Done with verbal!

I'm just done with the last verbal bin from Cracking GMAT. Actually, with two last ones,#2 Medium and #3 Hard.

Well, frankly speaking, I'm still struggling in fixing my verbal part. I was able to score about 65% on the hardest part while scoring about 61% on the medium one. While I feel myself a little bit more confident on the type of the questions, I know the good approaches to solve some of the problems, I still much more intuitive on them, rather then knowledgeable.

I don't really have a theoretical points to support my answer. Well, sometimes I do, about half of the times. In all other cases, it's more like what feels good.

Also, I don't know if it's me or the book (Cracking the GMAT), but hardest ones were rather easy. Easy, I mean, I've got wrong 2 or 3 in total 16 or 17.

And a few final words: I'm pretty unsatisfied with the book. I believe it's pretty worthless. They've got a pretty solid part on permutations and combination theory, but, dude, it's only ten pages or so. Yes, they provided readers with some good use cases, but that's it. Everything else is like the image on the right -- too much about nothing (or the same).

My next one is Kaplan's Comprehensive Guide to GMAT 2009. My best hopes that it'd be a better book.

Other than that, I'm going full throttle into practice questions.

Verbal

Well, let me make it straight. Now I know for sure -- I don't like the verbal section of GMAT.

It doesn't make me happy.

While I scored into middle third according to warm-up section of Cracking the GMAT, I decided to start with the first bin, instead of the second one. (Better more then less.)

You know what? I didn't mention any difference. The first bin felt pretty hard for me. Sometimes even really weird.

I made a few "educated" guesses, completed it rather quick, despite on the noise and overall distraction of TV and constantly beeping email coming in (yes, I receive a lot of emails on the weekend, too).

So well, what made me even more surprised is my result, which was about 90% of correct answers.

If you'd ask me about that -- I would say I made at least 30% of mistakes. However, I didn't.

So what could be my options to improve myself in the verbal part of GMAT? Still don't have a good answer for that.

Reading helps, however, to what extent? The texts posted in the GMAT are pretty weird and unlikely to belong to my list of readings. Other then that, I didn't mention any improve in my results.

From what I heard, Manhattans' Sentence Correction is very good. I have plans to acquire this book as soon as I'll finish with my official guides and one more (I guess Kaplan's one). I'm also thinking about Kaplan 800, however, I'm little bit concerned on some reviews saying that the questions in it not that good like even the free ones from mba.com.

I also have a set of printed material from my friends, with some sample questions and tests to go through. However, I'm not very fond of solving problems, that I can't get an explanation for. It will take more time, which I'm pretty limited for anyway.

P.S. Found a nice image to accompany this post. ;)

GMAT CR

Okay, so I missed a day of study (was too sick for that, and I didn't think going over the questions in that condition can make any good for me) and next day (instead of problem solving) I had a few hours preview class on Manhattan GMAT. They're telling people about what GMAT is and were pitching their courses. I didn't really solve a lot of questions that day, but got a pretty good intro to the actual exam process, and what computer adaptive tests are. I never had CAT before so it's going to be a pretty new experience for me.

Well, as for now, I just turned over to GMAT part which is called Critical Reasoning (CR), and (from the first sight) it felt to me pretty easy. I was able to score 80% without even paying enough attention and being constantly distracted by my little son, whom I've got to babysit for whole weekend. (And you know, he knows how to distract you from studying.) The most of my mistakes were pretty careless. (Not an excuse though.) And I completed only 40 questions today. I'll try to make at least 50 or 60 tomorrow.

Starting my GMAT challenge

When I'm starting my GMAT challenge, I know absolutely nothing about what is it at all (except the abbreviation though. ;)

Few words about myself. I'm 28 years old, have more then 11 years away from my school-days. Although, I had math for a few years in the University, I was too busy to pay enough attention, as I was building my first company. (Never end up as a huge success, but was a great experience).

I'm not a native English speaker. My native languages are Russian and Ukrainian (in some kind). Although, I've got more then 40 articles published and working in the English-speaking environment for about 9 years, I have got less then 3 years of active speaking (living in California - so one can hardly call it English, but Spanglish :).

So all these attributes don't make me a lucky GMAT candidate. However, I plan to target 740+ overall score, plus high numbers for verbal (or whatever it is), as it could be important for admission officers (against non-native speaker applicant). I'm not a top-scores type of the guy, so I'll leave 780-800's for Asian and Indian robots (no offense :). Anyway, 740 is a lot as well.

I've been told that TOEFL would be extremely easy comparing to GMAT, so I left it for dessert. :) I may blog about it eventually, but from experience that my friends shared with me (who positively took TOEFL), not much to write about.

As for now, I have only three books on my table. The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 11th Edition, Quantitative and Verbal Reviews. They are known as must-have books, so it was sure-shot.

I'm going to use some abbreviations during the text. I'll try to make sure to describe them, at least once. :) I'm also using a sample testing grid, that I'm printing out (I'm going to make 50 two-sided copies or so, with 40 questions on one side) and filling out answers there, marking my errors and making notes.

After brief intro, I started the diagnostic test (p.19). First day I went through 24 Problem Solving (PS) questions, ending up with 8 correct answers (that is Below Average (BA) by the grading table at p.45). I've started Data Sufficiency (DS) and stretched them into the second day, making as low as 8 correct answers (BA). This makes me pretty sad about my current condition. :)

Third day I'm turning into Reading Comprehension (RC) and Critical Reasoning (CR). I was more confident about RC, but I scored it as low as 10 (stands for Average (AV)), but still better then the first two ones. CR made me really sick, and I was pretty disappointed of it, but I made 9 (Above Average (AA)) and this really amused me then. :)

My goal for tomorrow (or late tonight) is Sentence Correction (SC) (starting p.39). It's known to be one of the toughest, so I'll to stay away from desperation.

I've ordered two more books, Kaplan GMAT 2009 Comprehensive Program and Princeton Review's Cracking the GMAT, 2009 Edition. I have a gut feeling that I'm wasting money, but I don't want to wait for these books if this is something I really need. I'm also advised to get Manhattan's GMAT Sentence Correction Preparation Guide, 3rd Edition as it one of the best guides for SC, but I'm pretty pressed in cash for now.