Kaplan, Hamare Kabze mein Hai...

Just finished Kaplan practice test from the book. 50 Questions, 49 correct at the first go. Fell to the classic trap of, miss-direction on the stem for 1 question. Of course, got it right on the second look.

More Problems Solved

On Sunday, I decided it is time to take on the toughies from OG. Going by my experience with other sections, last 30% of every section in OG are tougher. I decided to do, 201-249 this time. They were moderately tough. At the end of it, I got 43/49 correct. as usual, I attempted the wrong ones once again and got 5/6 correct. One question really stumped me. I failed to understand all the facts stated in the question stem. It was a permutation problem clevaerly mixed with Coordinate Geometry. It did stump me. Over all if I take the complete set of 150 PS problems I did from OG, I got 10 wrong. That is a correct answer rate of, 93%. Of the questions I got wrong, I got all but three correct on the second attempt. The other ones which bowled me were,
1. Which used a geometry theorem. 'The minor arc always measurs half the major arc angle'. I know that now.
2. Used the fact that Only numbers which are squares of prime numbers will have exactly 3 factors.

Lessons Learnt at the and of 150 Qn PS Practice

• Brush up Summation of Series, Arithmetic progression and Geometric progression. This will buy you precious minutes.
• Brush up co-ordinate geometry. Practice more of it.
• Every question could get solved with what I know, in less that 90 seconds. If it takes more than that, and I am not sure of the direction, the direction I am on is the wrong one.
• Probability, Permutation and combination problems are best tackled using simple logic.
• I need to learn how to use Venn Diagrams fast.
• I need to speed up.

Quantitavely speaking

Today I started practicing PS questions from the official guide. First I did 1-50. I got 48 correct. But those questions were very easy. So I decided to jump to 150-200. That set also I score 96%. Need to catch up on the speed. Technique seems to be working fine. By tomorrow I should be in a good shape to start the data sufficiency in parallel. Problem Solving and data Sufficiency are going to be my race horses. I am depending on them a lot. Sentence correction is still lagging behind. CR and RC at 85% is good enough to go into GMAT, If I could score full on PS and DS. Tough, but doable.

I, at least got my Grove back

Last two days I am getting up at 4:30am to do OG Questions. In the last two days I finished the First 100 Questions put under the section, Diagnostic Test. 85% is still my correct answer rate. I need to improve that. Reading Comprehension and Problem solving I did very well. Data Sufficiency I have some rough edges to smooth out. Sentence correction is at a paltry 75% correct. What could I do to improve that?. May be more practice is the solutions, and that is what I am going to stick to.

Officially I have not started 'studying' for my Quant section yet. I have to. I know that I need to brush up the statistics and Co-ordinate Geometry. Also, summation of series. A little brushing up in those areas will buy me a few more precious minutes during test taking.

I am happy that I am back on the GMAT trail. Always remember GMAT is the beginning, MBA is the aim.

Back to the thick of it all

I am back. The trip was very good. Puerto Rico is a diverse country. Geography changes mile to mile from side to side. If you ever be in Puerto Rico do not miss two things, One is the Flamenco beach on Culebra Island. This island is one hours boat ride into the Caribbean Sea from Fahardo. Flamenco is picture perfect with emerald green, slow swaying waves, Green carpeted mountain sides, White soft beach and Coral reefs just a stone throw away into the beach. The second item is the 'Nosh-Pits of Puerto Rico'. They are the road side eateries. In India they may best be called as Tapri, or Dhaba. Those snacks they sell are mind blowing. Delicious all the way. Also I meant the most hospitable hostess ever. Her name is Jasmine. We met her at a small Pardor near the mountainous region of Utuado. The Pardor's name is Casa Grande. She was amazing. The service we received every day at her small restaurant was top class. I will not be surprised at all if we see her next as the Maitre de in a NYC restaurant.

Well travel apart, I am slowly easing into the studies. I could feel the inertia. First excuse was, having lots of work to catch up. Next the golden one, My PC Crashed. Well, I have solutions for both. So back to sentence correction. Way to go baby..

Off to Puerto Rico

Flying off to Puerto Rico for 10 Full days. That is going tobe FUN. Just checked the Weather. 80F.

It is Official Now : I Suck at Correcting Sentences !!

My Technique is slow, Error Prone and In-Effective.
Time to buckle up and re-think the SC strategy.

Sentence Correction: The Fundamentals

According to GMAT, the right answer in sentence will be, Grammatically Correct, Concise in its presentation, Clear in the meaning of the sentence. Hence the 3C’s of correct answers.

So if you are ever tied between two possible right answers look for More Correctness, More Concision and More Clarity.

Concision examples:

Good
The division of work at the factory is a point difference between John and Tom.

Better
John and Tom differ on the work division at the factory.

Good

In the past one year alone price of Gas has increased by 40% upward

Better
Last year alone gas prices increased 40%.

Clarity could be a good yard stick to eliminate wrong answers. If the answer choices alters the original meaning of the sentence even slightly they are wrong.

Example:

All the roses are red.
Vs.
Roses are all red

Even though each of them is grammatically correct the meaning is totally different. Answer choices should not be distorting the original idea of the sentence.

John will come
Vs.
John may come


Grammatical correctness will be discussed in more detail.

Verbal Review RC - First Set.

I just turned in Questions 1 to 51 from the Verbal review. Quiet satisfied with the results. 48 correct, Above 94% accuracy. That is very comforting. The three wrong answers were primarily due to I, letting the guard down a little. Focus, Critical reading, do not forget these fundamentals when you read a passage. The last set is going to be tougher. I may take it later in the day.

Yesterday I sterted with the Manhattan GMAT Sentence correction. Excellent approach. I will be publishng my notes on sentence correction. So stay tuned.

Wish you a Great 2006

A friend of mine sent a thought provoking writing on New Years Eve. He characterized the journey of the universe through the new year as another moment in distinguishable from any other moment in the Grand Scheme of things. Well, Thinking from theory of ralativity everything depends on the frame you are on. So agree with him from certain frames. There are minor details likes, the taxes are due etc. to worry about when New Year arrives.

Wish you, your family and friends a Wonderful New Year, Let all your dreams come true.

Official Guide - Verbal Review - Practice Questions

One of my friends was nice enough to lend me his copy of the The Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review when he was going away on vacation. He is a very good person, know him for so many years now. One friend whom you can depend on to never ever let you down. So today morning, It was me, my coffee and The Verbal Review, Questions. From my experience now I know for sure that the last 1/3rd of the practice questions are the toughest. So I decided to do the last half of Critical Reasoning Questions (Qn 41 - 82). As expected, the first 15 questions went like a breeze. Then I started to feel the cogs grinding, and neurons in the brain starting to fire rapidly. I did bad with the time. It took me 10mnts more than my self allocated 70 mnts, limit. I ended up with 38 Correct and 4 Wrong. I have not done the analysis yet. May be I will do it once I finish this post. I am quiet satisfied with the results. I am planning to do one set of Reading Comprehension later in the day. Also it is time for me to start on my Sentence correction theory. So that is the rough plan for the weekend. Couple of practice sets from Verbal review, and Sentence Correction theory.

Kaplan CD Questions

I spent the last two days concentrating on taking tests on the Computer under strict timed condition. It is evident that howmuch ever I try I cannot give complete justice to 16 questions of RC presented by KAplan CD in 25 mnts. I am getting 88% correct. Still the last RC, is more done by intution than by complete comprehension. The CR Section was a breeze. Thiming was not a problem, neither was the well practiced reasoning techniques. I scored close to 90% on CR practice from Kaplan CD. Also I took practice swings at the PowerPrep and GMATPrep software. Performance was not bad at all. CR, 100%, RC 90%. as of now I am feeling very comfortable to move on to the Sentence correction practice. I am going to leave couple of practice sets aside to attack later once I finish sentence correction preparation. The timing issue of RC is not a big concern as of now. My reasoning is that I will have left overs from SC and CR to compensate for RC.

Manhattan GMAT : RC & CR Question Bank : My Opinion

Today, I took the the Manhattan GMAT Question bank on RC & CR Twice. My performance was laughable. Out of the 25 Questions, I got 14 correct on the first attempt, 16 correct on the second attempt. I was very confused since none of the questions I attempted was particularly difficult. They were no where as taxing as the Kaplan 800 Questions. Still I performed far far below my average.

After the second attempt also failed I decided to look at the answers and explanations. In my opinion the logical reasoning in these questions are far far away from what I learnt using, Kaplan and what I experienced using OG. The answers, and explanations were not convincing for many questions. I have to conclude that, In my opinion these questions are badly written, and badly explained.

I think I will take the CD tests from Kaplan today in the evening. Also I will attempt RC from Kaplan 800.

Christmas Weekend Update

It was all about practice tests this weekend. Nothing much of theory. I finished the last and final set from OG. In addition to that I did the practice set on RC and CR from PowerPrep. Also I took the monthly test on Kaplan website (30 Questions). Also I did analysis of all the tests. Saturday I spent some 6 hours, Sunday around 2 hours, and Monday which again was a Holiday another 6 hours. RC I have improved very much. I am close to my 90% correct rate. CR, I am exactly where I was before, at Around 86%. Kaplan test, I flunked at 70%. I made some very silly mistakes in DS and CR.

In addition to this, I yesterday tried my hand at the KAplan 800. First RC, I got 3/4 Correct. I was charged up. The second one I got 1/4 correct. I was brought back to reality. I closed the book and called it a day.

Today, my plan was to start at 5:00 am as usual. But I decided to sleep till 6:30, since we slept late. I will be taking the Manhattan GMAT Question bank in the evening. It is on RC and CR.

Third Set of RC From The Official Guide

A Merry Christmas to Everyone !!.

This set was for Questions, 76 to 110. 35 Questions.

Timing was a little more than 2 mnts per question. That was not very encouraging. My initial feeling at the end of the test was over all I was satisfied, But last passage I felt, I lowered my guard a little.

Final analysis confirmed it. I got 29 out of 35 Correct. Again sticking to the 82%. That was a little disappointing. However a closer look at the wrong answers consoled me a little. None of the wrong answers were due to a technique error, or comprehension error. They were careless mistakes. As I suspected, 3 out of my 6 errors came from the last paragraph. Also, I was able to get all but one of the 6 Questions correct on my second attempt.

Next, The last and final set of OG !!. May be tomorrow early morning. Today, the Christmas day is cramped with Social obligations.

Analysis of First Two Sets - RC

A Merry Christmas, And Wonderful Holidays to everyone. Enjoy the season with your loved ones, and be ready for the new year !!.

Today I did a thorough analysis to understand my logical flaws in answering RC questions. The conclusion is that, defining the scope of the question is where I am going wrong. I am going to correct it by going back to the passage / Notes One more time to confirm an answer. This could take slightly more time. Since my current timings are very good for RC, and since with more practice speed of answering will increase, I think this new approach will not leave me short of time. Any way, I will start seeing the results, or effects soon. So corrective action, if required could be adopted.

My Analysis method was very simple. From my answer grid first I classified all passages into One of the four sections, Social, Biology, Physics, Business. Then I went to each paragraph and read it once more. After that I attempted the questions I got wrong in that passage. With the logical reasoning fresh in my mind, I went to the OG explanation to understand their reasoning structure. I must say I agreed with every one of their explanations.

I compiled a grid with some statistical data similar to the one I did for CR. I will publish those once I complete all questions in RC.

OG-RC Second Set Finished.

Today I came back from office a little early. So decided to attempt another set of next 39 questions from OG. Timing was not bad at all. Something like 109 Seconds per Question. That seems to be right on target for the test.

I got 32 out of 39 Correct this time. So the correct percentage is 82%. Now I will take a breather and analyse all the wrong answers. This is an important junction. I need to get the correct answer rate above 90%. Do not know where I am going wrong. Hopefully this analysis will shed some lights.

RC Train Back On Track

Yes !!.

As I promised myself, I woke up dot at 5:00. Started a pot of coffee. And did the first set of 36 Questions from OG. Initially I felt my speed was not up to the mark. For the first seven questions I took close to 19 mnts. Later I gathered momentum and finished 36 Questions in One Hour. I got 29 Correct. That is a percentage improvement of 4%.

90% of the errors were from the first 50% of the questions. I realized my answering grid need a little modification to the analysis of the answers more effectively. I need to add Two more columns, One With Topic : Subject (Business, Science, Social), And the Length of the passage. That way I will get a clear idea of which type of passages I have problem in comprehending. Over all I was satisfied with the Topic Paraphrasing technique I was using. I am able to remember most of the content of the para without going back to the text.

I will do the detailed analysis of the errors today evening. I will keep a tally of not only my wrong answers, but also the places where I got them wrong. From the initial scanning itself I can see a clear pattern emerging. This analysis, I believe will be to my advantage.

Also, I am keeping up my daily routine of doing 20 Quant questions everyday. Even though the questions are a lot simpler than what I am anticipating for GMAT, I feel this exercise will keep my Quant skills well oiled.

I am taking it TOO Easy

I am bad. I was watching a DVD whole evening. Now I am sitting next to the OG with all RC Section book marked and everything. I even neatly earmarked the question sets I am supposed to take as part of each session. Basically I divided the OG Questions into approximate batches of 35 Each.

But, I have not started !!.

May be it has something to do with my dismal performance in Kaplan RC. I scored 76% correct. That is a bad rate.

I MUST start my OG-RC Practice tomorrow morning. No snooze button when the alarm rings. Get up, Put the Coffee, Freshen up and attack the session. Procrastination has destroyed one too many good things in my life. Not this one.

The Reading Comprehension Train Rolls On.

By, Yesterday evening and today morning I finished the Study material from Manhattan GMAT and KAplan on RC. The approach of these two are as different as schools of thought from two religions. Both are trying to achieve, and will achieve the same set of correct answers. But there are some major differences in the way each of them tries to cultivate the quick reading strategy. I think I am going to stick to the Manhattan Technique for reading, and use Answering technique from Kaplan. Not because I want to be a nice person, but because I feel this is best suited for me.

Manhattan GMAT, forces you to read in a carefully careless manner. Also the approach is different for Short Vs. Long Passages.

For Long Passages :-

Read the First 3 sentences of the First Para carefully, Then SKIM through the rest of first Paragraph. After finishing the first paragraph Jolt down up to 3 important points from the first Para by giving core importance to first 3 sentences. This will become your Skull section. Box it up.

Next, Read the first two sentences of each of the remaining paragraph very carefully. And SKIM through the rest of the material. Al the end of each paragraph put down in billeted points what you think is important.

At the end of this exercise you will be left with a Skull section, and 2 Bulletted ideas from each paragraph. According to Manhattan, this is enough for you intelligently approach each question.

For Short Passages:-

You can take a more detailed note taking as you go along as long as the time allotted is not exceeded.

That brings the question of how much time should be spent?

For the timing what they suggest is, You will know in advance by looking at the Question header how many total RC questions are going to be based out of the given Material. For example at the first question, header will read as, Question 21 of 21-24. This will tell you that there are 4 questions. So they advocate using 2 x 4 = 8 min total for attacking this RC. You should use a maximum of little less than half of this time to read and prepare the summary. Something like 3min 30 Secs for 4 Question passage, 2 min 30 Second for 3 Question Passage.

That will leave us about a minute to answer each of the questions. These timings are as always rules of thumb. I will be starting to do practice questions today evening. I will update back as to whether these techniques are working for me or not.