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15 Jul 2016, 10:24
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HerrGrau
Agree with this, especially points 1 and 4. Why does GMAT RC cover diverse topics? Well, I think that MBA literature likes to throw around the term "well rounded". So it follows that the GMAT RC would cover a variety of things. Also, for the most part, the topic shouldn't matter. You don't need to know what some bacteria is in order to do well on an RC passage about that bacteria. Still, if your reading is on the weaker side then you'll likely suffer when the topic is foreign. If that's the case, you might stop "studying" and start working on your reading. Once you get that strong, the GMAT will be much easier.
Out of curiosity, which MBA program covers "bacteria" to give a "well rounded" education ? My guess is none. IMHO the term "well rounded" and one step going further "holistic" is one of the most over-hyped term in B school education.
If I knew that one day I have to read about bacteria and comprehend for an exam like GMAT, then I would have paid more attention in my biology papers. As I am writing this, I know GMAT accepts only three "if" and "then" construction and I am too tired to remember them and use it in previous sentence.
Trust me I can understand far more economics and social science than an average test taker. But the moment complex science passages pop up, it just takes longer to figure out the topic or central idea. Now imagine actual test, 2 science passages pop up and first passage in 1-10 question happens to be science passage itself. Here a native speaker will stand up and use his natural reflexes to get to the bottom of the task in hand. For a non native, the same task is much harder as that natural reflex is missing and a few months period is too soon to achieve the same.
-South City
15 Jul 2016, 15:19
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SouthCity
Out of curiosity, which MBA program covers "bacteria" to give a "well rounded" education ? My guess is none.
I have a ton of respect for anybody starting off from a tough spot and attacking the GMAT. It certainly isn't a walk in the park. In my small sample size, the non-natives have done extremely well BUT most of them have had to put more work in than their native english speaking counterparts.
For RC, it's not about "bacteria" or any specific topic but about being able to reason through whatever topic, even something that you're not necessarily familiar with. And, believe it or not, many of my students who are native speakers also have a tough time with science passages. I think it's better that RC is based on a wide variety of topics. At least that way nothing specific is being favored. Whether that's the "right" way to test people for admission to MBA programs is up for grabs. Should MBAs only be comfortable reading/analyzing texts about business/economics/finance? I'd say no. But that's really just my opinion and it is completely fine for anyone to disagree. Again, I'd also point out that there are disadvantaged groups of native speakers who are much worse off than some non-native speakers in terms of GMAT studying. Just because english is your native language doesn't mean that you've been taught to reason well or have learned even basic math skills.
Last thing: just because english is your second languages doesn't mean that you can't succeed on the GMAT and be granted admission to a great MBA program. You will probably have a tougher time because of the language. And, for many people in this group the GMAT won't be a 2-4 month process. It could take much longer. With that in mind, remember that the more you plan and figure out what you're up against the easier the process will be. Set realistic goals and realistic timelines for achieving those goals. Break up the studying into reasonable chunks. Go at your own pace.
Happy Studies,
A.
Updated on: 29 Aug 2016, 10:51
Originally posted by LogicGuru1 on 28 Aug 2016, 23:38.
Last edited by LogicGuru1 on 29 Aug 2016, 10:51, edited 3 times in total.
Last edited by LogicGuru1 on 29 Aug 2016, 10:51, edited 3 times in total.
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With due respect, I disagree totally with your post.
All section of verbal are designed in GMAT for a specific reason.
Critical reasoning is all about syllogism, philosophy, fallacies and math. It has nothing to do with verbal or linguistic abilities. If one knows how to deconstruct an argument then solving CR is easier than peeling a banana or drinking a glass of water.
Similarly sentence correction is not about memorising some obscure grammar rules. SC is about making quick decisions based on just a couple of words and finding the correct form of those decision points to arrive at a correct option. These decision points can be tenses, idioms, pronouns, parallel verb structures, modifiers, etc etc. Sentence correction test your ability to retain a lot of almost identical information and sort out the imposters from the real ones
Reading comprehension :- This is the sweetest part of the verbal. Some great scholar whose name happens to elude me at the moment once said - A day spend without a book is a day wasted. That is how important reading is to many people.
I have not seen a single a chemistry passages in the GMAT as far as I can remember my practices. GMAT passages are about Sociology, Sciences, Economics, Business, Finance, Art and Environment. In my humble opinion, exposure to arts, humanities, sociology, and technology is far better than the ability to crunch numbers. Once you are in a big company with a multi-ethnic background, your experience to see the mistakes and fallacies in an argument, your ability to respect and understand multiple point of views and broad knowledge of other fields is far more important than math. They have accountants and junior clerks for doing the math, I hope you are aware of the fact. Assume someone says to you - "Close but no cigars" and you have absolutely no idea what they actually mean, then what kind of a clueless person you would appear. Similarly while describing a client if someone in your team utters - "He is two short of a full pack" you are expected to understand the context and meaning. Such a global understanding can only be attained by reading and understanding as many cultures as you can. Your knowledge of the formula for calculating the area of circle using the inradius or circumradius amounts to nothing in real life or in business life. At the end of the day business deals are made with language as the primary tool for conversation and number crunching comes later into equations. Lawyers and managers are the first one to make a decision and then comes risk analyst and accountants. Why do you think CEO is a bigger position than CFO. Quant score as the criteria for selection in MBA actually weighs less than the personal essay that you are asked to write in your application. (Language triumphs over math again !! ) Search Gmat club and you will see people with a score of 650 being selected for INSEAD, people with score of 710 making into Harvard and people with 700 zooming into Stanford without any problem. Heck I know a girl who with a score of 680 and just 4 year experience in telecom industry got admitted to MIT Sloan.
MBA is all about creating a leader with vision and creativity not some number crunching clerk.
To be good in studies does not equal to a good manager. To be good in Quant amounts to diddly squat for a MBA school.
Example = Sachin Tendulkar , great batsmen, terrible captain.
Example = Arjun ranatunga = Mediocre batsman, great leader, great captain, good administrator
So in my opinion, Verbal and AWA are the only parts of GMAT that actually differentiate the true and worthy candidate.
Contrary to your claims , European University pay high emphasis on Verbal and AWA. Some top German, Canadian and French school don't even ask the IR score which is just fancy math dealing with tabulated data, graphs venn diagrams and all sorts of math. THIS CLEARLY SHOWS HOW LOW MATH SKILLS FEATURES IN THE PRIORITY OF A BUSINESS SCHOOL.
I am not a native speaker of English, to be frank English is not even my fourth language. (I speak 3 languages fluently and English is not one of them) and till this date I have never understood the rant of non-native speakers against Verbal Section. Do you feel privileged and want everything to be served to you on a silver platter. I suggest go to a restaurant. "But that ain't gonna happen in GMAT". When it comes to GMAT it's easy to make a decision:- Up your game or pursue a local MBA in your country. After all after pursuing a Global MBA you are not expected to take on the business world in Mandarin, Finnish, Croatian, Gujarati, Zulu, Spanish, Farsi or whatever language you speak.
As far as non natives are concerned, Indian contribute the highest chunk of 99% on GMAT. I have seen many Indians with near perfect or very high verbal scores. The proliference of many Indians with unrealistically high GMAT score is a common scenario since the last decade. In fact the situation has gone so out of control that MIT, Harvard, Stanford, INSEAD, HAAS, Princeton, Colombia, Cambridge etc will not even seriously consider an Indian applicants because there are so many of them. There goes your chance of a world class MBA education.
Let me tell you frankly if you are a female from Iceland with a 710 GMAT score, or a Slovakian chess player with 700 score than you can beat any Indian having 780 GMAT score, as far as getting admission in a world class university is concerned. MBA schools are NOT LOOKING for GMAT TOPPERS. All of you need to understand that. WHAT every good MBA school is looking for is cultural diversity. Students with multilingual skills. Students with diverse job profile like authors, artists, entrepreneurs, failed entrepreneurs, Military, educationalist, hardcore scientist, sportsmen. So if your earlier job experience is a 9 to 6 job (even in the biggest multinational) or you speak only 2 language or you are from IT or computer field or if you are a male, then don't even waste your money applying to the top 20 business schools. your chances are less then 4%.
See where I am going with this :- Scoring a high 750+ in GMAT does not guarantee you admission in a world class school. Basically if you are Indian male from IT or computer industry , you have more chances to win a billion dollar lottery than getting admission in Harvard. Now, coming back to the fact that you are a non native and scored a poor 530, I would say you are not evenin the same league as many more 700+ non natives in the eyes of admission council. So please stop criticising GMAT Format and better try to make yourself so irresistible that no school can deny you an admission. Just assuming that GMAT and the universities around the world owes you or any one else a special favour because you are non-native is a laughable idea. The GMAT council didn't came knocking to your door with a product to sell. You decided to use GMAT as a tool to improvise your career and education. So either attain a high level of knowledge as per the current prevailing standards or quit. Cribbing, complaining or playing the victim won't change the fact that your score is below par and substandard and the reason for such a weak score is the lack of efforts on your part or sadly speaking -a lack of intellectual prowess. Accept the fact that you are not cut out for a global MBA, dream less, lower your goal, be realistic about your expectations and move on with your life or work, work and do some more work towards your goal.
REMEMBER THE MANTRA :- IT'S BETTER TO BUST THAN TO RUST.
Before I go, just to clarify another point in your original post. Coaching has nothing to do with success. You spend 1000$ on coaching .. I am sorry for your loss but even if you spend 20000$ on coaching, the result won't change unless you work hard yourself. There is a proverb in my culture that roughly translate to something like this :- "If you are not able to make much use of the ocean's water then its not the ocean's fault; the fault lies in your glass which is too small" Try adding some more liters to your glass before criticizing the ocean.
I hope you will take my critique in a positive manner and will work hard to attain your goals.
All the best
All section of verbal are designed in GMAT for a specific reason.
Critical reasoning is all about syllogism, philosophy, fallacies and math. It has nothing to do with verbal or linguistic abilities. If one knows how to deconstruct an argument then solving CR is easier than peeling a banana or drinking a glass of water.
Similarly sentence correction is not about memorising some obscure grammar rules. SC is about making quick decisions based on just a couple of words and finding the correct form of those decision points to arrive at a correct option. These decision points can be tenses, idioms, pronouns, parallel verb structures, modifiers, etc etc. Sentence correction test your ability to retain a lot of almost identical information and sort out the imposters from the real ones
Reading comprehension :- This is the sweetest part of the verbal. Some great scholar whose name happens to elude me at the moment once said - A day spend without a book is a day wasted. That is how important reading is to many people.
I have not seen a single a chemistry passages in the GMAT as far as I can remember my practices. GMAT passages are about Sociology, Sciences, Economics, Business, Finance, Art and Environment. In my humble opinion, exposure to arts, humanities, sociology, and technology is far better than the ability to crunch numbers. Once you are in a big company with a multi-ethnic background, your experience to see the mistakes and fallacies in an argument, your ability to respect and understand multiple point of views and broad knowledge of other fields is far more important than math. They have accountants and junior clerks for doing the math, I hope you are aware of the fact. Assume someone says to you - "Close but no cigars" and you have absolutely no idea what they actually mean, then what kind of a clueless person you would appear. Similarly while describing a client if someone in your team utters - "He is two short of a full pack" you are expected to understand the context and meaning. Such a global understanding can only be attained by reading and understanding as many cultures as you can. Your knowledge of the formula for calculating the area of circle using the inradius or circumradius amounts to nothing in real life or in business life. At the end of the day business deals are made with language as the primary tool for conversation and number crunching comes later into equations. Lawyers and managers are the first one to make a decision and then comes risk analyst and accountants. Why do you think CEO is a bigger position than CFO. Quant score as the criteria for selection in MBA actually weighs less than the personal essay that you are asked to write in your application. (Language triumphs over math again !! ) Search Gmat club and you will see people with a score of 650 being selected for INSEAD, people with score of 710 making into Harvard and people with 700 zooming into Stanford without any problem. Heck I know a girl who with a score of 680 and just 4 year experience in telecom industry got admitted to MIT Sloan.
MBA is all about creating a leader with vision and creativity not some number crunching clerk.
To be good in studies does not equal to a good manager. To be good in Quant amounts to diddly squat for a MBA school.
Example = Sachin Tendulkar , great batsmen, terrible captain.
Example = Arjun ranatunga = Mediocre batsman, great leader, great captain, good administrator
So in my opinion, Verbal and AWA are the only parts of GMAT that actually differentiate the true and worthy candidate.
Contrary to your claims , European University pay high emphasis on Verbal and AWA. Some top German, Canadian and French school don't even ask the IR score which is just fancy math dealing with tabulated data, graphs venn diagrams and all sorts of math. THIS CLEARLY SHOWS HOW LOW MATH SKILLS FEATURES IN THE PRIORITY OF A BUSINESS SCHOOL.
I am not a native speaker of English, to be frank English is not even my fourth language. (I speak 3 languages fluently and English is not one of them) and till this date I have never understood the rant of non-native speakers against Verbal Section. Do you feel privileged and want everything to be served to you on a silver platter. I suggest go to a restaurant. "But that ain't gonna happen in GMAT". When it comes to GMAT it's easy to make a decision:- Up your game or pursue a local MBA in your country. After all after pursuing a Global MBA you are not expected to take on the business world in Mandarin, Finnish, Croatian, Gujarati, Zulu, Spanish, Farsi or whatever language you speak.
As far as non natives are concerned, Indian contribute the highest chunk of 99% on GMAT. I have seen many Indians with near perfect or very high verbal scores. The proliference of many Indians with unrealistically high GMAT score is a common scenario since the last decade. In fact the situation has gone so out of control that MIT, Harvard, Stanford, INSEAD, HAAS, Princeton, Colombia, Cambridge etc will not even seriously consider an Indian applicants because there are so many of them. There goes your chance of a world class MBA education.
Let me tell you frankly if you are a female from Iceland with a 710 GMAT score, or a Slovakian chess player with 700 score than you can beat any Indian having 780 GMAT score, as far as getting admission in a world class university is concerned. MBA schools are NOT LOOKING for GMAT TOPPERS. All of you need to understand that. WHAT every good MBA school is looking for is cultural diversity. Students with multilingual skills. Students with diverse job profile like authors, artists, entrepreneurs, failed entrepreneurs, Military, educationalist, hardcore scientist, sportsmen. So if your earlier job experience is a 9 to 6 job (even in the biggest multinational) or you speak only 2 language or you are from IT or computer field or if you are a male, then don't even waste your money applying to the top 20 business schools. your chances are less then 4%.
See where I am going with this :- Scoring a high 750+ in GMAT does not guarantee you admission in a world class school. Basically if you are Indian male from IT or computer industry , you have more chances to win a billion dollar lottery than getting admission in Harvard. Now, coming back to the fact that you are a non native and scored a poor 530, I would say you are not evenin the same league as many more 700+ non natives in the eyes of admission council. So please stop criticising GMAT Format and better try to make yourself so irresistible that no school can deny you an admission. Just assuming that GMAT and the universities around the world owes you or any one else a special favour because you are non-native is a laughable idea. The GMAT council didn't came knocking to your door with a product to sell. You decided to use GMAT as a tool to improvise your career and education. So either attain a high level of knowledge as per the current prevailing standards or quit. Cribbing, complaining or playing the victim won't change the fact that your score is below par and substandard and the reason for such a weak score is the lack of efforts on your part or sadly speaking -a lack of intellectual prowess. Accept the fact that you are not cut out for a global MBA, dream less, lower your goal, be realistic about your expectations and move on with your life or work, work and do some more work towards your goal.
REMEMBER THE MANTRA :- IT'S BETTER TO BUST THAN TO RUST.
Before I go, just to clarify another point in your original post. Coaching has nothing to do with success. You spend 1000$ on coaching .. I am sorry for your loss but even if you spend 20000$ on coaching, the result won't change unless you work hard yourself. There is a proverb in my culture that roughly translate to something like this :- "If you are not able to make much use of the ocean's water then its not the ocean's fault; the fault lies in your glass which is too small" Try adding some more liters to your glass before criticizing the ocean.
I hope you will take my critique in a positive manner and will work hard to attain your goals.
All the best
