Knowing club members - Introduce Yourself here

Hi everyone

My name is Mikhail, I'm a 25-year-old Russian guy from Moscow. I have been Marketing Manager/Project Finder & Buyer for a TV production house for the past 3 years, very much an international-environment job (also requires some modeling & statistics knowledge as well as writing skills for reports/business plans /presentations); prior to that I had worked for 2 years in various functions at the Acquisitions Department of a national TV network. Before that I had taught English at school for a while and had been a freelance translator.

I have a BA Hon. in Linguistics, majoring in English & Translation (graduated in 2003) from a Russian college, and am now completing a distance-learning undergraduate Finance program at the University of London, London School of Economics. I know some French and can read Spanish.

I am a movie fan and a bit of a powerlifter, and - more recently - a GMAT fan)))

I came across Gmatclub in one of my Google searches. This is a wondeful community of very intelligent people and a great learning resource! I keep working through the archive problems (230 pages - wow!) Thank you, Bogdan, Praetorian and other founding fathers! This website is absolutely a must for aspiring MBAs. I try to participate in some discussions though it can be difficult due to the 8-11 hour time difference between me and US participants who, like U2lover, post correct responses and explanations in under 40 minutes.

My first (and I hope the last) go at GMAT is scheduled for Nov 18, 2006. I've been preparing for 6 weeks now (Kaplan 06/07, Princeton Verbal, PowerPrep, this forum) and these days I score 710/730 on Powerprep and 570/590/650 on Kaplan CATs - but there are still 8 weeks to improve. I will re-try if I score below 690 and won't re-try if I score over 730; as for the 690-730 range, I'm not sure. Of course, I covet 770-800 because 1) I feel that I can do it, and 2) I hope higher GMAT will give me a better chance at a scholarship. (I have a 3.98 GPA from my first degree and over 6 years of pretty diverse work experience, including some managerial experience, so with a good GMAT score I guess I will have a good application all around). I have just scored 116/120 on TOEFL iBT.

I plan to apply to a full-time MBA late next year, for entry in September 2008. Columbia would be the first choice; also pondering Wharton and Stanford.

Best of luck to every GMAT-taker out there and see you around this forum!