DAY 0 (of 57) - the Start

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?




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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!!!

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