Unpleasant surprise with GMAT score report

Just now received a letter from INSEAD admission officer, saying that they haven't received my official GMAT score. Schocking news, since the interview decision is due this Friday, and I don't have any GMAT report at hand, and so I cannot phone GMAC or Pearson right now (how will they identify me if I don't remeber my ID?). Yes, I participated in the GMAT Limited Summer Test, which was held by Pearson VUE. I haven't received my official report either. Was that the sign? And I begin to worry if my score report was sent to LBS or not.
Never mind, I'll solve the problem anyway :) And it was good to hear from an ad com even like that.

UPD: Pearson confirmed to have sent my report to the schools in August, and since the EMEA center is located in London I may not worry about London Business School, I think. And they sent a copy to INSEAD. So, I hope, it is settled. Thanks to everyone for support :)

GMAT done!

I'm feeling glad!
© Gorillaz

So, I’ve made a frame for my picture - and I’m absolutely content with it. Now the time comes to think about brushes and paint ;)

But before I’ll go thinking about transcripts, recommendations, scholarships and all the other things – I have a pile of promises to fulfill (I’ve done some already – cleaned the flat, for instance, or written this blog entry) and a heap of books to read. I decided to give myself a week of a free life. But after it, I’ll make a plan for myself and will start fulfilling it.

So, how did it go? ;)

First, I should say, that I’m not a native speaker and I have never lived somewhere in an English-speaking country (that helps when you pass the test, sure), and I’m afraid this ‘backfired’ at my Verbal. I have spotted that if I see an easy problem, I understand it and do it in English all right, but as soon as I face a tough one, I have to translate it in Russian, so I lose time or answer wrongly. I checked that idea with a friend of mine, to whom I sent some of the toughest ones’ – when he translates the problem with a dictionary, he does it right, but under time-pressure he sometimes misses the point. I just wonder, how it is to pass the test for a native.

Second, I have a strong background in math, so Quant was no problem for me – it was important just not to forget the words like reciprocal, factor, multiple, range or gross profit… because I know what to do, when I see them in Russian, but if I don’t remember the translation, it won’t help me.

Third, I was lucky with AWA-topics – they were about job-candidates and some company crashing – so I had a lot to say. Well, AWA-results will tell.

Anyway, I know I could have done better, if I devoted more time to preparation (I began looking for books in May, started doing Official Guide in June, but have done only half of it or even less before passing the test). Yes, I have a lot of excuses for myself such as work, friends, family and the famous law of 20/80. But I said to myself, that I would be content with 650+. I actually got over 700, so I’m feeling glad.

AWA Tips (for non-natives, like me, mostly)
First, don’t worry about AWA. It won’t count towards your score and many AdComs don’t pay attention to AWA marks (or so they say). But there is still a possibility, that they will check your style – to be sure, it was you who wrote your essays for school and not some highly-paid consultant.
I have downloaded all the 280 essays from Scoretop.com forum, written in quite a good quality and read about 1/3 of them (I devoted a whole week to this). I have made a template for myself and practiced it with 8 essays (4 Issue, 4 Argument), until I felt confident and words like ‘furthermore’, ‘similarly’, ‘in addition’ spread all over my texts. You can see, I’m still writing close to template with all those ‘first’, ‘second’ and ‘third’ ;)

Quant Tips (for 48+)
Be sure you know all the words concerning math. Check tough questions at GMATClub.com forum (or any other forum of your choice). Understand the strategy that underlies probability and evaluation problems (they are usually appear as the top ones). Practice DS questions.

Verbal Tips
SC – there are a lot of guides and strategies about this one on-line, and it’s important to learn all about parallel constructions, apples and oranges and the rest. My strategy for difficult sentences is to use some sort of ‘bubble sorting’:

1. Eliminate as many chances as you can. Don’t panic if you see nothing to eliminate at first.

2. Compare A and B (if they are not eliminated, of course). What is worse? Why? (it’s very important to know ‘why’) Chose ‘the best one’.

3. Compare ‘the best one’ with the next one. Is the latter better? If yes, make it ‘the best one’

4. Continue until you have only one choice left, which is ‘the best’ :)

CR – practice to understand GMAT logic. Kaplan disc helped me a lot – they have some useful tips about finding the better choice if you have two left: try to refute both – which undermines argument most – is the answer.

RC – I’ve read a lot about strategies for this one, but I don’t use them, because I have no time to draw maps, etc. I do the following. As the text appears I read the first question. If it concerns some special part of the passage I read that part and answer the question. By the time I have a general question in front of me, I have already read and understood about half of the text.

Preparation for test-day

If you take test on Saturday, take a week of holiday at work. Revise your error log on Monday and Tuesday, do a ‘real test’ simulation on Wednesday (revise errors) and another one on Thursday. Don’t prepare on Friday – go for a walk, swim in the swimming pool, clean the house. If you definitely want to practice, revise some concepts for SC and read a bit of AWA essays.

On the test-day, have a good breakfast (if you love pasta, fried potatoes or roast beef – cook it in advance and get up with a feeling of ‘Vienna-waits-for-you’). Take with you a bottle of cold tea with sugar (your brain will need it during the breaks).

Use ear-plugs. Even if you’re alone in the test room, there will be a lot of distracting noises around - don’t let them get you out of your flow.

Have a good mood and a winning mind. There’re lots of people who did it and who did great. Even if you don’t do it now, you’ll make it a month later, so there’s nothing to worry about.
So, that’s it and enough of GMAT. I’ll write my database with all resources on a disk, sell all prep-books next Monday and forget about it for the next 5 years.

As soon as I wrote that, I remembered how I got my driving license: I passed the test when I was 19, got the document, valid for 10 years and… stored it in a box at home, since I didn’t have a car. I nearly bought one this spring, but changed my mind: I decided to leave the money for my business school, so I’m still commuting by metro ;)

New GMATPrep tool and a cool T-Shirt

Good girls go to heaven…
© Meat Loaf

I’ve downloaded Limited Summer GMATPrep Software from this link Dave posted on his site. And it looks rather different than those I did a month ago (and math seemed a bit tough to me yesterday night – but maybe I was just exhausted?). It seems the test is going to be the same - since I'm going to take money-back version by Person Vue – that’s great to know in advance, many thanks to Dave.

One of these days I’ve seen the boy in a T-shirt which said: “Good boys go to heaven and bad boys go to London”. I want that T-shirt! ;) (better change ‘boys’ for ‘girls’ though)

UPD: Yes, I've bought myself this T-Shirt half a year later :)

Some useful links to DaRaverLA posts (GMAT & Essays)

...Doesn't live here anymore.

I'm sorry that's all there is to it...

© Roxette

I came across a very interesting blog of DaRaverLA. He's not there anymore, but he has some really valuable posts. I would like to provide links for them here, because I think they will be useful to anyone, who's starting the Journey (like I do):
1. GMAT Math tips
2. GMAT Verbal Tips
3. More GMAT Verbal Tips
4. Very good advice about writing application essays
5. Just a funny post about math in different business schools

GMAT resources on the web

I was lost in France…
© Bonnie Tyler

I decided, that I will name my posts with a proper title and the words with “©” place in the epigraph. Else it will be too difficult to find anything here after some twenty posts.

I will not provide a full list of GMAT resources here, but I will write some, that I found quite useful. All the resources listed below are free of charge (or you can receive some useful info in them for free, and pay for additional info or course).

Forums

GMAT Club - good forum with lots of materials and help (available to registered users). You can pay for some materials, or you can receive them for free if you contribute a certain number of posts to the forum (a big number, I should say). There are a lot of good advice there, for example to keep your error log of every single error you make in order to revise them before your exam. Then, it's a wonderful community, which can help you prepare for the exam: post your questions, get explanations, help others - explain what they don't know.

Test Magic - also a great community around GMAT and other tests.

ScoreTop - another forum with lots of information. For example, you can easily get 3000 of additional RC questions (registration not needed), or pass a timed quant test on-line (registration needed) or find Kaplan Workshops and GMAT+ or download all AWA essays. (Thanks to Forrest Gump for this link!)

Software

POWERPrep Software - direct link to the practice test download (registration needed).
You can also download AWA topics from that site.

Books

I haven’t found a single free of charge complete book worth of reading in the net, but here is a link for some CR problems from Official Guide.

Strategy

GMAT Tutor has good plans of preparation strategy (you can also find such plans on the forums above. Many people, who score high, post their strategies in forums), a list of idioms, tips and tricks.

GMAT Study Strategy from Dave - this is a very useful resource together with Dave’s blog. A single grade list of easy-hard questions in Official Guide is lot more you can gain from many other sites. Dave devoted a lot of effort to prepare this outstanding piece of advice about strategy and books, and all other stories.

Strategy for CR (and other sections) - not very long but quite useful guide for all GMAT sections.

Questions on your e-mail

DeltaCourse - a new math question every day, both easy and hard ones.
Manhattan GMAT - a difficult math problem every week.

These are the links I have found most useful (I know there are a lot more out there - but we don't have time to explore them all. After all, we are to pass the test, not to enjoy the process, aren't we?)

As for myself - I have read through strategy sites, done POWERPrep tests (if they are computer adaptive, then they are adaptive in a different way, than that we are told in textbooks), receive questions on e-mail and do them. I keep track of errors I make in an error log, and I also arranged a database for myself, where I put all links, articles and other materials, which are related to MBA. ;) It is a good thing to do, because you will not worry, that you’ll miss or forget something.

As for epigraph - it's easy to get lost in all these data, you find in the net :)

Choosing the School and searching for GMAT Literature

Hey Joey, c'mon tell me 'bout your dreams…

© Bon Jovi

STEP 2. CHOOSING THE SCHOOL

In March I came across a contest, - organized by some good Russian newspaper – the winner of which would be awarded a place at Durham School of Business. I began searching for articles and essays to get the idea “why MBA, why now”, I searched the Durham site and found out that the place was awarded in distance-learning program… what a pity!

I appreciate distant learning and all the advantages of Internet, but I still think, that it is better to study full-time and in person, because, first of all, you can devote all your time to studying, second, you have face-to-face contact with staff (I have always preferred vis-à-vis exams to written or test ones, because I’m not able to use my charisma during the latter *joking*) and finally, get to know your classmates, build you personal network, which is the next (for someone even the first) big thing apart from the education itself.

So I didn’t take that chance, but I started thinking about MBA.

Then I came to a presentation, organized by British Council, about getting master degrees in UK (that was a really helpful one!), found out about ratings and resources. Going through those resources I surfed to LBS site and registered. They sent me their catalogue (surprise!) – and at that point I began to think about LBS seriously. I read through the catalogue, then the website, then began searching about LBS in BusinessWeek-Forums and eventually came across these blogs. :)

I already knew, that there are also Oxford and Cambridge MBA programs (not forget about Durham) in UK and INSEAD in France (and a lot of other great schools, like IESE, but they won’t put me closer to UK). I feel that I’m missing something, having not researched them properly, but I like to focus on one important thing and do all my best about it. And then – I’m lucky, I know that, I usually do it from the first attempt.

STEP 3. LITERATURE FOR GMAT (useful for Russians!)

When I was preparing for IELTS, I have found all the materials I needed in the Internet, but I couldn’t find the same thing for GMAT. It seems to me, that this test is not so popular among Russians as IELTS (many people pass this one for immigration to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and they tend to help each other).

So I found out that in our major bookstores (in Moscow) and even online ones there are no books for GMAT (except for Barron’s, but it’s the same as “no”). I went to American Center (Nikoloyamskaya, 1, metro Taganskaya) and found a great variety of books for GMAT, SAT, GRE, TOEFL, but they don’t give them home. Stay there and study… Although my trip was not in vain: they gave me phones of shops where the books may be:

1. Anglia, (095) 299-77-66. They usually have Princeton Review (great!), Arco and Barron’s
   
2. Angliskaya Kniga, (095) 928-20-21. May already have something.

And in a week or two I decided to phone MBAConsult (the company that prepares for MBA) and it turned out, that they also had books! (Official Guide, Princeton and some of Kaplan’s)

I found out, that most GMAT-takers in Moscow order books from Amazon (you must have a credit card anyway to pass your GMAT – else it will be very difficult to register) and wait for them for about 4 weeks. Amazon is also a great source of discovering whether the book is worth buying or not.

And at last - it’s possible to buy second-hand books (I will sell mine when I pass the test :), but it’s a game of chance: you need books quickly, but they maybe no one wanting to sell.
I don’t know how people in other cities of Russia manage to get books, it seems an impossible task, really :)

STEP 4. GMAT ITSELF
Well, I’m preparing right now. Quant is nearly easy (I get more than 90%), but Verbal seems impossible. I cannot really master the logic of it.

So I’d better go and study and post some good web-resources a bit later.

*Little bit more about HSMP

You can get a HSMP without MBA – first of all, you must qualify, then you have to gather a lot of documents, wait for 2-7 weeks about the decision and finally you must find job in UK. But with MBA from TOP50 all you have to do, is provide your diploma – and you get the visa (it will be definitely easier to fing a job ;).