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

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.

Keeping cracking the GMAT

Well, so far so good. I've just finished with almost half of the book (Cracking the GMAT 2009), completed the quantitative part of it and still pretty intrigued about when will we start to crack.

No, don't get me wrong. The book is really nice and good for people who was very bad with math. (I can judge the verbal section, yet.) I wasn't the most brilliant math guy, and I have more then 12 years past my school days so far (I graduated when I was 17, I now I'm almost 29). However, the book is very, very basic. 225 pages out of total 347 (not including practice questions, answers, drills and blah-blah-blah) and almost nothing new for me. No tricks, no hints, no secret combos that I'd be able to apply on my own on the real test. (Well, sorry, The Princeton Review, I might be dumb to get yours, too.)

Anyway, I still want to mention pages 147 to 158. These ones have a pretty nice intro with practice questions on probability, permutations and combinations. I marked it down and going to use it as a table reference. Very clear and nice.

There are also few nice intros on pages 183-184. This is something I normally don't use in my daily life and tend to forget. The books has all these formulas for me there. Thank you.

So, lessons learned.

1. There are a lot of books on GMAT and there is no the best one. I might need to purchase some more to cover those parts which are needed to get me to 700+ score. However, I still believe I should better practice more. It looks like those hints and tricks aren't for my type.
2. Flexible hours of studying time just don't work. You need to be have a specific timing every single day (well, you can give yourself a break 2-3 days in a week). But you should have specific hours within specific time frame. If you break it — you should know that you fucked up. I tried many different ways of managing my study time, and everything sucks but specific and set hours. You can feel some pressure because of that, but it's good for you, trust me on this.
3. GMAT questions are tough. At least, they should be. If you feel that they're piece of cake for you — you either extremely brilliant and well prepared or you're doing them wrong. I try myself not to turn the page and breath with a relief because of seeing an easier question. This won't happen on a real exam, if I'm doing well. Better manage to enjoy tough ones.
4. Make sure you can get some peace when you're studying. Every single minute you're being disturbed requires up to 5 minutes extra to get back on track.
   

Bear with me, I'm moving forward. :)