GMATBLACKBELT's Journal

are you around london, let me know if you need assistance in tutoring

Dawned on me this morn why Co's prolly ask all that tedious info included in ur resume...

Solely for statistical purposes. Also, why pay someone to enter in my info in the database when they can get me to do it for free.

Bastards...

I studied about 2 hours on weekdays and 7-8 hours on weekends. I don't know about you but studying more than this really tired me out (I am working full time). My logic was 2 hours on weekdays are not that bad and thus I can save some energy to study on weekends. The key here is quality not quantity - you probably have heard this before and it's true. For me, reducing to 2 hours of study on weekdays really made my study more manageable.

Update: Yesterday, just did some probs the club and did a few SC's from Gmatter... actually did really bad at the Gmatter, but did very well on the club SC's that were posted. (dont think I missed one), guess its just the luck of the draw sometimes.

To get my mind off GMAT, ran 50 50 yard sprints. Took breaks after every 15. (simulates rounds in a fight). The last 5 i just did balls to the wall. Then cooled down on a 2mile jog.

Finally went back to MMA training for the first time in 4 1/2 months... that was crazy, but I felt great. lil sloppy on my jiujitsu technique, but still feel good.


Today: Just finished Challenge 17, man what a doosy. 70percentile in 1hr 45min... yikes!

Later gunna go over Verbal, especially CR's and RC's. (ive noticed im gettin progressively worse at RC's... maybe its just the GMATTER software not having all the info in the passage).

Ima go over my mistakes from Challenge 17 and earlier challenges.


Now off to tutor that girl, changed the session to today.

Back from tutoring. Went well. Shes got a lot of work to do though... she wants a 600+ in less than 50days.


Today SC: 11/15
CR: 11/14
RC: 3/4


Challenges: 70%. Ouch.

I now have to resort to Kaplan for RC's and CR's. Im using the 800 book. So far not too bad, although I gotta say the RC's are not very realistic. Some of the answers require you to draw way too much info that is not in the passage. Owell, its better than GMATTER. CR's are ok, a bit easy.


Ive come to reality on some terms today. Looking at scores consistently over the last few weeks and above, I think I can see why I got a 640 on the real thing.

If I miss 3-5 SC's, 3-4 CR's, 3-4+ RC's (if I were to do 3-4 passages). Thats a lot of missed problems. 9-13 problems wrong!

These are usually my ranges for verbal. Maybe a bit worse if I had a really bad day or something. I dont remember who said it, but the GMATPrep should not be taken so heavily as an accuracte indicator.

Especially for verbal! While on my very first GMATPrep, I saw maybe a couple SC's and 2-3 CR's Im 100% positive I got all of these correct. On verbal a few wrong questions can make a HUGE difference in the score.

Math: 44 on the second im still kinda ticked about b/c i was SO much better @ math than my first test. Guess it could have just been the luck of the draw. A few mistakes. just a few more wrong answers brought my score down.

For anyone aiming to score 700+ we have to be so careful. Just a few mistakes can send our score down 60points!

Ive realised that I really need to get my accuracy better b/c while I may beable to score a 700+ now, there are just so many factors that play into this test. Like I said, a few minor mistakes and ur done. We are aiming for such a high score that we cannot afford to make very many mistakes.

Ima post this as seperate thread as well.

Today's results:

Challenge: 78%... made some really dumb errors. Though there were some generally very difficult problems.

SC: 12/15
CR: 8/12 - man I hate kaplan CR's

No RC's today, im a bit tired so ima do an extra one tmrw instead.


Got my AWA back: 5.5 as I expected. worthless part of the exam.

Ok today Challenge 15: 94%, but spent about 2hrs+ on this. This was by far the hardest challenge yet. Despite the extra time, i was expecting a very low score. So im pretty pleased with that. Time though is just ridiculous. At some point during the test I said, these problems are just way too hard to get done in 2min. So i decided to focus on really solving them w/ no regard for timing.

Finished my verbal for today and reviewed.

SC: 10/14
CR: Last 8 from Kaplan 800. 6/8
RC: 4/4


Im really gettin ticked off here bout my wrong answers. In the SC's I was down to 2 answer choices. On all 4 wrongs I went from Right to Wrong.

CR's same thing: down to 2 choices. Right to Wrong. Im not sure how to fine tune this problem. Im always down to 2 choices on the ones I get wrong.