience, I worked as financial analyst in financial institution for one a half years or so. Is this enough?

there is no such thing as 'enough' here. some people apply to b-school with twenty years of work experience; others apply with barely a year of experience, but with some unusual diversity factors and/or exceptional perspective.

as i said above, there are a lot of financial analysts applying to b-school, so you will have to separate your application from the pack in some way. here are some ideas:
work the hardest on the STRONGEST PART and the WEAKEST PART of your application.
whatever these are - that's for you to figure out - these two will be the most important and memorable parts of your application. if the weakest part is 'uniqueness / diversity factors', then work hard on developing those, or, at the very least, tweaking your application to make it look as though you've developed them.
emphasize leadership qualities.
if you have taken a leadership role in anything significant, whether work-related or not, now is the time to brag about it. do not be humble.
emphasize unusual aspects of your job, if any.
do you do analysis in an unusual or cutting-edge industry? do you have knowledge of international cultures that you can bring to the table? have you started any new projects, departments, endeavors, original research, etc.?

just some food for thought.

good luck.

[GMAT Freak]

A lot of questions there. In the future, can you break up these kinds of posts to one question per post? You'll get much better feedback from the community that way.

It sounds like you're at the very beginning of your prep. I recommend checking out this link, https://www.beatthegmat.com/resources.html

then doing some searching into the archives for your other questions. We've had rich discussion on your issues in the past.

Good luck!

thanks for the reply, I thought by gathering everything in one post I will collect the summary of most important posts.

I will break up my questions next time.

[GMAT Freak]

wow, yeah, lots of topics. i'll take a stab at the following 2 parts.

one:

I asked all the business schools I am applying to and they said 650 is the average for their students. So, I think I need 700 to make sure I get in.

interesting. how did you conclude that you NEED a score that is 50 points ABOVE the average? (this is almost like a critical reasoning question: what assumptions are you making?) do you not have very many diversity factors - ethnic diversity, job diversity, diversity of work/life experience, and so forth?
generally, the less of these kinds of diversity you have, the higher your gmat score should be. if you're a financial analyst, then, unfortunately, you score low on the 'job diversity' scale, because all the other financial analysts are also trying to apply to b-school right now.

as for the specific #s of questions, you can google 'gmat scoring scale' (or similar search terms) and find this out on many different websites. there is no one magic combination of scores; the higher your math score, the lower the verbal score you'll need to combine for a 700, and vice versa.
the essays don't count toward the 200-800 score; all you have to do there is not screw up big-time, and you'll be ok. (in other words, there is really no added value in having an EXCELLENT essay score, vis-a-vis a GOOD one; this is of course totally not true for the actual 200-800 score!)

two:

About the job experience, I worked as financial analyst in financial institution for one a half years or so. Is this enough?

there is no such thing as 'enough' here. some people apply to b-school with twenty years of work experience; others apply with barely a year of experience, but with some unusual diversity factors and/or exceptional perspective.

as i said above, there are a lot of financial analysts applying to b-school, so you will have to separate your application from the pack in some way. here are some ideas:
work the hardest on the STRONGEST PART and the WEAKEST PART of your application.
whatever these are - that's for you to figure out - these two will be the most important and memorable parts of your application. if the weakest part is 'uniqueness / diversity factors', then work hard on developing those, or, at the very least, tweaking your application to make it look as though you've developed them.
emphasize leadership qualities.
if you have taken a leadership role in anything significant, whether work-related or not, now is the time to brag about it. do not be humble.
emphasize unusual aspects of your job, if any.
do you do analysis in an unusual or cutting-edge industry? do you have knowledge of international cultures that you can bring to the table? have you started any new projects, departments, endeavors, original research, etc.?

just some food for thought.

good luck.

Thanks for the reply and all the information. I will do my best represent a good MBA application package.