Morning hour for GMAT

I was able to find some time in the morning to move forward with my GMAT preps.

Finishing with the Sentence Correction section of Cracking the GMAT I found minor errors paragraph also interesting (p.251). It also has a comparison quantity matrix, which was pretty much something new to me — I don't remember anything of that.

The next part of the book was devoted to Reading Comprehension. It's a good intro to the exam, but not much new ideas, though.

Few of main points follows:

1. You should always read the first sentence of paragraph, as it's always a key to entire one.
2. A very nice list of trigger words on page 265. And another nice list of ying-yang words on page 266. That's what I can a trick. They structurized the approach of solving a problem and giving you tools for that. I don't know if I can remember this, though. But I'll try to use the book as reference while practice, and hopefully, I will learn them.
3. Process of Elimination (they often call it POE and I always forget about it) — I found it to be the weirdest thing for Reading Comprehension. It doesn't make any sense for me. I mean, you can always eliminate wrong questions, but I was supposed to see some theory behind that. None found.
4. Reading Comprehension section really requires some silence around. I'm not the most noise-sensitive person, but even a working TV in the other room adds a huge pile of distraction.
5. I really got stuck on page 278 in the sample question with answers like scornful and denunciatory, dispirited and morose, critical but respectful, admiring and deferntial and uncertain but interested. While I can logically eliminate some of them (2), I have problems choosing between the rest (3). I need some more practice here.
6. It's recommended to take 3-5 notes while reading the passage. It's something that you need to develop by practicing, from the other side, I'm a little bit concerned about how will it be on the real exam, when you're kinda limited in paper size.

The next part of the book is Critical Reasoning. Actually, as the book authors say, we'll see the most questions on SC, the less or RC and even less on CR. So it looks like the priority of CR is the lowest one.

TEchnically, the whole section on Critical Reasoning was great (pp.283-315). I mean, a lot of interesting and nice tips and tricks. (Fortunetly, as I wasn't very happy about the book at all.) They did a great job on structurizing the problem.

I also liked that they described three main parts to an argument:

1. Conclusion. Something that author wants us to accept. Look for it in the beging and end of the passage. Normally, you'll be able to nail it down very quickly.
2. Premises. Evidence to support conclusion.
3. Assumptions. Unstated ideas or evidence without which the conclusion might be invalid.

On the other note, the real life is different from class room and as you can see on my example (which is not the best one for sure :) it's pretty hard to keep the stable schedule, especially when you cannot invest significant time into it and you're being "attacked" from other sides of your life. However, I am sure that I can make over it. Bear with me. :)

GMAT: complexity equation

Following up.

This is going to be a short post about my current observation on questions complexity. Well, now I can probable draw it like this:

CR < RC < PS = DS

I found CR to be a little bit more time-consuming then RC, but I think this is normal, as you have a separate block of text in each question instead of (bigger) one, but for 3-5 questions. It requires to change the topic more often and it can be a valid reason for many careless errors.

Last block of GMAT RC

My last block of GMAT Reading Comprehension (RC) dropped down again. It scored just a 65% over there. So it opens up a new question here:

What is the best way to take your time and prepare, when you're not about it? It just the wrong mood, the wrong everything, the head is full of shit (pardon for my French) and you can't concentrate. What are the best way to turn yourself into "class-time" when the importance is relatively low, and sometimes, also pretty routine?

Concentration for the exam is rather different than concentration for one typical day from your 3-4 months study plan.

So, I don't have an answer, yet. Do you?

Warming up with GMAT RC

Finally, after warming up a little bit (and staying away for different types of insect texts ;) I was able to score a tiny bit more then 82% of correct answers on my next block of Reading Comprehension texts.

So now it looks like it'd be the easiest part of manage, with some practice and just keeping up my English vocabulary.

I've already passed three types of questions (according to the first book of GMAT Review). They are Problem Solving (PS), Data Sufficiency (DS) and and Reading Comprehension (RC). To prioritize them, I'd write something like this:

RC < PS = DS

PS and DS are almost equal in hardness (for me), while RC is fairly easy one. Bear with me, and I'll compare more categories to those two.

GMAT Reading Comprehension (RC)

Starting with GMAT's Reading Comprehension (RC), I finished with 65% right of the first block. Such a low score doesn't make me happy either (and actually looks like a pretty sad tendency :).

However, I found a pretty interesting thing - I tend to make a lot of errors while reading text about animals and insects, but everything else, which is related to history, business or social is never less then 85-90% of correct answers.

While low scores are pretty depressing, I'm very sure that keeping up the good plan and working hard could give me the target 700+ score on the exam. It's sad that I don't really remember my feelings and thoughts when I just started to prepare for PMP exam, but I guess it wasn't that much fun either. It took me a fair amount of time to get on track, but I ended up with a pretty high scores on the exam (I guess I screwed up only one category getting moderate proficiency on it, while getting the tops on all others).