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…

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!

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!

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