DAY 0 (of 57) - the Start

Question

Well... it's time I suppose. Time to start writing and preparing. Just like many people here, I really want to keep track of the progress I make. It took me like a week to start writing this post. So I'll be writing every single day for the next 57 days. Why 57 ? Well, I'll be taking my first attempt on April 6th, so 57 days left. A lil of profile info. I'm Russian, I somewhat grew up in DC, basically spent 9 years in the States, then moved back after my Junior year in high school. Now I have 2 BA degrees from 2 schools. My GPA in the first major (Linguistics/translation) is way low. 2.9 at most. I'm not sure what is the right way to actually calculate it. One way is to simply add up the grades and divide by their total, another way I've been told is to multiply the grade by the number of hours in that class and add that up and divide. BUT I feel a disadvantage, since the grading scale is a 5 point one, there's no 5- or 4+. just 5 or a 4 or a 3. You can't get a 2 or a 1, that means you failed and you won't graduate... Which scale should be used btw? My second major (Economics) is somewhat better, a 3.6GPA somewhere at the top of the class, almost graduated cum laude, needed to ace 2 classes, I know it doesn't count...

I'm currently an insurance broker for one of the top Russian brokers. I previously interned at 3 financial companies in various positions and want to make a transition to finance, IB. I understand there's no way to get into PE/VC without prior WE... but hey! gotta get into b-school first. So I'll be aiming at the top 5-top-10, we'll see how it goes. Anyways, I believe that there is no purpose in getting an MBA from a school below the top-10, so I'll be applying in R1 in the fall of 2013 I'm a guy and I'm 26, just in case. The primary purpose of this blog is to be honest to myself, and I hope I will be able to join in on the discussion of various topics pretty soon. The status as of today, February 7th 2:21 AM - got the Veritas books, complete MGMAT package + foundations of math + advanced quant and the official guide obviously. I've currently started the math foundations and am around page 50. Plan for tomorrow - another 50 or so pages of refreshing material. General plan - 2 or so hours daily, plus more than 10 over the weekend. Hope this topicblog won't be too annoying. Everyone is always welcome to approach me with any questions they may have. Cole P.S. Having some difficulty with the gmat registration, what's a valid id? It says it's supposed to be an id where my name is in Roman alphabet, what if I don't have one, mine is in Cyrillic's? Any suggestions? ------------------------------------------------- DAY 1 Hey Everyone, Like I said, I'll be posting everyday. And when I woke up today, I knew I promised myself I would later today, so that really motivated me to studying. And actually studied for over 3 hours today, got to page 110 of the Math Foundations. QUESTION !!! Should the updates be posted here, in the original post, or should they be as a reply? OOOOR maybe as a separate post everyday? What do you think? Please let me know!!! -------------------------------------------------

lololol650 · Answer

$250 paid.
April 6th 11-30AM it is...

RyanCJW · Answer

Good luck Cole - look forward to following your progress!

As far as your question regarding ID is concerned, I would recommend just asking GMAC. They seem pretty active in social media so I would imagine sending them an email would get you a response that you can bank on rather than my conjecture - https://www.mba.com/service/contact-us.aspx

lololol650 · Answer

Thanks Ryan!

I actually have done what you are suggesting... Like 3 days ago. Nada

JustMsk · Answer

Hey, Cole!

I'm a French student, currently in Moscow for a double diploma! 
Interesting to see that we have kind of the same approach to beat the GMAT. I think the right thing to do is to focus on the basics (I also ordered the Foundations of GMAT verbal) and once the books completed, to take a Mgmat Test to have an idea of your level. Then get to know the way the GMAT will test you through answering questions daily, maintaining an error log and taking more prep tests.)

Удачи! Рад тебя читать!)

Posted from my mobile device

lololol650 · Answer

Hey Just,

Thanks for the reply!
Where r u studying?

JustMsk · Answer

Studying in Plekhanov for a double Bachelor degree. I'm preparing the GMAT to enter a good MIM program.
Are you working in Moscow?

Posted from my mobile device

lololol650 · Answer

Yup, work on Sukharevskaya

JustMsk · Answer

Haven't been in that part of Moscow yet. I should give it a try!
Try to keep this topic up to date and good luck!

lololol650 · Answer

DAY 2 - Friday

Well... it was Friday, so didn't really have much time, decided to have some friend time.

So no studying there...

DAY 3 - Saturday

The morning started out a bit late. So spent around 3.5 hours going through the problems I didn't understand.
Good study day i suppose.

DAY 4 - Sunday

started studying at 11-30AM

Got to around page 170 of the Math Foundations.
Did all the drills, which took some time.
All in all, 5 hours straight, with a few 5-7 minute breaks.

When I started going over the mistakes I've made, my brain started to melt due to the amount of info I had.

So now I know I make 3 types of mistakes.
1) Silly ones. Like adding 5-(-1) and getting 4
2) I simply forget how to solve. All the info gets mixed, I go one way and suddenly I'm nowhere. That was unbelievably frustrating.
3) handwriting... I feel like I'm the only who does these. When I see a problem, I automatically write it down on paper and start solving it, but at times, pretty rare bu still, the writing gets messed up, so that a minus would be there instead of a plus. I guess you could put in the silly category.

To sum a bit. I can definitely work and overcome those mistakes. The 1st and the 3rd are obvious, simply more attention needed.
For the 2nd one, I just started making flashcards, so that I could review more quickly.

DAY 5 - Monday .

Really hard workday. Close to no studying...

By looking at this post, I suddenly realized that I need to speed up a bit, since I need to go through another 9 or so books in 52 days, which makes it 5 days/ book, but should be faster since there would be no time for practice tests at all...

Question of the day !!!

DO YOU GUYS USE FLASHCARDS? IF SO, ON YOUR PHONES, PAPER ONES OR BOTH???

JustMsk · Answer

Here are my cents cents about your question!
I personally use both, cardboard flashcards and virtual ones.

For the "virtual" flashcards, I use Anki ( ankisrs net ). What you have to do: download it, create a deck and then start creating flashcards. Then review them on a daily basis (you can set it, so you review cards more often). Following an algorithm, you will see more often the ones you don't know. There is also an app on phones (around 800руб for the iOS version and the Android version is free).
What I put on Anki: main squares, cubes, square roots, powers of 2, primes (up to 100 but I'll go further), formulas and so on. But what you put there is up to you.

Concerning the cardboard, I use 148x210 cardboard sheets. On them I put what I find useful (or what I forgot then relearned) in  Foundations of GMAT Math  and review those sheets before going to sleep or when having a break. 
I also plan to put on another set of cardboard sheets the way to tackle down each kind of problem.

Reading  Secrets of Mental Math  by Arthur Benjamin can also give you some useful tricks to compute quicker.

Hope it helped!

EDIT: If I'm not mistaken, you can also download the GMAT Club Flashcards. However, when dealing with flashcards (to learn a language, to remember a poem or to memorize stuff for the GMAT), I'd advise you to make them yourself.

DAY 0 (of 57) - the Start

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