Destination and a new beginning

Ok, I admit that I should have posted this a long time back. I was hoping for a better result. Finally after so many twists and turns, there is only one word for my score - DECENT

710(Q-50,V-37,AWA-5.5) wrote on 7th July

There are mixed feelings. Inspiration, elation, sadness, confusion all blending in. Now What? Is this score good enough? Should I write again? The answer depends on my school selection and profile strength both of which are unclear to me. Therefore I have decided to close this issue by end of July by taking the help of a consultant.

So what happened to the overconfident guy who was claiming to ace in GMAT? Well he is still there, little shaken but still going strong. I have been through so many diverse and difficult situations in my life that I have learned the importance of calmness. After GMAT, the main thing that was bothering me was my self image. To counter this, I was repeatedly thinking - I AM MORE THAN MY GMAT SCORE. But still I was not convinced. I was in agitated state. So I just waited to get myself into calm mode again. I watched my favorite movies and had great food. Once I relaxed, the whole GMAT preparation journey went through my mind.

I started my preparation for GMAT in mid-April. I used to study on alternate days because of professional commitment, my own lack of self-discipline and extraneous factors like power-cut, social commitments. So basically I studied for around 35-40 days. +1 for getting a decent score in so less time.

On looking back, I feel I should have devoted more time for verbal especially sentence correction. On GMAT day, I performed well in AWA thanks to myohmy. Then Quants was a breeze as well. But in verbal I started slow. I still remember I spent around 5 mins for the first verbal question. Then I realized my poor beginning and brought about a sense of urgency while keeping my accuracy. I was going alright but my speed was a little bit slow. In the last I had around 8 questions with 8 mins left. I had to finish it anyhow and so there was guesses. It brought down the score in VA to 37 :(

But I am happy and proud. Feels good about the whole process and all in all it was fun. It has taught me to think in an analytic and structured manner. Now its the time for new beginning which involves school-shortlisting, essays and recommendations. Let another yatra begins.

P.S. - Since this blog was created to capture my GMAT journey, I am going to change its outlook and expand its scope to serve as my B-School journey. Keep visiting :)

Seeking Frequent Help is Surest Way to Stall

Growth requires resistance. Without resistance, there is no addition of potential. So when it comes to GMAT preparation, if you come across a difficult problem, seeking solution immediately is stopping yourself to grow out of that problem.

When you come across a problem, your mind starts to find solutions to that problem. You should gift your mind that opportunity. After brainstorming, if you seek help, then it is going to be branded in your mind forever. Also the mind has its share of exercise and practice. This is the way to learn any trade and making it the second nature.

Personally for me, Mathematics is my second nature and I do not have to exert myself or brood over math problems. But for Sentence Correction, I sometimes spend up to 30 minutes on a single problem and still ends up being unsure of the answer. It is because its various rules are still not itched into my memory and to burn them I need to bear the pain of thinking hard. So basically I try not to seek the solutions and instead try my level best to come with an answer with an explanation. After that, when I see the solution, there is an AHA moment and the learning remains with me forever :)

Sentence Correction - Subject Verb Agreement

Yesterday's Mock taught me the importance of practicing daily and remembering the rules. Subject Verb Agreement in Sentence correction is easy to do if one has done an intensive reading through out his life. That person will be easily selecting the right answer without even knowing the grammatical rule behind it.
I too got quite success like this. But I believe its important to know the rule also. Because GMAT creators know this and they might tweak with the question. Therefore I am trying to familiarize myself with the rules. Instead of memorizing them, I am looking at them regularly so that they become my second nature. I am posting here one such revision note.

All the best for your journey fellow Bloggers.