Road to MBA ---> First Stop: CrackTheGMAT

It might be a while before I get a chance to post all my daily updates but wanted to give an overview of what has helped me in the past few weeks in improving my overall score.

Before I get into it, I do want to mention couple of things -

1) All the practice exams I have taken so far, discuss the test scores of, and assess my performance through, have been KAPLAN CATs.

2) In the past month (especially around the time I felt lost and discouraged), I reached out to quite a few of my friends to get some guidance and better direction. This definitely helped! A consistent advice I received is pretty basic and simple yet key to achieving a high score - It goes something like this:

Step 1 - Assess your current knowledge/skill level (It is best to repeat this few times during the process)

Step 2 - Identify your weak/strong areas

Step 3 - Work on your weak areas more than strong ones but don’t ignore what you are good at. Your strength areas are what will help boost your score in the exam.

Step 4 - Continued analysis of your strengths and weaknesses will help guide you, manage time effectively and hone your skills.

Although I was following the steps listed above to most extent, I had to change my plan from focusing on my weaknesses or concentrated areas to work on all the areas covered in GMAT. This helped me strengthen not only my weak areas but also improve scores in already strong areas.

I made an aggressive schedule - tackled the GMAT Official Guide (12th edition) first. Finished it in a week and half. Followed by completing the KAPLAN GMAT coursebook in the same duration.

Took the CAT and woilaa - 660 :) 97% percentile Verbal 59% Quant - Clearly we can tell what my overall weak area happens to be…

I was relieved to finally get a score that showed significant improvement and helped assure that I was on the right track. I felt better after I spoke to a friend who has been down the same path before and mentioned that KAPLAN tests are usually harder than the actual GMAT and getting in mid 600s in KAPLAN translated into score of 750 on GMAT for him. This was definitely encouraging :)

So, this is what I basically did for each of the guides I covered in the past 3-4 weeks - I took timed tests for all questions in all sections. After each test - I would review the wrong answers (jot down some notes) and move on to the next set of qs. During the process, I took two kinds of notes - One type included things I need to remember (which I plan to put on flashcards and review daily till exam date). Second type of notes were concepts/terms/areas I am struggling with, which will be my next focus. So, my action plan for the next week will be to do more practice problems specific to the weak areas, which I would like to accomplish primarily through KAPLAN quiz banks. Let’s see how that goes.

Wish me luck!

My apologies for the delayed updates on my journey to cracktheGMAT but you will be pleased to know that although I wasn’t timely with my updates, I was able to manage time well enough to bounce back on track with the GMAT studying in the past month and make substantial amount of progress.

I will post daily overviews when I get some time but there were quite a few days I had to miss in the last month, primarily for two reasons. One being, as I had mentioned in one of my previous posts, that of discouragement and feeling at loss of how to proceed further. The second and the more frustrating reason has to do with fluctuations in my health.

Addressing the first reason was easy - I had to get myself motivated again, and make sure I don’t lose sight of the end goal. I created an aggressive study plan, which I was able to follow and implement 80% of.

The second reason was a bit more challenging to work with/around. Whenever I got sick and the frequency of that wasn’t low - I would say at least once or twice weekly, it would completely throw me off my study schedule. After I had few of these episodes, I realized all these unplanned gaps were really costing me, it was almost like starting all over again with the GMAT. I can’t stress this enough - Try not to take any long breaks or have any gaps more than a day or two when you start studying for this. There is a mindset you need to get in, in order to be able to make progress. Your brain needs to be programmed in a certain way to the point that, by the time you sit for the test, this stuff comes second nature and the only way to do so is to Practice, Practice, Practice - Trust me, I tried my best (even with the health challenges I faced) in the past month to follow my own advice as much as possible and I have seen some favorable results since, which I will share in one of my later posts :)

I realize it’s been about 15 days since I updated my blog.

Doesn’t mean I stopped studying but after the last CAT, I did get a bit frustrated as I wasn’t seeing any progress. So, I decided to take a mental break. I realized I needed to figure out a better strategy but didn’t know what exactly would work.

I decided to attend the remaining KAPLAN classes while I still brainstorm. I took another CAT and was highly disappointed when I couldn’t break 600.

Given I have less than a month left before my exam date, I have decided to approach things a little differently and with a bit more sense of urgency.

I have canceled all my social plans - no dates, no sports, no trips and no night outs :/ I will take a break once a week if I reach my daily goals throughout the week by doing something last minute but other than that, I will not be doing anything but studying 24/7 - with the exception of workout for an hour/day - Need that to keep my sanity and not blow up :)

It was challenging to apply with this past weekend being NBA All Star weekend and the Oscars but I managed to stay away from the distractions 85% of the time - so that’s a good start :)

Over the weekend of Feb 24-26, I decided to start on the GMAT Official Guide (12th edition). I plan to finish this book in a week and then move on to completing the KAPLAN Practice book the following week.

I will provide a more detailed breakdown and progress report in a separate blog - This is just an overview of the past 2 weeks and where I currently stand.

Time to do another GMAT practice set before I call it a night.

CAT Weekend (Feb 10 - Feb 12)

You know they say - Doing your best means never stop trying…but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you keep trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results - I think ‘they’ say that’s foolish, to be exact the term I believe is ‘insanity’

I felt a little insane after having repeatedly tried but continuing to come up short - all based on review of my past horrid practice test performances. This sense of failure was reaffirmed by a live Practice test event I participated in on Saturday, Feb 11. We were able to skip through the essay part, so it was a 3 hr exam instead. I scored 540, No surprise there. I knew my performance would be lower than the last CAT but I was still expecting it to be in a ballpark of high 500s at least. Did you know, this is the average GMAT score - 540? Can you believe it - Sounds like such a low score but yes, apparently this is the average, which means anyone who scores above 540 is above average - Sounds hard to believe but I guess that’s true. Yes, this was my attempt to keep me from beating myself up over another poor score.

Feeling of disappointment coupled with discouragement was enough for me not to revisit GMAT for the rest of the weekend. Started experiencing nausea (no joke!) but couldn’t tell if it was due to the constant reminder of my low test score or if I was starting to get sick again. Turned out to be the latter and I thought to myself - here we go again. While I am struggling to get back on track and add some consistency, discipline and adopt a better approach to my GMAT study routine, I could have definitely done without the health issues. This certainly poses a new kind of challenge to an already not so fun ride but that’s beyond my control, so I guess no point in stressing - I will work around it.

(Day 26: Feb 11, 2012)

Today is what I call a make up session day. I knew I had to start catching up on all the slacking that had been going on plus it was also time to take another CAT, so I needed to refresh some of the concepts I had forgotten due to all the breaks.

Started off with an area that was covered in a session earlier in the week -  Sentence Correction Basics Workshop.

It covered the following areas:

- Structure of Sentence Correction Questions

- Kaplan Method for Sentence Correction (which is pretty consistent with their suggested method in other areas - Read, evaluate, scan the answer choices, eliminate until one remains)

- Six Classic Sentence Correction Errors - Subject-verb agreement, etc - I believe I already touched upon this under my notes on the day of the class.

- Quiz Score - 80% (Sigh and here I thought I had this section down).

I proceeded to completed the 3 Practice Tests which covered Reading Comprehension + Sentence Correction. My score ranged from 78-80%.

At this point, I took a break, watched some TV, did some Yoga.

Decided to finish up one of my areas of concern - Geometry before calling it a night.

Practice Test Score - 56% OUCH! I can’t wait for the day I am finally able to master this!

Off to bed I went before I beat myself up over it too much! I thought to myself, hey at least I caught up on quite a few things today…

(Day 25: Feb 9, 2012)

Attended my favorite session today - Math Formulas and Geometry (hard to tell but that statement was full of sarcasm:)

Sharing some of the points I deemed valuable from the session:

Notes:

Formulas -  There’s no easy way around these, so just try your best to memorize the basic ones, if possible. This includes Averages, Rate, Speed, Combined Work Formula, Overlapping Sets Formula, etc.

Geometry -  Same goes for Geometry as well. Familiarize yourself with properties of Lines, Angles, Triangles, Pythagorean Theorem. Also, memorize formulas for Area, Surface area, Volume for different shapes. Make sure you know how to calculate Slope given two points on a coordinate plane and can identify the parts in a straight line equation which takes the form y = mx+b

I mentally checked out shortly after the class ended and my brain needed a break, so there was no value in studying after class. Decided to make up some of the lost time the next day.

(Day 24: Feb 8, 2012)

Tried to apply some of the learning from the session attended night before by completing some online work.

Completed online KAPLAN Basic Reading Comprehension and Sentence Correction Review.

Followed by the online Reading Comprehension Basics Workshop, which covered the following areas:

- Basics

- Attacking the Passage

- Getting the Gist - Topic, Scope and Purpose

- Mapping the Passage (This is highly suggested - I forgot to mention this under my notes yesterday but what they mean by mapping the passage is try to jot down the main ideas presented in a passage, short summary in your own words of what the author’s high level message was)

- The Payoff - Reading Comp Question Types

- Wrong Answer Types

- Prediction - The art of foresight

- Quiz Score - 83% (No Bueno but I will get to a 90% by the time I am done prepping - and this holds true for all the areas :) Fingers crossed!

This was a short study session, did some Pilates to end the night.

(Day 23: Feb 7, 2012)