GMATClub Forumitis

Someone on the message boards just posted this funny post and I thought I would republish it.  This is what our lives have come down to since we know that all of the schools know whether or not we've been admitted/rejected and whether or not we have the fellowship.

Good Evening Everyone

I am posting this comment to try to help my friend. You see, I have a friend who religiously checks this forum to the point that it is a disease. I have decided to call the disease "Forumitis" - it is when you check the forums and constantly hit refresh over and over and over again. To you help everyone recognize this disease, here are some of the symptoms:

- Making statements referring to refreshing the boards
- Making arguments and statements beginning with "looks like some ppl..." or "the boards said..."
- Loss of productivity at work
- General lack of hygiene
- Staying in on Friday and Saturday night to hang out with friends from the board
- Even hitting refresh while on the toilet
- Or flat out denying they have a problem

The best way to combat this is to recognize it early and sent them to therapist to get help. How do I know all this, it is because I suffered this in the ED phase. Now that R2 is coming up, I am starting to see other people suffer from this. So, please if you yourself is suffering from this or you know someone who is, please get them help. Please feel free to PM me if you need extra advice. Remember, its normal to check it a few times a day, but hitting refresh is not OK. I just hope this message reaches my friend before its to late.

Good Luck to everyone.

...it depends on Business School

At this point in time I don't want to complain about "The Waiting Game" per se because I understand that I have to wait.  I'm not anxious about decisions YET.  I'm more concerned with the fact that my life is on pause right now.

In the new year everyone begins to plan for the Spring and Summer whether it be long vacations or short trips.  All of the birthday invites and wedding invites come out etc etc.  This is even the time when people start looking for new jobs and furthering their careers....but nope.. not for a business school applicant.  Every sentence ends with "...well it depends on if I get into business school."

For me this is very frustrating because I am someone who constantly looks for what my next move will be in life!  At this juncture I cannot do such things.  I have to focus on my Cornell interview next week.  Not to say that I don't want to think about it because obviously I do!  But I mean when I think to my life in May right now it's a black box.  I could either preparing to go to business school or something else.  It's just frustrating for me not knowing what path I'm going to be taking in a couple months.  I will find out next month though.

I'm not even anxious about finding out decisions any more.  I'm not being cocky and saying "oh im going to get in everywhere" because we already know that that is not the case.  But there's no need for me to be nervous or anxious.  The chips will fall in the right manner that's supposed to be right for me and that's that.  I'm at peace with that now.

I'm fortunate enough to have a Director who has her MBA degree from Kellogg so we were talking today about where I was in the process and what not.  I was telling her about how it's tough to just have one's life on Pause.  She said that after she submitted her applications she got a second job just to kill time.  I do not have a second job, but I am heavily involved in the BeatTheGMAT community and am working on a couple of projects right now.  So I guess my activity to "get my mind off this process" is heavily indebted to this process lol.  Counterintuitive don't you think?  Oh well... the projects are great ones...so don't judge.

Sorry I was in the middle of this post and then had a 2 hour long phone call with an old friend.  I don't remember what I was really talking about so that's that....

So on that note - I'm going to watch Hulu!

No Michigan Interview Thus Far :-(

Let's take this hour by hour:

Friday between 9-6 - the real first wave of Michigan Ross R2 interview invites went out.  Initially I wasn't aware that the invites were going out on Friday, so I was just going about my day like a normal person.  Then my friend sent me a copy of Jonathan Fuller's tweet saying that interview invites would be going out Friday and Monday.  So naturally my heart jumped into my throat and I thought... "ok keep hope alive and your fingers crossed... maybe you'll get one today."  Must have refreshed me email 25 times at first and then calmed down.  Then my friend sent me a message saying "I GOT AN INVITE" so of course my heart sank yet again and then the doubt started setting in.  I tried to keep hope alive throughout the day but then my friend told me that Ross interviews everyone that gets accepted even if the person applied through the Consortium.  So what I think that means is that if I don't get an interview invite on Monday, then I know my fate when it comes to Michigan.

Friday between 6-8:30pm - I had drinks with my tutor and a bunch of his other ex and current students on the upper east side.  This was a fun time and I met some very interesting folks who were in the same boat as me.  Some had applied already and were just waiting for decisions to come out, while others had not.  It was interesting to see the light in people's eyes as they were about to embark on the process.  Boy I remember those days.  Now I'm just Bitter Bethanny and am over the whole thing lol.

It was interesting to see the types of applicants that there were.  Two of the folks I met were surprised when they received their interview invites on Friday.  One got an invite from HBS the other got one from Tuck.  It's not like they were surprised that they were invited to interview but they were not watching their emails like hawks and just happened to check their email and see an invite.  I wish I could be that nonchalant about the whole thing myself!  But nooooo I have to be a Crazy Cathy and obsess over everything.  ::shaking my head::

Then I was talking to a guy who got the HBS invite and he was telling me about his "low" gmat score and I'm like... Dude I bet you I have a lower one than you do.  He insisted that he had a lower one.. so I said ok let's make a bet!  Whoever has the highest has the buy the other one a drink.  In my head I was thinking "there's no way he has a lower one than me and got an interview at HBS."  So we asked our tutor who had the lowest one and low and behold mine was lower.  So at the very least I got a free drink out of my GMAT score!

Friday between 8:45 - 10pm - I went across the street to meet my friend who was at Turtle Bay celebrating her Ross interview invite while I sulked over not getting one lol.  It served a dual purpose.  We danced a bit... drank some beers.. she knocked mine out of my hand... and I gave her the side eyes... but it was all good.

Friday between 10:45 - 3am - I was down on the East Village at some bar that I don't remember the name of.  I was hanging out with some of my best friends and also my friend who I met at the HBS LGBT open house last April.  He hasn't been having as much this season with NYU or Tuck.  Now he's just waiting on HBS and Yale.  I wanted to hang out with him cuz A.) he's hilarious and B.) we need to drink because this process leads one to drink heavily in either celebration or frustration.  Then he and I went to a diner by his house and I had french onion soup!

 - Let me vent here for a quick second.  So one time I was at another diner and was drunk and ordered French onion soup to then have them put CROUTONS in it!  Croutons?  Who wants croutons in their French Onion soup?  I want soggy bread.... I was so upset...  So cut to Saturday night when I asked for French Onion soup.. then remembered my dilemma the last time so I asked "wait.. does it have croutons or bread?"  he said "croutons... do you want bread?"  I said "i definitely want bread"... In My Opinion bread should be the default choice.  In any event.. I got it with bread and it was phenomenal. -


Saturday - I got home around 4pm and then just lounged around in my bed and worked on some projects for Beat The GMAT.  


Sunday - Worked on BTG projects and am about to start getting ready to go to the City to watch the SuperBowl.


But congrats to all those who got interviews and acceptances this past Friday.  I'm hoping to be in your position very shortly!   ::Fingers Crossed::

Free GMAT Practice Questions Winner is...

Caroline can you email me so I can forward your email onto the folks at BTG?!  Thank you...

As for everyone else, I have another contest that I'll be posting later tonight.  I got another prize that I can give away.  It's not GMAT related, but it's definitely admissions related!

I didn't know I would get as many responses as I did for this contest, so the next one will be harder!!!

Ok... I'm off to the NYU Diversity conference... Day 2!

Beat The GMAT $100K Challenge!

So last week, the kind folks over at Beat The GMAT started a pretty cool contest.  I can tell you from personal experience that Beat The GMAT always comes through with great prizes and this time is no different!

Win One of 500+ Awesome Prizes

1 Elite Business School Tour ($25K)

Visit HBS, MIT Sloan, Stanford GSB, Haas and one more US business school of your choice. We'll pay for everything, including a flight from anywhere in world.

42 GMAT and MBA Packages ($25K)

Win one of 38 GMAT courses or admissions consulting packages from Veritas Prep, Knewton, Kaplan, The Princeton Review, Manhattan GMAT and Grockit.

500 Beat The GMAT Premium Practice Question Accounts ($50K)

Get full Premium Access to Beat The GMAT Practice Questions: over 700 GMAT math and verbal practice questions, each with a detailed video explanation walking you through the solution. All questions and explanations are written by veteran GMAT instructors.

Here is the link to learn more about the Beat The GMAT $100K Challenge!

My Favorite GMAT Blog Posts

I've been wanting to post this for a while now.  Here are my favorite blog posts in no particular order.

I Got You My Pretty...and Your Little Prize Too - I was so relieved that the BTG contest was over and that I came out on top.  I also like this post because I basically document how Brandon (Osirus) and I met.  He is now a life long friend!

Old Yaler? - This post shows how messed up in the head I can be.  Who really thinks about these things?

What Sound does a 680 Make? - One of my favorites - and Brandon's too!

GMAT Has Not Seen The Last of Me - I was soooo looking forward to drinking after this post.

Dartmouth Tuck Visit - Just being honest... it's my blog I'll talk about it if I want!

Cheerleading - My Life! 5 Videos - I miss this!

Michigan Ross: Pre-1st Year Student Interview - I can't wait to finally meet up with Jonathan again.

I Yearn to be in Business School - Thoughts that have been building up!

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!

I'm Getting There... Slowly but Surely

Today I was thinking to myself about what I write about and nothing pertinent came to mind.  Then I went back to studying and figure it would be a good time to let you know how I've been doing on that front.  Let me back up and tell you about my Friday. 

After work on Friday I walked 10 blocks south to meet with my tutor.  The first thing we did was go over my CR mistakes.  The interesting thing here is that the last batch of CR questions I did ended with 14/26 incorrect.  This was a huge blow to my ego so I was anxious to see what he had to say about my performance.  More times than not I could narrow down the answers to two choices, one being the correct one.  It got so bad that I remember saying to myself as I was mulling over two choices 

"Ok... I want to choose this one, but because of my track record, I should probably choose the other one even though I don't know why it would be right."  

Yeah!  I know right.. it got to THAT point.  But I would inevitably choose the incorrect answer thinking that "well maybe...just maybe I am correct."  Nope... EENNNT  WRONG!  So my tutor couldn't find a pattern in the types of questions I was getting wrong.  I was literally all over the damn place!  Then he said that he thought my problem was that I wasn't being LITERAL.  Hhmm I thought... I think it got to a point for me where I was thinking the answer choices were trying to trick me.  While they can be confusing... if you take it literally there really isn't a gray area.

So today when I did a batch of RC passages, I wrote "Be Literal" and "Modifiers" to remind myself to well... Be Literal... and watch out for Modifiers.  The modifiers thing got to me a couple times because I didn't like answer choices because of the "at least some" or "a little."  Needless to say, taking that advice to heart I only got 7/27 incorrect which is my best RC hit rate to date.  Now I know some out there may be saying "um... Richard... that's still a lot" and to that I say... "HUSH!"  The next time I'll do better, but at least I'm moving in the right direction!

So I was feeling good about that performance today and decided to do some Quant.  I was going to do a math section from one of the Veritas practice guides, as prescribed by my tutor, but I was cutting it a bit too close to the Real Housewives of NJ Reunion.  So instead I started doing problems from the BeatTheGMAT practice set, just to keep my brain in working order.  

What I enjoyed about these sets is that I felt myself being good at some things I would have struggled with before.  It was to the point where I was finishing problems in a minute ON THE REGULAR.  I definitely feel like NOW is when the uphill battle ensues on the way to a 700, as my tutor cringes as he reads this knowing the road ahead of US for me to get there!  ;-)  

It's amazing that I have sooooo much GMAT material and yet I feel that I'm making the most progress from an LSAT book, some worksheets and problem sets, and the Official Guide(s), both OG Review guides.  When I say I have so much GMAT material... I'm not joking!  I was definitely THAT guy who wanted to get all the material out there and just bulldoze through it.  Clearly this was not fruitful, otherwise I wouldn't be in the position I'm in now.  

Or I wonder if it could just be my biorhythms - right Nick? Read this it's interesting...  http://bit.ly/affR4c maybe when I do decide to schedule my GMAT I'll pay attention to my biorhythm.

Sidenote - Do you guys know what Thursday is?  I'm uber excited for it!  Tell you more tomorrow... right now it's time to go to sleep!

10,000th Blog Visitor! Congrats to Me!

Ok yeah so that title was somewhat self absorbed, but again... it's my blog and I'll "cry if I want too!"  So today I will pass the 10,000th Visitor milestone!  I'm excited about it simply because I remember when I had 1 visitor = me!  When I surpassed the 5,000th visitor mark I had Brett Nowak from IvyAppSuccess as a guest blogger, and this time around I have the legendary, on this blog at least, Osirus more formerly known as my friend Brandon.

With that being said I just want to give you guys some stats about my blog...

1. As I'm writing this I have received 9,977 visits to date.  I wanted to write this now because I have another post scheduled to post in a half hour!

2. Mean visits per day is approximately 100.

3. Mean pageviews per day is approximately 210.

4. 45% of the traffic to my site has been referral traffic from BeatTheGMAT...not surprisingly

5. The most visitors to my site came on the day when I made that post optimized towards Poets & Quants and began showing up in the organic listing on Google for PoetsandQuants.com.  Remember this day - http://money9111.blogspot.com/2010/08/new-mba-website-poets-quants.html, yeah well that day I received a total of 252 visits - surpassing my previous high (when I posted my GMAT debrief). That was an exciting day.

6. The top keywords typed into Google that generate traffic to my site are...ready for this...
- Poets and Quants - 111 visits
- Money9111 - 30 visits
- Poets & Quants - 28 visits

7. Top Three Countries by Visits:
- United States - 67% of total traffic
- India - 16% of total traffic
- Canada - 2% of total traffic

8. I have 56 Google Followers and 73 total subscribers.

hhmm let's see what else I find fascinating...

9.  Top Three States by Visits:
- New York - 1,611 visits
- California - 1,132 visits
- Texas - 431 (surprising)...

10. I have not received one visit from anyone in Montana, South Dakota, or Alaska!

Yeah that's all for now... I look at numbers like these all day every day at work, more complicated of course ;-), not to mention the White Collar episode that I missed last night just came on...

CIAO CIAO

Yeah Hi GMAT? You're not that special!

So I've been studying hard...going hard with Quant these last couple of weeks.  I mean if you don't do well on the Quant section then there's really nothing more you can do in terms of the application and trying to optimize the "holistic" approach.  I understand what b-schools say when they mention this approach, but I only believe it to an extent.  I wonder if business schools are just as unsure about the process as applicants are.

I mean think about it...  it HAS to be holistic to an extent.  Just take a look at the average GMAT scores amongst (could have said among but I've naturally gravitated towards the English way of saying it) the top business schools.  All of the mean GMAT scores are above 700, so yes... Holistic approach - sure I'll give you that...BUT let's look at the numbers shall we?

Let's say there are 5 students in a matriculating class and the mean GMAT score is a 710 and the school admits a 650 GMAT score..  Well what do the other 4 scores need to be in order to have a school mean of 710?  So we have:

(A+B+C+D+650)/5 = 710
A+B+C+D+650 = 3550
A+B+C+D=2900
2900/4 = 725

So in order to admit that 650 student and maintain an Mean GMAT of 710 the adcom needs to admit FOUR 730 GMAT scores, since we would need to round up in order to reach that 710 minimum.  I say this all to say that yes while schools take on a holistic approach when reviewing applications... I personally need to keep in mind that it may be a reach for them to admit a lower stratosphere score even if my application is superb!  Just a little note to self  :-)

My tutor is going to have a BLAST with me tomorrow!  I've done all of the worksheets he's given me to do while he's been away for the past week, and I must admit that I feel defeated because of the last worksheet I completed.  It was very tough - even as I was going through it I said to myself "WTF!"  The good thing about it was that I knew what the questions were asking, and there is a definite pattern as to which types of questions I'm missing.  I have a plethora of questions for him tomorrow, so our session should be interesting.

@Charles ... if you're reading this... I'm not going to hold anything back tomorrow!  Just so YOU know!

@Everyone else studying for the GMAT - we can do this!  It's JUST a test, albeit a stressful one, but JUST  a BEATABLE test!  Let's keep each other going...

@People who only had to take it once - like my friend admitted to Ross - yeah... um... I envy you right now!

Tomorrow I'll be finishing up the first rough drafts of my Tuck essays!
Saturday I'll be going sailing with a friend I haven't seen in 10 years!
Sunday I'll be studying my ass off.

Until tomorrow!  Take Care!

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...)  

Top 3 Business Related Video Clips! Must Watch

I want to lighten things up a bit...  Here is a compilation of GREAT business related videos that I've found throughout the years...at the end of this post is a Poll question... let's see which one you guys think is the best!

Since I'm making this post so close to the last one...check out my last post about Using a Business School Consultant: http://bit.ly/BSchoolConsultant

Banker & Analyst

If you have never seen Boiler Room you are not serious about going to Business School!

I used to have this speech memorized!  Hhmm wonder what happened...

Addendum to WTF CR = Death (below)

As per my post below here is an addendum - I just watched the first 10 slides of the CR 2 lesson and already realize where I made my mistakes...  I was focusing on the content within these more advanced sections rather than the LOGIC behind them...  I threw the whole SWIMMER categorization out the window.  This is my own fault and oversight...

so what I've done is put SWIMMER on my wall and I'm going to make notecards with each component.  I will NOT tackle CR again until I have these memorized!

So when I'm laying in bed watching Hulu or Studying or just playing around on the internet this is what I stare at in front of me on the wall on three big posterboards.

The SWIMMER poster was just added tonight after my little hissy fit haha... the other two have been up there for a while...

Thanks for bearing with me through my little hissy fit bout!  Back to the CR 2 Lesson.. hahaha...

Signing off,

Hot Mess Overreactor

WTF CR = Death

This is going to be a short post because it was not planned as I had another topic planned for tomorrow... but I just got incredibly frustrated going over the CR questions in the Veritas CR 2 book.

Last night I did a bunch of problems.  Probably like 20 problems but I did not look at the answers until tonight.  I figure I do the problems one night and then the next night I go over the answers and then read the explanations on the ones I got right.  Well this strategy didn't turn out to be the best vote of confidence.

I got so many wrong that I simply closed the book and pushed it off my bed... LITERALLY... I know it may seem dramatic but I was just so pissed.  I probably got 16/20 incorrect.  When I went through the answers.. of course they made sense...except for one of them but I can just post that on BTG and get the reasoning behind it.

I'm just very pissed right now so I had to come and vent...  in this short amount of time I do feel slightly better...  so now I need a plan of action.. next step = watch the Veritas Critical Reasoning lesson.  I also think that while I think studying late at night is a good option for me... maybe I'll try 8pm(ish).

Crap!  I just realized that tomorrow I have my stats class, so it looks like I'll be studying around 10pm tomorrow...AND I just realized that it's 12:45 so I probably won't get through much of the CR lesson.

::sigh::  I'm all over the place... how did this happen?

Signing off,
Defeated

510 GMAT Admitted to HBS!

Hola!  So I was reading an article that came through my Google reader the other day.  What caught my eye was that the:

Preliminary Class of 2012 at HBS: GMAT range was 510-790!

Full Profile:  http://bit.ly/HBS2012Profile

Granted the mean GMAT was a 724 but I just thought it was great to see that yes GMAT isn't everything.  I'm sure this person had a very compelling application or has been to space! J/K I'm sure it's very very well deserved!

Anyway - I found that to be very interesting and I thought I would share with you folks!  Back to what's going on in my GMAT world...

So today I finally cracked open the Veritas CR book again.  I'll be honest in that I was apprehensive about tackling CR again.  When I took the class last month we were doing more advanced CR problems and they were throwing me for a loop.  I guess I got discouraged with it, but I know that with this test... if you have a weakness you cannot let it get the best of you otherwise the test will!

So tonight I went through the end of the Geometry guide.  I must admit that some of them stumped me.  There was one question asking about something shaped like a Toblerone box... you know... not quite a cylinder or a rectangular box... yeah they threw in a triangular shaped figure and wanted me to find out the area of the triangle or something like that... I didn't know the formula so I gave up on that one.  When I looked at the explanation it looked pretty standard!

Michigan Ross?

Let's see.. let's see.. what else is going on in my world?  Oh.. I signed up to attend a Michigan Ross information session at the Kaplan center here in NY on 7/19.  I'm kind of excited to go... but I get excited about going to any information session.  I'm interested in Ross for a couple reasons.  My two new friends 

(Remember back to when I started talking to the kids in the train station after our Yale SOM visit - Here's the link to that Blogpost: http://bit.ly/YaleSOMVisit) 

In any event... they're both going to Ross and they keep telling me that I would love it and that I should visit.  I did some research into the curriculum and what not and the main takeaway is that my favorite color is Blue, so I can see myself there for two years.  Of course you guys will get an update on how it goes...  

That's all she wrote tonight!

GMAT - Die or be Killed!

Hello everyone!!!!!

I have to give an great congratulations to my now good friend Brandon.  For those of you who are familiar with the contest on BeatTheGMAT.com back in February... Brandon's user name is Osirus.  As I've mentioned before he and fast became friends during the contest and have talked everyday since.  The first time he took the GMAT he scored a 680.  That was back in January and he just retook the GMAT last Thursday and scored a 730!  I'm very proud of him and he's being a source of inspiration for me.  CONGRATULATIONS!

Anyway since this is MY blog... and I'm an only child who is used to talking about myself... let's get back to me!

Tonight I studied for 3 hours.  I went through the Veritas Arithmetic book.  It's taking me longer than I originally planned.  I realize there are certain topics that I can do 100% of the time in under 1 minute with no fail.  Then on the other hand there are some things that I think I should know that I just give up on and flip to the end of the book to see the explanations.  I'll have to give myself some time before I go back to tackle those questions.  It's nothing alarming and that I shouldn't be able to sure up after some more practice.

I had to stop tonight at question 68 because my head was spinning and I was seeing stars.  No big deal...it was actually very therapeutic to start studying again.  Now... I just need to keep putting in this kind of time.  That way I'll forget what it's like to have a life.  That's really where I need to get again... to the point where I don't have a life, because that's when I felt I got the most appropriate studying done.  During the summer there is waaay too much distraction.  Once I fall off the bandwagon once, it's tough to get back on.  So with that being said... I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that I can put in the same amount of time tomorrow night.  Step by step right?

Tomorrow I think I'm going to tackle Critical Reasoning - ::biting nails::

I want to update you guys on my Digital Marketing class that I took last week.  This is the 4th class of the NYU Digital Media Marketing certificate program.  I'll save that for another time though!

VHXZ2JRG8HYK

GMAT Exam - Debrief

Get a drink.... a snack... sit back and enjoy!

So... now that exam day is over and I've had time to take a step back and relax aka get totally wasted on Saturday, I feel that I can purge my brain of the experience. I'm going to swallow my pride here and be very candid with everyone. I hope this can help someone somewhere...

As many of you know I took the MGMAT in-person 9 week class. Prior to taking the class it's recommended that you take a practice CAT. I did this and got a 590. Now let me say that this class is a TON of work. I remember towards the middle of it I had to take a break and not look at any GMAT material because my head was spinning. I won't go too much into my classroom experience because I'm sure it's documented somewhere in my blog... I want to get more into exam day.

The Sunday before my exam I took a practice exam and scored a 520! Yeah that's a terrible blow to the confidence! That was by far my lowest score ever. So then I started freaking out because I got 12 out of 14 SC's correct, but only 4 CR's correct. Up until that point CR had been my strong point so I was at a loss for words. I took monday off of work to study. I ended up sleeping until 1pm but told myself that it would be better to start getting lots of sleep. That night I studied CR and RC - clearly it didn't do me any good. Tuesday -> Friday I didn't do any hardcored studying. I reviewed old exams...

One good thing that I did.. and I think this is clever haha... I generated the MGMAT assessment of all of my CAT exams. I clicked into Verbal... sorted by question type... I wrote down all of the idioms that I had missed since the first CAT exam... I recorded them on my iphone... and played it back to myself while at work... while on the subway... I will never forget that the idiom is "Think of X as Y" amongst others.

So exam day... I woke up at 9:30 and showered and went to the Dartmouth Tuck event @ the Kaplan center. It was great that this event was from 11am-1pm because it kept my mind off of the exam at 4pm. After the event I went home... took another shower - to kill time... reviewed the basics to writing the essays. Did 2 SC's... 2 CR's...a couple geometry problems and random quant problems. I didn't even look at the answers because I didn't want to be discouraged going into the exam. I just wanted to get my brain working again.

It was a nice day outside... and I walked to the testing center. As planned I avoided Times Square! I had my headphones on and I was rocking out to some dance remixes. When I got to Rockefeller center I started feeling nervous. It was very weird because I felt like I was walking to the torture chamber or electric chair. Everyone was walking by my and I was saying to myself "Doesn't anyone realize where I'm going right now and what this exam means?" So I get to 500 5th Avenue and go into a zone. Nothing was going to throw me off once I walked through those doors.

I hand the security guy at the desk downstairs my ID. I walked through the same turnstile and took the same elevator that I took during my dry run. I got into the testing center, which felt like a doctors office and the woman began to give me instructions and told me to read some papers. After that I asked her where the bathroom was and went in. When I got back I sat down to have my picture taken - now this is the funny part... As I'm sitting down having my picture taken, a Woman/Girl must have been about 25/26 comes in with her Longchamp bag slung over her shoulder, huffing and puffing. She starts talkign loudly asking me questions as if I'm the administrator. I just smiled and nodded. Then she asks the administrator what she can bring into the exam with her and the administrator of course said "nothing but your ID and your locker key". The girl said - "I CAN'T EVEN BRING IN MY CALCULATOR?" The look on the administrators face when she said that was absolutely priceless and I will never forget it. I had to laugh when I heard this, because it was just that comical. It was a little refreshing to get in a laugh.

So I took my picture... she did the palm vein scan thingy... and I went to take the exam. I sat away from the door and I didn't have ear plugs I had those huge aviation headphones lol. I kept them on during the essays because people were typing, but I took them off during the Quant section because they were a little cumbersome and I could hear myself breathing lmao.

The essays were intuitive... they were more like a hiccup in the exam. I wrote the intro... 3 examples - one offering a suggestion... and then the conclusion bringing everything together. I used about 3 minutes to set up each essay just jotting down notes...After both essays I took my 8 minute break.

Again here I went into a zone because I had practiced time and time again. I went to the bathroom... got my Gatorade... got my crackers.. and sat down and had a conversation with the administrator. While I was out there another girl came out and just sat down. I'm like "wait.. people don't bring snacks? and something to drink?" I guess we're a rare breed. So I went back in with about 3 minutes to spare... sat down... took a deep breath and said.. "Ok remember to watch the time!"

I did pretty well on time and finished the Quant section with about 1:30 to spare then I took my next break. I had to go to the bathroom again which is rare, but oh well it happens. I got back.. went to my locker.. got my crackers and Gatorade and sat down for about 5 minutes. Then I did some stretching before going back in. I felt very confident about tackling the verbal section. Now let me talk about this verbal section if I may...

I did not think that the questions were anything like the ones I saw in the MGMAT SC guide. I went through that guide about 4 times and thought I had everything nailed down. Considering I got 12/14 correct in my last practice exam I thought I was on track. The two questions I got incorrect were idioms so my SC confidence level was very high. I did see some SC questions with 3/2 splits, but that's not what threw me off. The language was different. I don't even think the SC was anything like the SC in the beginning pages of the OG or the Verbal Review guide. Something was off and it's hard to explain. I think I studied the SC guide TOO much. I studied it so much that the language in the book became second nature and I probably thought I knew more than I did.

The CR and RC sections didn't seem to much different than what I had seen before. It's funny how with RC you can talk yourself into an answer whether it be right or wrong. I got one Resolve the Paradox question in CR and I smiled because I like those for some odd reason. I may not get them all correct but I like seeing them, I'm weird.

So anyway... I finished the verbal with 2 minutes to spare and then had to answer those questions at the end. You know.. address... undergrad institution... blah blah who cares? Then I got to the "do you want to see your score" screen and my heart was pounding out of my chest. I put my hands over my eyes as if I was at a scary movie, which I don't even do anyway, and then I clicked YES. I thought my heart was going to come out of my chest - hands still over eyes. Then I started peeking through my fingers to look at the last two numbers. I knew that if I saw an 80 or 90, then my score would be a 580 or 590. I knew that if I saw a 20 or 30 then I might have been able to end up with a 620 or 630. Unfortunately, I saw an 80 so then I uncovered my eyes and saw the 580.

I looked at my split and wasn't surprised by the 36Q because all in all the questions were too simple. Now you may be thinking "well if they were so simple why did you get them wrong?" well... You know when a question is simple or difficult. There were too many simple questions so I was making stupid errors. I was surprised by my Verbal score of 34. I was devastated more because I haven't seen an increase in my Verbal score even though I was going at that hard. There's no reason why I cannot get 40+ in Verbal. I need it to click before my next exam. I'm willing to do whatever... this is crazy!

Now here are some tips that I would like to address that I've heard but didn't take to heart:

1. When people say that you're ready to take your exam when you've hit your target score on your last 2/3 practice exams. BELIEVE THEM! IT'S TRUE. I should not have been surprised by my score at all. I went into the exam thinking "maybe this time it will be different!" Let me help you out... IT WON'T for most of us... yes there are some anomalies out there, but don't put yourself in that position. I think people who have been scoring maybe 700/710 can surprise themselves with a 720/730 sure... but to everyone out there scoring SUB 600 on their practice exams... I say this with love, learn from my mistake... you will NOT surprise yourself with a 650. No... it won't be different for you... listen to those who have come before you!

2. Writing the essays before practice exams... DO THIS...period! I started doing this towards the end of my studies... it helps with stamina during the exam. I did not feel that the exam was too long because I did this.

3. Do NOT just go through as many books as possible just to go through them. Trust me.. it doesn't help that much. I have all of the MGMAT guides, OG Guide, Verbal Review, Quant Review, PowerScore CR, PowerScore SC, that 350 page Quant PDF, an Algebra Book, and a Geometry Book. I've been through them all and still got a 580. The QUALITY is 100% better than QUANTITY. Unfortunately for me these books have been exhausted and I'm tired of looking at them to be honest haha.

4. Memorize as many idioms as possible. There's nothing worse than encountering a SC problem and narrowing down the answer choices and you see that the only difference between two remaining answers is a stupid idiom. You will beat yourself up over it and spend too much time. Memorize these! I have 3 poster boards on my bedroom wall with Idioms on them. So yes when I'm getting dressed I'm staring at Idioms. I know that "rather than" is more formal than "instead of" ;-) Who wants to sit down an memorize idioms anyway? Just put it on your wall... you'll get it.

5. Something else that I didn't do which I now know is UBER important... you should spend some time... I won't say as much time... but SOME time reviewing the correct answer choices and why they were correct from CAT exams you took. Why? Well... I know when I took CAT exams I would have to guess on some answers...well some of those I inevitably got correct, even though I may not have known the reason. Then when looking at my exams, I would only focus on the questions I got wrong. Well what about the ones I guessed on because I didn't know how to do? At the very least, mark which questions you don't know, so that if you get them right you can still go back to check.

All in all... this exam is beatable and after having experienced the whole thing once... I'm more dedicated to beat it! This 580 will be nothign compared to my next score. Hope this helps at least one person out there... and if you've gotten this far I commend you... sorry I tend to ramble!

- Richard

The GMAT has not seen the last of me!

580 full debrief tomorrow - off to go drinking now


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Location:Nyc

1 hour and 30 minutes

Hey everyone... I'm still pretty calm. It's a gorgeous day



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Location:Nyc

It's Game Day! GMAT Today!!!!

So yes yes I know it's 12am and I'm awake on the day that I'm supposed to take the GMAT.  Did you really think that I would be able to go to bed on time today?  Ha you're joking.  This is the reason I'm glad my exam is at 4pm.

So the real question is...  How am I feeling? I'm feeling confident.  I have my game plan... I've done as much preparation as my body could allow for the last 4 months.  Will I have any regrets tomorrow post-exam?  Not at all, which is exactly where I wanted to be mentally.  I've made some mistakes along the way, but the important part is being able to learn from them.  I'll be able to do just that, so I'm not worried.

I promise no matter what my score is later I will update you even if it's just a post with my score.  I may not post it on BTG if I'm embarrassed, but I owe it to you guys.

Oh btw... did anyone see that Times Square was on lock down again because of another bomb scare?  See!  It's good that I did my dry run trying to avoid it lol... can you imagine if I was walking along to my exam and all of a sudden I'm quarantined inside of a building because of a bomb scare?  Yeah I would be soooo pissed off!

Anyway... I'm going to go for a walk once my iphone charges a bit more... then I'm going ot get my suit ready for the Tuck event at the Kaplan center.

Tomorrow will go just fine if I stay on time with the Quant section!

Wish me luck guys and gals!!!