Message from my GMAT Tutor

You guys have heard so much about me referencing my tutor that I thought I would have him write a post about me!  Here you go...

How to frustrate and impress your GMAT tutor

by Money 9111’s anonymous GMAT tutor

I’m a full-time GMAT tutor who tends to attract the obsessive “hard cases” of the GMAT world.  Earlier this year, I worked with a student who has spent seven years studying for the GMAT, and she’s taken the exam nine times.   Nearly all of my students have taken the GMAT at least twice before contacting me, and close to half of my students have taken two prep courses or more.   So in one sense or another, almost all of my GMAT students are – and I mean this in an absolutely loving way—totally obsessed weirdoes with unbelievable work ethics.

But Money 9111?  Special.  Very special.

First of all, I don’t think he ever sleeps.  He sends me ellipse-filled emails at all hours of the night.  (We actually started working together because of our shared love of ellipses.  No, really…)  He’s often exhausted when he comes to tutoring sessions.

OK, I just made up the part about boiled cabbage.  That’s not really true.

In all seriousness, Money 9111 is a smart, likable guy who hasn’t had an easy time with the GMAT… as you can probably tell from his blog.  For some people, filling in little bubbles comes naturally.  Unfortunately, Money 9111 is not one of those people.  

Before I continue, let me crap on the GMAT a little bit.  The GMAT is an outstanding measure of your ability to fill in little bubbles while sitting in a windowless room.  It’s a solid measure of your ability to read useless garbage while paying mind-numbingly literal attention to useless details.  And it’s a pretty good measure of your ability to use 9^th-grade math to solve bizarre, useless math problems.   

Other than that?  I’m not sure that it tells us much.  

After almost a decade in the test-prep world, I can tell you that GMAT scores don’t always tell us what we think they tell us.  One of the most competent, capable, intelligent students I’ve ever met scored in the 400s on most of her practice tests, and she was flabbergasted to pull a 570 out of her butt on test day; I’m convinced that she’ll be a CEO someday, and some lucky firm will be blessed to have her.  One of my highest-scoring students of all time was a smelly nimrod with the emotional intelligence of a stoned, drunk, slightly rabid raccoon.  He scored over 750 on the GMAT, and nobody in their right minds should hire him to work with other human beings.

So yeah, good luck interpreting GMAT scores.  

The way I see it, the best business leaders are usually what I call “grinders”:   they may or may not be naturally brilliant at filling in little bubbles, but they’ll work like hell to achieve their goals.  If I were the emperor of a top business school, I would reject all of the lazy smart people who love filling in little bubbles and can get a 750+ without trying (oh shit, that’s me), and I would fill the program with savvy, likable grinders who work their nuts off.  The most successful people might not always be booksmart, but they’re usually tough as nails, in some sense or another.

Money 9111 might not look like a badass, but he’s definitely one of those guys who has that “grinder” mentality—he’ll achieve his goals one way or another, and he’s exactly the kind of character you would want in your company or at your MBA program.  As I’ve watched him duke it out with the GMAT over the past several months, I’ve become increasingly convinced that he’ll do whatever it takes to kick ass… and he really doesn’t care if he suffers mightily along the way.

And the GMAT is definitely making him suffer.  Money 9111 has more GMAT books than his GMAT tutor does.  He has GMAT SC idioms written all over his walls.  He’s been studying daily for six months.  And tons of things still don’t come easily for him.  He’s naturally sloppy with his algebra and arithmetic.  He usually can’t resist the urge to skim RC and CR passages, which means that he’ll randomly miss easy shit on verbal, especially if he’s sleep-deprived.  Number properties and inequalities make him crazy.   This GMAT thing must be his own personal hell.  

And you know what?  He keeps showing up for GMAT tutoring, he keeps studying until the wee hours of the morning, and he’ll do the same problem set four times in a row if he thinks it will help him get a better score.  The poor man has done my evil number properties set more times than we can count.  And he still screws up pieces of it.  And then he does the problem set again, hoping that the breakthroughs will finally come.  Sure, sometimes they do come… but usually only after an inhuman amount of effort.  

But trust me on this:  Money 9111 will finally give the GMAT a good, hard kick to the nuts before he’s done.  He scored a 36 on quant back in May, and he’s consistently in the low-to-mid 40s on his practice tests now… and I don’t think that he’s really hit his peak yet.  He’s done a ridiculous quantity of RC and CR questions, and I see signs that he’s finally starting to break through—the mind-numbing “literalness” of the GMAT verbal is actually making sense to him now.  That dream of a 40+ verbal score isn’t far out of reach anymore. 

As Money 9111 grinds his way to GMAT glory, his life will continue to be thoroughly unglamorous.  Part of his homework is a daily regimen that includes a huge number of CR and RC questions, a smaller dose of SC questions, and a big fat wad of math problems.  His CR and RC seems to suffer when he’s sleep-deprived, so I’ll keep making him turn in a “sleep log” every week—if he doesn’t get at least 50 hours of sleep every week, I’ll throw a tantrum.  And if I’m feeling really mean, I’ll steal his cigarettes as punishment.  

Money 9111’s next test day is coming soon, and I’m not going to even try to predict his next GMAT score.  But I’m convinced that he’ll get into a badass b-school somehow, even if he doesn’t beat the tar out of the GMAT on his next attempt.  One of the top MBA programs will figure out that Money 9111 is one of those “grinders” who will—some way or another—manage to get some serious shit done in the business world, even if he has to pull a lifetime of all-nighters to get it all done.  

If nothing else, you have to give the man huge props for his work ethic.  By the time he’s finished, Money 9111 might spend more than a thousand hours working on the GMAT and his applications.  And he’ll probably never even complain about all of that work…

GMAT Critical Reasoning becoming easier to reason

That's how I used to feel about Critical Reasoning

Now I don't claim to get every Critical Reasoning question right YET!  But I will say that by doing either 20 Critical Reasoning questions or 20 Reading Comp questions a night since my last tutoring session on 9/18 has given me a positive outlook on Critical Reasoning and Reading Comp.

I just finished my last set of 20 Critical reasoning questions in the blue verbal review guide book.  I didn't know how many critical reasoning questions there were in that section, but day by day I could see how they made the questions harder.  I didn't get any more right or wrong towards the end of the section either!

That was nice for me to see... I did see that I got some of the same ones wrong that I got wrong back in April.  Now that's not necessarily because I haven't learned anything (some may think differently) but that's a function of me not being able to solve questions that I've seen before.  Here is the reason I find it difficult to solve questions I've seen before....

- I read the premise.  If I recognize it I try to remember what the premises were about...the story they told

- I look at the answer choices and remembering two of them sticking out in my head for some reason.  The reason usually being because those are the two I narrowed it down to previously.

- Then I reread the premise again

- Then the two answers again..

- Then I hone in on one answer and then debate in my head if I'm choosing that answer because it's the best one, or if it's the OPPOSITE of the one I chose the last time, but the thing is.. I don't remember which one I chose the last time.

Needless to say instead of looking at the question with a fresh set of eyes, I'm going off of the time I previously saw the question.  It's just the way my brain works so leave me alone!  :-)

But now I am more confident than ever about reading comp and CR.  There is still one type of question that I need more practice with and I'm going to point it out to my tutor.  Sometimes the two answer choices seem exactly the same to me. This is something I need to work on so that I go into my exam confident about my answer choices and not debating on whether I should choose the answer opposite from the one that I want to choose!  Oh yes!  I have gotten to that point before...

On that note - I've also done it before during a practice set hahaha...I wrote on a separate piece of paper the answers I would have chosen for a select few problems that I couldn't pick 1 answer on, and I said to myself "I'm choosing B but I think C is the better answer but I just don't know why and can't justify it."  Then I wrote C on another piece of paper and I got it "right" lmao.  Hey gotta make yourself laugh sometimes right?  I obviously know that I can't do that in the exam - or can I?  ;-)

Needless to say - Critical Reasoning is becoming easier to reason

Tomorrow I'll write a real update about conversations I've had with folks and upcoming events.

44Q tonight! Guess the first wasn't a mistake!

So today was/is a good day.

First on the agenda is a big congratulations to my friend.  She will not be taking the GMAT ever again!  She just took it for the 3rd time and did well!  Now I must follow in her footsteps!  I'll see your score and raise you _____!  ;-)   She's probably laughing right now as she reads that!

In any event, I can't wait until I'm completely done with this GMAT exam.  I seem to be getting closer and closer to that goal and it makes me smile!

Studying for the GMAT has no longer become a dreadful thing.  It's actually quite fun trying to figure out the intricacies of this exam.  I no longer study for 5/6/7 hours a day reading through material doing 1 problem here and 1 problem there.  Working with my tutor has been very beneficial, albeit expensive, but given the opportunity cost it's worth it.  Now when I study it's usually going over mistakes.  I know all of the information - for the most part - now it's a matter of putting it all together...getting faster...and refining my skills.

QUANT

Tonight I took another Veritas quant section and scored a 44!  I think I did a fist pump (I'm from Jersey so it comes naturally!) when I saw the score.  I pressed B for every verbal question so my final score was  a 460 lol, but when I found where the Quant score was I was very pleased.

Number properties is still my achilles heel, but I see that issue fading slowly but surely, although my tutor may disagree.  The next thing that I want to focus on in terms of my Quant score is getting it up to 47/48 consistently.

VERBAL

So yeah.... verbal... not a fan until I figure it out.  I know I'm on the verge of an epiphany but I'm getting anxious waiting for that EUREKA moment to arrive.  I think I've dialed in to what I need to focus on.  My problem is not that I don't understand the premises...I think that before in my prep I was so focused on figure out what the questions were asking and not so much the premises, but now I need to go back to looking into what the questions are exactly looking for.  

I had a discussion with Brandon today after I got my quant score.  He really wants me to take a full practice exam to see where I am this time.  I keep telling him "No... my tutor doesn't want me to do that yet."  I'm really putting a lot of faith into my tutor and I want to do things on my own, but hey you know what?  He just took the exam again and got a 780 when he was sick!  So who am I to override his suggestions?  My job is to simply do the work assigned, which is getting harder I might add.  

After I finish writing this post, I'm going to tackle critical reasoning again.  I'm going to try something different this time and underline the conclusions.  I know that obviously when taking the actual test, I won't be able to draw on the computer screen, but I think my problem is forgetting about the conclusion and then choosing answers that are too broad in scope.  So I'm going to see if this tactic works this go around!

Just a reminder - I will not be posting my exam date on my blog or any forums.  It will be a surprise because I don't want the added pressure of having people wishing me good luck and then thinking about them asking how I did - post exam.

I better get going because even though it's the weekend I still need to get some sleep as per my tutor!  I'm going to be posting a lot over the next couple of days because things are about to get uber hectic!

45Q Score! Must be a mistake

So as prescribed by my tutor I took a practice exam today - only the Quant section though.  One good thing for me being able to have access to all of these exams is that my tutor can just tell me to do x,y, and z and just assumes I have the books/resources.  It's funny actually...kinda sad... but more comical!

So anyway I took the exam today and look:

I died when I saw that score.  Literally DIED ahah...  I'm still dead actually.  Once I got the score, I posted on BTG to see how that relates to the real exam.  Then I texted Brandon to see what his highest Veritas score was. I emailed Eric and David from BTG to see what they thought.  Then I emailed Brian at Veritas to see if he thought that was a good score.  Then I emailed my tutor to see what he thought.  Hahaha I'm a hot mess I know.

Needless to say.. I told you guys I was feeling good!  So now after I come down from my high I'm going to forget about this score and focus on what I did incorrectly.  (I was going to say - "did incorrect" but did was a verb and needed an adverb to modify it!  I think...)  Yeah SC is going to be a hiccup in my life again, but that's ok I'm ready for it.

On another note - I get this text message from my friend today:

He has no idea what he's in for!  I'll try to take it easy on him!  Now it's time to watch Hulu and get back to House Hunters International!  Tomorrow is another day of CR...  ::taking deep breaths::

THURSDAY IS THE TUCK RECEPTION @ THE YALE CLUB... note to self.. pick up dry cleaning tomorrow!

Guest Blogger (Osirus) - His Story! Pt 2

Short and sweet... Here is Part 2 of Brandon's Guest Blog Post...Read Part One Here

Giving People Advice and Having them not take it...

Once I started MLT, I was basically my cohort’s go to GMAT tutor.  I have spent many hours at the Harold Washington library in Chicago helping members of my cohort with the GMAT.  The biggest thing I would try to impart to people that would take was to develop a systematic approach to each question type.  I think this is probably the most important thing that anyone could do to help improve their score, and I was just surprised by how people just didn’t get that.  The people I would help would put in a lot of time to study but would get frustrated that they weren’t seeing results.  The main thing that you have to do is be intentional with your study.  When you are studying math don’t just do a random set of problems.  If you struggle with divisibility problems, make sure every math day you are doing at least 2 divisibility problems.  You have to be intentional and you have to develop an approach.  On test day, anxiety will play a role in your test day experience, this is why having an approach will be very helpful because anxiety won’t be able to steal your moment.

Another thing that people don’t do that I tell them to do is to have complete faith in themselves. The only way that you can achieve a top score is to have an unwavering faith that you are capable.  Once you allow fear and doubt to take over your thoughts, your chances of a top score decrease dramatically.  Confidence is huge.  Even when I was only scoring 550s on my practice tests, I knew that I was going to get above a 700.  You have to truly believe in yourself.  Richard wrote a post about how introspective essays are, but in many ways, I think preparing for the GMAT is introspective as well.  Everyone hits a wall in which they stop making progress or even regress some.  It is at those times you have to make a choice not to doubt yourself and believe that you are capable of achieving your score.  You have to believe that you belong at HBS, or that you belong at Wharton, or that you belong at Tepper.    

Watching people deal with the pressure of the GMAT and application deadlines...

When I watch people struggle with the pressure of the GMAT and watch people freak out I think that they are playing things wrong.  I think the people that are doing essays and studying at the same are doing themselves a disservice.  I think the biggest thing that people don’t realize is that it is better to apply round 2 with your highest GMAT score, than to rush the GMAT to apply round 1 and leave 20-30 points on the table.  From what I have observed, the biggest reason most people are rushing and stressing out is a result of them having too many schools that they are applying to.  This is not undergrad.  You should not be targeting 7 plus schools.  There are probably not 7 schools that you would actually attend.  I think if people had a more manageable list of schools they would have a better perspective that they can get the GMAT done by mid-November, and still have more than enough time to do a great job on their essays for round 2.

In Closing...

I want to add something that most readers will never have heard before that I think would be useful.  Well here it is.  After setting your time table for studying and taking the test, add two weeks.  You want to add two weeks to focus on your STRENGTHS.  The one thing I learned about the CAT is that what’s difficult for you may not be difficult for others and vice versa.  What does this mean for you?  A CAT can make a topic that is normally a strength for you a weakness.  I remember on my second attempt, I got a a ratios problem.  I always considered ratios a strength, and as a result, I didn’t focus too much on them in the last few weeks of my prep.  I got a problem on the test that dealt with surface areas and areas and the ratios.  It was so awkward that I know I got it wrong.  

I think you should spend at least 2 weeks seeking out overly difficult problems in areas that you consider to be an area of strength for you.  Getting you to miss problems that you are normally strong at is the strength of the GMAC and CATs in general.  That is the one thing I wish I had done before my last attempt, because I feel that it would have gotten me into the 99th percentile.  Seek out problems that will be difficult in areas that you think are strengths.  This will help to ensure that you bank all of the points that you should bank on the exam.

When most people think about getting really difficult 700-800 level problems, they envision really difficult probability or combinatorics problems.  The reality is that if those two areas are still weaknesses after you have studied for 3 months, odds are they will remain weaknesses.  During my prep, I thought I was strong at rate problems.  I could answer almost all of the rate problems I encountered.  I got thrown off though, when I encountered a rate problem that incorporated geometry.  It was a problem involving a circular track and that made the problem a lot more difficult than most other rate problems.  

With a CAT you can't choose your 700-800 level problems, and there is a good chance that you will encounter problems that you previously considered to be strengths packaged in such a way that you will miss them.  I truly believe that the reason for the 30 point standard deviation is that people miss problems that they thought were strengths because the GMAC gives them the problem in a package that they aren't used to seeing.

Duke Fuqua Admit! Congrats Friend :-)

Hi... so this will be an update post.  

Let me first take you back to my post titled: What Sound Does a 680 Make? , which can be found here: http://bit.ly/680Sound  In this article I talked about how I had a couple friends who were getting dinged left and right.  Since then, and I'm sure I said this somewhere in a previous post, but one of them was accepted to Darden.  He decided to pass up Darden and work for another year because he got a sweet promotion.  

My other friend who applied to a bunch of schools and was rejected from all of them WAS in deed waitlisted at Duke Fuqua.  I didn't know he was waitlisted...or I forgot, but nevertheless, he sent me a text today saying that he got into Duke!  Now what immediately went through my head was, wow that's kinda late in the year I think.  I was BAFFLED, but what transpired next... just read the conversation below:

I would have at least thought that schools would give a little bit more notice than A DAY!  But I guess, they have numbers to hit.  

Now... update from MY end...  

I haven't worked on my essays too much.  I've been doing well with my GMAT studying.  I am working with a tutor now to just fill in the holes that I have.  I only plan on taking the GMAT one more time so I gotta hit a home run this time.  Again.. I'm so tired of talking about it.  I have a lot of homework from my tutor to do this week.  It's definitely a good thing though so I'm not complaining.  I just did the first 50 problems of a problem set he gave me and I only got 2 incorrect.  One was incorrect because I didn't understand if the problem was a2 (or 2a) or a squared.  But whatever 2 out of 50 ain't bad if I do say so myself.  Tomorrow I'll go through the next problem sets.

Is anyone reading this who will be attending the Kaplan: Destination Business School this weekend?  If so... did you get the email about how we're supposed to prepare for that this event?!?!  I was shocked!  

I'm going to call it quits for tonight, but I'll post the agenda and what our "Homework" was for the event this weekend.   Which reminds me... I need to take my suit to the cleaners tomorrow...  hhmmppfff!

Battle-Baxter = OUT!  (I kinda wish I signed off all of my posts like that...)  

GMAT Detox

Well hello again everyone! Nice to see you all still alive... so for the past week I have been detoxing my brain. After nearly 4 months of inundating my brain with GMAT material it was phenomenal to take a week off.

It got to the point where my GMAT books where on the floor in my room and I would step on them while going in and out of my room. My friend Brandon kept asking me when I would resume studying and my response would be "When I don't think that I should be studying in my free time!" So what does that mean? Well I don't know if anyone else experienced this but before my exam, if I had free time, I would feel guilty if I was not studying. Well right after my exam there were days when I of course I free time and I would say to myself "you should be studying" when in reality I didn't have to any more.

It's been tough to get out of that mindset. Everyone keeps asking me "so when are you going to take it again?" The answer is... I'm NOT! I'm so over the exam and I've spent so much money preparing for it that I'm done! hahahah just kidding, there's no way I could give up now BECAUSE I've spent so much money preparing for it lmao. I will retake the exam when my last three CAT exams are in the 700 range. As I said before, that's when you are truly ready to tackle the beast.

I wonder how that girl did who thought she could bring in the calculator... hhmm anyway I digress.

So last Friday I met up with Charles aka the GMATNinja for some drinks. I don't know it's always fun for me to discuss GMAT/MBA topics. I can talk about this stuff for hours...and that's exactly what we did. I think we spoke for about 3 hours... we even made fun of Businessweek for ranking Stanford 6th behind Michigan Ross. Don't get me wrong Michigan is a great great school, but does not deserve to be above Stanford in any other regard than being written in a list alpabetically!

Charles had some great advice for me and I took one of his suggestions to heart. Those of you who have been following my blog know that I enrolled in a Financial Accounting course and Statistics course at NYU SCPS (School of Continuing Professional Studies or something of that nature). Charles reminded me that I probably won't be able to study and do well in those two 12 week classes AND prepare properly for the GMAT. I forgot to tell him that I'll also be taking some marketing classes dispersed in there. Each one of those classes would just be over a weekend though, so it's not a big deal. I need to finish my Certificate in Digital Media Marketing!

In any event, I came to the conclusion that taking the classes is great and helpful, but if I don't score well on the GMAT the classes won't matter. Therefore, I need to devote more time to studying for the GMAT. As a result of that conclusion, I dropped my Financial Account course and will probably take it in the Fall instead. In my application I'll just write that I'm taking that class currently.

I'm not going to give a concrete GMAT date, but I'll just say that it'll be in the summer. Things may have gotten a little out of control the last time. I was more wrapped up in the process of studying rather than trying to retain the material.

Ok so enough about that...

Do you guys remember when I visited Dartmouth and I met the other prospective student from Washington, who was out visiting a myriad of schools? Well I still keep in touch with her, and she just took the GMAT on Saturday. She said she had been scoring in the 680 range. Well... when she took her exam she got a 730! How exciting?!?! So happy for her, maybe we'll be at the same school next year!

Another funny thing happened today... So I have a friend who went to MIT undergrad... She lives in the City now with her husband and I haven't heard from either of them in over a year. Not even on Facebook! So after brunch today with friends we walked over to the Dream hotel to go to the rooftop bar. I got stuck in the elevator so my friends were waiting at the top for me. When I got out of the elevator they're staying by the door and I say "why aren't you going up?" They said "you'll see..." So I go up the one flight of stairs and I see that everyone is in khakis and ties and it looks like a private event. So I walk back downstairs and I see a woman walk out of the elevator. She looks very familiar to me to I say Mrs. ______ she turns around and looks at me like "who are you?" I said "it's richard..." and she said "Richard... Battle-Baxter?" and I said yes.. she said "omg how are you? etc etc?" She tells me that my friend Christy was having a graduation party upstairs because she just graduated from Columbia Business School! Then I realize "oh that's why I haven't heard from her". So I go upstairs for a couple minutes and talk to her and her husband... I love the city... it can be very random at times.

In any event, I'm done writing now... and I have to get up at 8 for work. Until next time! Peace out folks