Count down for a REAL GMAT

This post is for me to have a self boosting / to get inspriration from GMAT Club as and when my enerygy levels go down. Please ignore this post if found boring / irrelavent.

Finally the D-DAY for my GMAT exam is fast approaching. March 7th 2009. Hum.....Month, Day and Year are all odd. But I hope my result will definitely not be odd. My journey for GMAT is not a long one so far. It just started during later October of 2008. But I do agree that a dream of doing a MBA is around 8 years old. But till recent past, never got the oppurtunity / energy to make my dream put in to real world.

I always had a dream of doing my MBA in one of the IIM's(India's top business schools). But situations never allowed me or rather I should say, I didn't make use of the situations to make this dream come live. Finally durng the month of October, when I was browsing thru the net, I ended landing in this great forum. Read couple of inspriring success stories on how they got the entry ticket(GMAT score) for achieving the dream. This gave me the inspiration to do my GMAT exam. Now I started thinking, should I prepare first and then set my date / should I set my date and then prepare for the exam. Preapring first and then setting the exam date, is something like trying to fill a non existing vessel. There is no limit / no checkpoint / no end. So I decided, let me fix the exam date. And this will make me do my preparation. Finally decided the date to be March 7, 2009. Now when the day is fast approaching, I realized that the day is odd, having all odd numbers. But don't want to have my GMAT score to be odd as well.

Now coming to the target score, not aiming too high. Just 720+ will suffice. Hum...Just 720+......well when there are many members of GMAT club forum who are in the 720+ club, why shouldn't I be one. Ok.....Hoping is one part. But implementing is second part. So I better start putting my effort to give some life to my dream. Now that my date is fixed, I need to have some plan for my preparation. So after going thru this forum repository, gathered information that I am looking for. The whole of October + half of november went by gathering information / materials. Finally I made a estimated plan(BTW estimated need be actaul as we say in IT industry). The plan is divided into 3 months -
a) whole of December month, give a shine to my blunt Quant skills. (I think I am always good in Quant). So all I need is brush the basics little bit and raise my speed calculations.
b) Whole of January, dive into verbal and get a feel of the length, breadth and width of GMAT Verbal.
c) Whole of Febrary - Practice, practice and Practice Quant and Verbal.

isn't the plan sounding good........Well I thought so. Ok now here comes the actual scenarios. I am on track till the end of December. To be specific, I have brushed my basic maths, practised couple of hundreds of questions under timing....wow....sounds great. But when I started practising Data Sufficiency problems, I realised I am not able to hit the right answer choices. I thought, I just need some patience and control my eagerness to solve the problem when I come to a point where I have enough to solve it. Simple reason, I doubt whether the information that I derived so far is really sufficient to solve the problem. To clarify my doubt I end up solving the problem and BOOM.....my timer will die.....OK I will have to concentrate more on DS. Well still it is December and I have full of Jan and Feb. (Postponed it for later time. First mistake)

Now came the Christmas vacation......with a Vegas Trip. Where are my books? Where is my inspiration?.........After 2 weeks of break, when I realised the date, it's already in to january. Oh my God, my Quant lost some shine. So again to get into the track, I spent couple of days(few) revising my Quant. Realized already I am running late on my Verbal. So one fine day I opened my material for Verbal. Hum....Even before I started my prep for Verbal, I am quite sure, I am less than average on GMAT verbal. I realized that Communicating in English is not good enough to attack GMAT Verbal. It is by itself a big ocean to swim across. (atleast for me). Going thru the material, not able to get the starting point. And it was already mid Jan. Started doubting whether I be able to complete my diving into Verbal Ocean. God....so far I didn't even know how deep it is.

Finally started of with MGMAT - Sentence Correction. Only reason being that SC is one area in Verbal where it is easy to build more points. Even though it doesnot have the formula like in Quant, there are predefined rules in Grammer that if we remember, we can build the score. Decided let me catch the easier one. Parallelly started off with Critical Reasoning Bible, I under stand what the book is saying. But when I have to answer the CR question.....my brain is going blank....... RC still is far from sight. And today as I am writting this post, it is in the last week of January. I know I have to put lot more hours and lot more interest to get thru my Verbal. But yes, I will definitely plan to take atleast 2 CAT tests in a week to understand my weak points in Febrary.

So here I am with 40 days and counting for my GMAT. Friends, all I need is some inspring words for the D- DAY and suggestions on how to tackle my Verbal. It really is a big ocean where the Length / breadth / depth are unknown for a Non Native English speaker. The biggest challenge I have is balancing my 24 hrs between WORK / 18 month old Toddler / GMAT preparation. All are equally imporatant. I guess getting into an MBA path also teaches us on proritizing the tasks, time manageming, handling the stress and testing patience.

Well this thread is only the introduction of my GMAT journey which I will be updating with my major milestones. And really hope to see a happy ending with atleast 720+ score. .