I definitely need to learn English

Well, I am keeping pretty stable position on the quantitative side, scoring 47-48Q on the most of practice tests.  However, my verbal drives me mad.  I didn't realize it's going to be that big issue as it's now.  

Okay, after running a few practice tests, I found out that my verbal sucks (in general), but gradually looks like the following:

1. The best thing I'm scoring is Critical Reasoning.  I don't know why, maybe because it is what it is. :)
2. Sentence Correction is something in the middle.  I'd say, it's closer to CR, than to RC.  It's still bad.  Even while I'm starting to think I'm catching up, I'm still failing.
3. The worst thing is my Reading Comprehension.  It is like 20% away from the SC, which is already bad enough.

So I'm pretty much gearing towards verbal now.

1. I grabbed PowerScore Critical Reasoning Bible for CR.  It's one of the most recommended book for it, although I've heard complaints of it being boring.
2. Manhattan's Sentence Correction is also a sure leader for SC.  A lot of memorization though, as it seemed to me from the first sight.
3. And none for RC.  Harvard Business Review was recommended many times, as well as many other books and magazines.  However, they don't seem to me helping.  I need to come up with a better strategy here.

We'll see how it works out for me.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Daily GMAT questions

Every weekday, GMAT Hacks publishes a realistic GMAT practice question. In general, you'll see Quant problems on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Verbal questions on Tuesday and Thursday. You'll always be able to find them at www.gmatdaily.com.

Give today's question a try, and check your answer.

via gmatdaily.com

After several weeks of these daily GMAT questions, I'm opting out. They are too easy. But this doesn't mean I'm too good. Actually, I'm not. Really not. I'm still struggling. But I see no reason to waste the time for questions that typically take me less a minute to shoot, and rarely require to touch a pencil. Ciao.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

"Tough" questions from GMAT 800

I saw a number of positive reviews for the sample questions from the Kaplan GMAT 800 book (now Kaplan GMAT Advanced).  Not a problem, just got a copy for myself, and went through it.

To avoid confusion, I completed only Critical Reasoning part of it.  However, making in average 75% of correct answers (1 mistake in every 4 questions set), I got some serious doubts about extraordinary type of questions there.  

They are good, but not much more.  

On the other note, format of the book is really weird.  I don't like it.  I believe the willingness to do a guidebook drove them to such a style, but it doesn't help at all.  I'd prefer something closer to a "classic" approach, when I clearly have a set of questions to work through, and the answers to clearly state correct answer, but not looking for it in the several blocks of explanations.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Must-know idioms for GMAT

The following GMAT idioms list is based upon official GMAT sentence correction questions that the test-makers publicly released.

Practice these idioms using our proprietary sentence correction questions.

GMAT Idiom	Book1	Question2	Answer Page3
Official Guide for GMAT Review (12th Edition)
x is more than y	12th Edition	4	686
unlike x, y	12th Edition	20	694
in contrast with x, y	12th Edition	20	694
in contrast to x, y	12th Edition	20	694
estimate to be	12th Edition	27	698
the same to x as to y	12th Edition	32	700
depends on whether x	12th Edition	34	701
so x that y	12th Edition	37	702
targeted ... at	12th Edition	40	704
rivalry between x and y	12th Edition	44	706
expended on	12th Edition	46	707
the ability ... to	12th Edition	51	710
x is to y what w is to z	12th Edition	58	714
amount of x	12th Edition	74	722
attributes x to y	12th Edition	79	724
not just because of x, but because of y	12th Edition	83	726
distinctions between x and y	12th Edition	96	733
either x or y	12th Edition	109	740
to consider x y	12th Edition	117	745
less successful than	12th Edition	123	748
so x that y	12th Edition	124	748
x is dated at z years old	12th Edition	140	756
Official Guide for GMAT Review (11th Edition)
x is more than y	11th Edition	2	662
in contrast with x, y	11th Edition	16	669
estimated to be	11th Edition	21	671
in danger of	11th Edition	27	673
seem + infinitive	11th Edition	29	674
as much as	11th Edition	30	674
to credit x with	11th Edition	31	674
as many ... as	11th Edition	37	676
between x and y	11th Edition	40	678
require x to do y	11th Edition	53	684
restrictions on x	11th Edition	54	685
not only x ... but also y	11th Edition	55	685
there is no doubt that	11th Edition	58	686
as a means to	11th Edition	60	688
attribute x to y	11th Edition	67	691
as many as	11th Edition	76	695
used x as y	11th Edition	79	696
not x, but rather y	11th Edition	87	700
order x to be y	11th Edition	92	702
just as x, so y	11th Edition	99	706
distinguish between x and y	11th Edition	107	710
both x and y	11th Edition	112	713
so x that y	11th Edition	118	716
Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review
not...but	Verbal Review	4	256
the rising cost	Verbal Review	8	258
range from x to y	Verbal Review	9	258
except for + noun	Verbal Review	13	260
between x and y	Verbal Review	14	260
to mistake x for y	Verbal Review	17	261
to think of x as y	Verbal Review	20	262
with the aim of + (verb)ing	Verbal Review	25	264
not only x ... but also y	Verbal Review	46	274
prohibit x from doing y	Verbal Review	48	275
more x than y	Verbal Review	50	276
not only x ... but also y	Verbal Review	52	277
so x that y	Verbal Review	58	280
not x, but rather y	Verbal Review	60	281
not only ... but also	Verbal Review	66	284
in order to x	Verbal Review	69	285
as x as	Verbal Review	75	288
worried about	Verbal Review	81	291
either x or y	Verbal Review	84	292
better served by x than by y	Verbal Review	89	295
ordered x to do y	Verbal Review	90	295
both x and y	Verbal Review	93	297
x rose almost as fast as y	Verbal Review	94	297
between x and y	Verbal Review	95	298
more x than y	Verbal Review	98	299
x rather than y	Verbal Review	99	300
isolated from	Verbal Review	106	300
not only x ... but also y	Verbal Review	108	304
as a result of	Verbal Review	113	307

This GMAT idioms list is available in PDF format.

via platinumgmat.com

For those who are too cheap to buy himself or herself a copy of Manhattan GMAT "Sentence Correction GMAT Preparation Guide", here is the list of the most popular GMAT idioms that are likely already known by native speakers, and must be memorized by non-native speakers (like I am).

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0982423861/iwhite-20

For those who do own a book, take a look at chapter 9, page 142. I am not sure I would be able to memorize all that, but at least I have one more useful guide to refer to.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Sentence Correction must-have book

There is one book that is absolutely must have for you to do well on Sentence Correction part of GMAT.

That's a "Sentence Correction GMAT Preparation Guide" by Manhattan GMAT.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0982423861/prokhorenkous-20

They do not have any either sample GMAT questions or a bunch of tests to try yourself on. But they did their best to cover a lot of potential tricks taken by GMAT creators to find your gaps in English. I'm really surprised and really excited about going through this. I just came to Chapter 4 and I have already learned a bunch of stuff. This is so great.

However, I do miss the sample GMAT questions. The books sends me to Official Guide and this is sorta lame. Been there, done that.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Typo hunter's on the road again

Typos happen.  Sometimes they don't bother you much.  Sometimes, the do.  Like in the books that have question and answer combos.

Like, you know, for the quantitative part of GMAT, for example.

Yes, I'm talking about the EZ basic math workbook.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1605621579/iwhite-20

It has a lot of typos.  What's worse, it has a lot of errors, too.  Like the one show above, which is page 113, question #20.  Twice 32 equals 64, but not 62.  Where the heck is editor?  Proofreader?  Anybody else?

It's not the only example, but I just wanted to show you that reviews like this (even if it's the only one), should not be ignored:

there are a lot of examples in the book that are completely wrong. The further you go in the book the worse it gets. Its like the author got exhausted by the end.

ex:
1) a question will ask you about blue ribbons but will calculate due to green ribbons.
2) some of the combinatorics questions have missing combinations that the question is asking about.

I can go on and on ...

The book is very easy and has bunch of errors. Work with it at your own risk.

BTW to put some weight behind my words: I have already taken GMAT and got above 700. 

by BebaZyabovna.

Take care.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

EZ Basic Math

Okay, I've got 200 more sample questions and 2 parts left from the EZ basic math workbook.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1605621579/iwhite-20

Listen. Get it if your math is really bad. I mean, you really suck. Or you feel like you suck. Otherwise, you don't need it. It sucks to be able to solve all samples. I'm not the brightest guy, but it's too easy even for me.

So I'm planning to take a pause with math and get back to Sentence Correction.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0982423861/iwhite-20

And only after it I'm going to spend more time with EZ advanced math workbook. I hope it would be way more interesting, because I found myself doing pretty well with The Quest for 700: Weekly GMAT Challenge posted every Wednesday on http://www.mbamission.com with answer following Thursday. Otherwise, screw the Amazon's reviews for EZ books, because they're wrong. Anyway I don't like the format of EZ books. I'd prefer to stay closer to GMAT format, because, well, you know... this is for GMAT. Why is it titled so, huh?

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

My progress with EZ basic math

While I didn't spend a decent time with the book, the results so far so good. Out of almost 200 questions, I've yellow-marked 4 or 5 solutions, even scoring the 100% correct answers. Those solutions were a little bit easier way comparing to what I chose.

This is quite a nice number to see, however, I was expecting for something more challenging. It's easy to be a smart guy when you're facing very basic problems, isn't it? :) I'm starting to think that getting a basic math workbook was not so good idea. I should start from advanced one. However, I'm not going to drop out now, and I'm going to complete it.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

EZ Basic Math for GMAT

Well, I'm pissed of.  

EZ Solutions - Test Prep Series - Math Practice - Basic Workbook - GMAT 

First of all, this title sucks.  How do you imaging me telling a friend about this book when it has some many words inside?  Do they all make sense?  Doubt so.

I've read so many positives reviews about EZ books for GMAT.  Speaking about this specific book it was like 7 five-stars and 1 one-star.  None of the did mention that the basic book is so freakin' basic.

I've went through almost a hundred of questions so far, and none of them are challenging.  They are basic.  But I'll keep going.  Hopefully, this book will undercover some hidden gem and it will make me happier about the twenty I spent.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Sentence Correction freaks me out

Out of 113 question I'm scoring barely 60% correctly. This is a total crash. I'm wasted.

Is it supposed to be that tough? I guess it's not tough for the most of natives, but what about not-native ones, like me? I don't have an academic experience in US.

While my math score is running high 80% - low 90%, and both Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning sections don't fall down the high 70% (what does, frankly speaking, suck too), Sentence Correction is a disaster.

I do have the 4th edition of Kaplan's Sentence Correction already. I heard a lot of positives about this book and hopefully it's suitable for non-native speakers, like I am. I'll do my best to spend the most quality time on it, to make sure I can improve my score and get to at least 80%'s. I'll let you know how it works out.

Okay, now I'm planning to get back to EZ solutions set of two math workbooks. While I think it's getting easier to me, I still want to make sure that I can get a solid 90%'s percentage on sample questions, so these two books might help me.

The rest is Sentence Correction one (ouch!) and that's it. I'm planning to run a few full-time sample tests and schedule a date.

See you soon.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Reading for GMAT

I definitely acknowledge that I need to read more to improve my verbal GMAT, in particular, the Reading Comprehension section.

I do have a long list of books to read. Typically, they are non-fiction books, business related or bios. My current one is Stealing MySpace. It's pretty entertaining I should say.

However, I normally cannot read more then 40-50 pages without being interrupted. With ~350 pages total, it will take me a week to get the book done and this is pretty poor progress. While such amount of reading is comfortable for me, I feel that I need to at least double it.

How much do you read?

Some more GMAT scores

While I didn't expect to, I was able to complete the verbal section of GMAT exam in about 60-70 minutes. I believe on exam you are given 75 minutes for 41 questions. So I was pretty much close, however, I'm not sure if it's okay for the exam -- the level of distraction and just emotional pressure is going to be higher.

The numbers were bad. While I'm hunting for low 700's for exam, I just scored low 600's now (according to Kaplan's spreadsheet). Once again, I missed the whole block of questions, consecutive, also in the middle of the test. I'm starting to think that it happens whenever I'm loosing the focus, but recover later on. I need to think more about that.

I'm afraid to think that I'll need more then a month to get my scores to a better level. I don't feel solid on some of the questions, and I know I need to do better. (Well, I'm almost sure I can.)

I found a lot of people struggling to improve by 100 points score with less then 4 weeks timeframe and fail. Well, some people still believe it's possible if you'll study 4-6 hours a day, but lets make it real -- it's not gonna happen even if you'll take a leave from a day job. You just can't do this unless you're going nuts about making 100 points improvement within such short period of time. (Besides, some people believe that all these "books" scores of 600+ can end up pretty close to 700 on a real exam and vice-verse. You never know.)

Anyway, I can't do 4 hours a day on GMAT. The best I can is 2-2.5 hours with an extra hour or 1.5 for reading books. I can't read too much fiction stuff that is recommended in GMAT Club forums, but I do love business books.

So this is my plan. And well, I'm not planning to schedule a test yet, so I don't have any time limits so far. Whenever I'll feel confident with verbal & quantitative parts, I want to write at least 15-20 essays on AWA (AI & AA). This will take me about a week or so. Only after that I'm going to run for the test.

On the other note, I really don't understand people who went to GMAT and got 720-740 and then still came back for a higher score (and often fail). While with the most schools you can suggest which score to consider, I really can't get the reasons -- why did you waste your time and hunt for something more then 720? GMAT is not the only, and, frankly speaking, not the most important piece. Whatever men.

Well, I guess that's all for now. Not much happening around there. I recently got Stealing MySpace book on my Kindle. I didn't have a chance to read it, but heard a lot of positive feedback about the book.

I'm almost there to close a deal with one of the gyms around (month to month, don't even dare to think I'm going to sign a contract :). I think it's going to be 24 hour fitness, even if I don't like it. We'll see.

Poor scores and everything else

Well, I took my chance to complete the quantitative section of the sample exam section from Kaplan's book. Frankly speaking, I was planning to get at least low 80%'s, however, I failed, and got higher 50%s.

I just missed the huge block of consecutive questions. They don't look similar for me, but I missed literally all of them. Some of them are careless ones, but speaking about other ones I remember being rather confident about. They definitely weren't the fast-answer-ones, but I thought that I took my time and getting really close. I was pretty wrong.

Pages 438-442 are really interesting from the standpoint of calculating of your score and getting to idea what GMAT score does it relate to. While I understand that it's a rough estimation, at least it's something to operate, right?

According to that table, I can allow myself less then 10% of wrong answers in the verbal section still to get close to 700's score. I'm not sure I can make it, I think the best I can do is 20% of wrong ones, but still it's a good food for thoughts and work on my skills.

On the other note, I'm helping a friend of mine with her car over the last several days. It's about 7 years old and rarely driven, mostly on short distances, pretty well cared, with no too much enthusiasm about though. ;) But they don't drive too far, so they don't really need an everyday-ready-for-a-ride one.

As everybody knows already, shit happens. It happen the day when my friend planned a long run and something went just wrong. As we figured out it was a crankshaft sensor. And while this is not a complete failure, the car just goes into some kind of emergency loop and keep on low rpm's, but you can still drive at 70-80 mph on the freeway to get to the service.

Whatever, it happens Sunday evening. The craziest thing is that in the capital of California -- Sacramento -- in the country that has so many cars around -- there is no 24x7 car service to get the car fixed. You just supposed to stay until Monday, wait for the part to arrive (an extra 24 hours!), and then, maybe, get it fixed. That's a freaking startup idea here. Get those services, get a Web locator for them and you are a) saving money b) saving nervous system which goes nuts when something is wrong, but you have no idea what and what to do now.

I had many different cars in Ukraine. I think my youngest one was a brand new (pretty big failure ;), the oldest one was dated 1993 in 2004 I guess. Yes, 10-years-old cars can be a headache. However, the driving conditions were way different those days.

Here, in US, I had only two cars. One was 3 years old SUV, Mitsubishi Outlander, still on a dealership warranty for 2 or 3 years more (or 30K, whatever comes first), so I cared very little about it. My present one is 2 years old Toyota Prius, but I got it brand new, and it's covered for 7 years by manufacturer, unless I will keep my driving habits and keep increasing mileage up (I have a warranty cap at 100K miles).

Anyway, all I want to say that sometimes the car that is over 7 years old might be a more expensive investment, then getting a new one. Typically, I think that an average working family get allow themselves to get a new car every 5 years. Keep it less luxurious if it's too expensive, but get a new one.

A friend of mine has already wasted $1.2K for servicing her 7 years old car (damn, it doesn't sound old, does it?) and nobody knows what's coming next. And this could be money for a down payment for a new car.

Word Problems

Starting from page 345 I got into Strategies and Practices part of the book, with the opening Chapter 10 of Word Problems. The first few blocks didn't impress me. Some silly principles described in writing -- it's more like something that every person should understand himself, but not learn about.

The picking numbers principles is useful, however, I found it pretty inappropriate for examples shown there -- they can be easier solved with plain math (0.8 * 1.3 -- is it something that is hard to calculate?).

Kaplan's 3 step method for word problems in data sufficiency questions looks absurd to me. Totally.

The Chapter 10 is over now with nothing useful taken. (Read: don't buy this book.)

The Chapter 11 is AWA. While they articulate that you need to learn how to type quickly, I'd be much happier if they would tell me "how quickly"? I'm pretty comfortable with keyboard, but I know people who go way crazier in typing.

Page 364 says that the length of essay is not a factor. However, I remember references to the fact, that the length of essay still rather important thing.

As always, a point of using transitional phrases, like first, therefore, since and for example.

As always, examples in this book really suck. The Analysis if an Issue one starts like they are going to tell me the process of writing an essay step by step (which is good, by the way), but suddenly they just come up with something that my essay might look like with a whole essay text shown.

The book says I should avoid opening sentences with there is or there are. I should mention I'm doing this quite often. ;) I also should not refer to myself needlessly. (Is this a really weak point?)

In Chapter 12, which is about taking control of the test, the authors raise the question of importance of answering the first questions correctly ..."on the GMAT, if you can get the first 10 questions right, you can get lots of later questions wrong and still score get a high percentile score". I believe this is one of the most arguable point of view about the GMAT. However, I don't know who's right here.

What I really like in the book is page 392. It's a sample GMAT practice test answer sheet, which you can scan and print in many copies for your own test process. It looks pretty nice, except I would prefer to see in a few different layouts, the one which is shown is very tied to original exam format, while I normally take about 40-50 questions per session, grouped by sections and the type of the questions, rarely mixed.

Page 400 opens up a full-length practice test. I run just through 25 questions of quantitative part. Hopefully will finish the rest later tonight or the first tomorrow morning. Wondering about the score.

Status update

Completed the Data Sufficiency section in the morning. Didn't actually do much. It looks like I lost some traction and need to get back on course.

Three days in gym so far. The only good thing is it's very close. I can put shorts and t-shirt, jump into the car or (better, but tougher) take a quick walk to it. Actually, 0.4 miles away and it's 8 minutes walk according to Google. Basically, that's the only good thing about it. ;)

Found a nice watches that I'm failing to identify. Here they are. Looks like german and a little bit steampunkish, but nice.

Today is a pretty warm day. It's about 85+ here in SF corridor to the Valley. I guess the temperature goes way up if you'll got south.

Data Sufficiency

It looks like I'm opening a new chapter from the Kaplan's book and gain the same (or higher) level of frustration almost right away. It happens with the Data Sufficiency chapter as well.

Four to five pages about nothing. Some points that they put a stress on which lead to nothing meaningful. More like: know the topics and think sufficiently. Damn, that's funny.

Very often I saw the AD-BCE combo for DS questions (in different books). Kaplan's editors decided to go further and changed it to ABD-CE. What a heck? But I need to make it clear -- in sample questions and answers later on they've used the AD-BCE approach also.

Once again I'm confused by the example of guessing in DS problems. While definitely, this is something I'm going to do whenever I'll stuck, the sample question could be solved with two or three math equations with no guessing at all.

I would prefer to see more small, but useful tips & tricks to be remembered as x^2 - y^2 then x != y (sorry for a little bit programmish style), m^3 is even (or odd) when m is even (or odd), square root of m is even, then m is even, and so on.

I could not complete the 50 questions quiz tonight, as I'm a little bit pressed in time -- need to complete the memcache part of the code for one of the projects, as well as prepare a little bit for upcoming session at Founder Insitute on selecting key vendors for your company.

My experience is pretty poor on this topic, however, I believe it's pretty sufficient for the needs of small company. Definitely gotta learn more to run something bigger then 20-30 people's one. Hopefully, today is the day to learn the missing points.

I've completed the 40 questions (10 missed), but with so disgusting score, that I would not do anything anymore in a hurry. Too many careless errors, however, with an a lot of concept errors, too.

On the other note, just upgraded Firefox on my Macbook Pro. Wondering why it provided me with numerous 3.0.x updates, when 3.5.x was available for a while?

So I downloaded it manually and installed over. So far so good, feels faster and nicer, however, interesting how much time will it take to fuck up the whole thing again? ;) (My previous FF 3.0.x was freaking slow, but I didn't want to rebuild the profile.)

I also try to download Arthur Hailey's The Moneychangers to my Kindle. Even that it's written in 1975, I've been told that it reads pretty well for 2009. I'm going to give it a try. It's not available in native Kindle format, so I'm hunting the sites for either plain text, PDFs or DOC or whatever they have available. I've got a few downloaded copies with a pretty broken lineage, so I need a better one. However, after half an hour of looking for the good copy, I didn't find any. It looks like all of them are the same one. So I decided to get the audio book of it, to use in the gym.

New names for common things

Okay, so now the Problem Solving chapter at Kaplan's wastebook. Once again, not impressed.

Picking Numbers -- while there is no doubt substituting numbers is a useful technique on GMAT exam, why does every single book published get its own name for it? This drives me mad.

In four examples on using Picking Numbers, I found only two of them (50% if you wish :) appropriate for that technique. I was able to quickly solve the other two with tricking and substituting numbers, but with plain old math.

Backsolving -- I don't know how trustful is that, but sounds intriguing. If it works, I guess this is the first valuable tip so far from this book. Unfortunately, out of 2 examples, I should say only one was appropriate choice. (Still 50% :) The other one could be easily be solved with just "thinking in numbers". Very easy. I'll try Backsolving on some real questions though -- interesting to see how good is that in real life.

Guessing. Damn, while I will guess if I'm stuck -- and this is pretty intuitive -- I would prefer to see some really hardcore question as an example for that, instead of simple proportion of alcohol & water question. What can stuck you there?? The only thing is well stated was Don't guess blindly. I second that.

Basically, that's all you can get from this chapter. Nothing more. You need a separate book to "wake up" your math knowledge. This is one does not give you anything.

I've run the sample 50 questions quiz, scored about 86% correct, I think I will do better with a few tries more and reading the correct answers (which suck by the way! in Kaplan's book). Had a few guesses though (wrong ones :), so need some more concepts to work one.

Next one is Data Sufficiency and I already waiting for the clueless theory part with moderate level of questions coming after it. Good practice anyway, but don't buy, if you ask.

On the other note, I won one of the free tickets to TechCrunch50 2009 that will take place on September 14-15th 2009. I mean, I didn't really get it in my hands, yet, but I don't think that there are any doubts after the confirmation. :)

I don't think I will be make it on Tuesday (and if so, I'll have to leave early, and maybe back afternoon), but I'll be there for Monday. And I would be happy to meet all of you, who're also coming, have some beer or whatever they serve. (Yes, I'm a beer-man.)

Reading Comprehension

Done with the set of 50 questions quiz on Reading Comprehension.

The questions are okay. I tried to keep 80-90% success rate over the track, however, the uncomfortable place which I used to work at added some discomfort and I missed the set of several questions in the end, getting down to ~75% of correct answers.

I still don't know how will this adjust to a real score. My originally idea was that scoring 65%+ on both verbal and math can be matched to high 600's or low 700's. Never got any confirmation for that, yet. ;)

Overall RC questions come easy when they're talking about something you can absorb (say, business topics), and come pretty bad when they're up to bacterias, molecules or other shit. (I never liked chemistry in school.)

So well, half of the book is done, but I still kind of miss the feeling of learning something new. Just 150 sample questions and that's it. The next part is math, but it feels like it's not going to be any better.

Now off-topic note. I can't stop wondering how low can be the price of vacation booked some time in advance.

The moderate room at South Lake Tahoe, CA in the middle of August could be booked for less then $145/5 weekdays, very close to the lake, cable TV & Internet, microwave & fridge, air conditioning, with pool & SPA on-site and continental breakfast included. Damn, that's hot. The room is good for 2 adults, sharing one king bed. If you're lucky, you might find a deal for two queen size beds for the same price (or close).

To compare, I recently talked to a friend of mine in Ukraine, who was struggling to book a "room" in Crimea (on Azov sea). The owners charged him ~$12/day per person, and the "room" is to be shared between 2 adults, more like a big-box-type-of-container, featuring nothing but two full-sized beds and few steps between them to "get up and out". The luckiest ones will get a fan in the room.

Nice.

Kaplan's SC & few things more

I'm not going top write a lot, but a quick note -- I've just complete a quick quiz from Kaplan's book on Sentence Correction (50 questions).

My results were rather poor this time -- about 70% correct still. While I didn't improve my concentration issue, I also found myself having weak skills in this section (even when sometimes it seems easier).

Most of the time the questions were okay, but I didn't really like the explanations (too much and broad words, too little samples) and I found those explanations to work very bad for non-native English speaker like I am.

I think I have to agree with many other reviewers who said that verbal piece is very poor in Kaplan's book. I still have to see the math one.

On the other note, I have printed a 14 days free coupon for 24 hour fitness gym, so I'm planning to activate it within next few days and get back my everyday gym habit.

I've also spent some time looking around gyms nearby, that actually suck big times here, in Northern California. I keep remembering my bad and ugly LA Fitness gym in Pasadena, which charged me twenty something a month with no contract, had three levels of gym machines, sauna, steaming room and few more gyms in driving distance (~5-10 miles) with pool, basketball court, racket ball (wrong spelling?) rooms and few more bonuses on the top.

While I thought LA Fitness to be rather moderate gym, here, in Northern California, it would be cream on the top of all. Unfortunately, LA Fitness has no network in this part of California.

I looked at Bally's, Fitness 19, 24 hour Fitness, Equinox, local YMCA and few more. Ugh, didn't like anything (or didn't get a match price-wise ;).

However, have to choose, so the cheapest solution is getting a prepaid certificate for 24 hour fitness. It's still about 5-6 miles away from my place, and while there is one close by, but it's a Super-Sport one. This actually one more ugly thing about gyms here. This is one level several years old and absolutely unremarkable gym with no pool and very poor amenities is charging fifty something per month, while regular one can be bought for twenty something (and I'm not talking about Costco's certificates out there!).

Whatever, we'll see what I'll end up with. :)

Tomorrow is Reading Comprehension section.

GMAT is EZ

I just received two more books EZ Solutions Basic Math for GMAT and Advanced one.

I'm hunting down the high scores on exam. Achieving this from the first try saves me $250 (x times :), so an extra book is never too much. Of course, if it's not dumb and stupid and useless. However, I don't have much people around me to advise.

I had a quick sneak preview of them and it looks like the super practical, however, rather thin ones. Like 3 or 4 times thinner then Kaplan's on Cracking the GMAT books. And, as it often happens, I expect them to be at least 3 times more useful then others. :)

But okay, lets go over the Kaplan's book.

I run through the chapter 4 for a verbal quiz. There were 50 questions which I made 41 correct, giving me 82%. While I don't think that I scored well, as the questions were relatively easy, the most of my mistakes were driven my careless and too much distraction from the side of my email, IM and all other things.

As you can see, I still struggle to put myself into noise-free environment, so I should better learn how to deal with distraction. :)

I didn't really like the explanation part, which is a little bit too messy for me, with no clear points and the answer stated right away, missing the logical path of reaching to it. (Do I ask for too much?)