nilaybadavne wrote:
Hello,
I am Nilay C. Badavne, a R&D Engineer, working since September 2009, almost one and half year, with a very well known Taiwan based company, Asus. I graduated from IIT Bombay, India, in July 2009.
My education (till high school) was primarily in my mother-tongue, except for Maths and Science subjects. So for next few months, I would be working on my English to pull it at a satisfactory level (don't know how to find out one's satisfactory level). I am hoping I would be done with revising some basic grammar concepts and RC skills by the month of May. I have already started reading some novels (as suggested by bb in his post).
I am planning to write my GMAT in August/September 2011, and aiming for 750+. As I am just one year old in the industry, I plan to work for another two to three years before applying to any universities.
I would like to conclude with two questions:
1) Will a classroom course be helpful with the preparations? I have inquired about Princeton Review's class room courses.
2) I have been following GMAT Club from last couple of months and after looking at scores posted by members, my observation was that Verbal score will make a huge difference in your score, as compared to the Math score. How far is my speculation true?
I will be active from now on on this forum, to keep myself, and other members motivated.
Thanks!
Nilay.
Hi Nilay,
How do you feel about your English grammar skills? I am assuming that being an engineer means your math skills are pretty good.
I'll give a little snapshot of my own story. I was born in the US but raised in Asia, so my first language is Chinese, not English. While I did move back to the US for high school, I never studied the foundations (I was busy trying to fit in with my new American friends). I just read a lot of books and learned grammar by intuition. So when I was in graduate school at Columbia (studying economics and policy), a few of my professors made comments that I am a good writer, but they noticed that I have trouble with past/perfect tense and sometimes subject-verb agreements.
So for the GMAT study, I chose to do self study (because I find the classroom courses expensive - and didn't necessarily work with my busy work schedule). I found that I have no problems with Critical Reasoning or Reading Comprehension but
I am IN DEEP SH*T when it comes to Sentence Correction. Per the recommendations from the gmatclub forum, I purchased the
Kaplan Verbal Foundations (finished), and also the
Manhattan Prep Sentence Correction (in progress). I find this combination VERY helpful. The Kaplan book really built my grammar knowledge from the ground up (I finally know what a gerund is!). Then the
Manhattan Prep book (still covered some of the basics, but with even better examples) tackled the sentence correction problems.
I also suggest getting the Official Gmat Verbal Guide because it will contain lots of verbal questions. Sentence Correction becomes easier as you A) get a more solid understanding of grammar 101 and B) practice so you learn to recognize patterns and errors.
Hope this helps! Good luck studying! I am still in the midst of my studies, too. I plan to take the GMAT in May.