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08 Aug 2016, 12:40
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Hello GMAT club!
I've lurked here during my struggle against the GMAT yet felt compelled to write my first post in the hope to encourage some other mental wrestlers somewhere out there in cyberspace.
My situation is unique in that I am not applying to a top tier American program. I live in Israel and will be attending the Hebrew University (Einstein was one of the founders is it's claim to fame).
My story is thus:
After my military service I had many directions wide open to me. I was always attracted to investing as I see it as the ticket to more freedom of choice in this short tenure we have on Earth. I had the fortune to attend a small group of recently released soldiers where we studied philosophy and politics for 4 months near the Dead Sea. One of the courses was actually Capital Markets, taught by a Wall Street hedge fund manager. We used HBS cases, some that he wrote, to learn the basics of finance. It lit a fire in me that brought me to where I am today. He strongly recommended that I study finance and after researching, I saw a perfect fit. After I finished my studies in the desert I applied to several universities and started out against the GMAT.
Now, I was never an exceptional student of math in high school. My BA is in International relations and Chinese, I'm definitely what one would classify as "non-quant". While researching MBA programs I saw that the requirements for Israeli universities are largely only the Quantative section. This is obviously a blessing, I didn't have to study for half of the test!
I made a foolhardy mistake the first time around, barely thinking that the test could faze me. I was only months out of the military and still had the aura of a combat soldier about me. While its true that the body can be pushed to amazing heights by sheer will power, learning does not take kindly to such methods. I studied using free online materials for about a month and a half and got a laughable score of Q36. Admissions flatly denied me. The rest of my application is quite strong. Yet there is no getting around a basic math aptitude studying a MBA.
After the first time I was already close to the final deadline for the school year, so ulitmately I missed the window of fall 2015. I took some time off, enjoyed life. I started studying again in late November 2015. This time I started from the very bottom. I took a class taught in my city and ordered Optimus Prep for additional work. I hadn't touched math in roughtly ten years at this point and it was a slow climb out of the hole.
To complicate things, I proposed to my girlfriend and married. All the errands of wedding planning coupled with daily GMAT study and working in a job with no fixed schedule wasn't easy. On June 29th, after a total of 325 hours I tested again. I got a heartbreaking Q43. So much effort and yet still I was missing something. The universites told me that I need to get a Q47 or higher to be amitted. Everything was riding on that, including a full scholarship from the army waiting for me once I was granted admission.
For the whole month of July I studied 100 hours. I used Bunnel's explainations, various strategy posts and the OG & GMAC questions only. I saw that I was using low quality questions with Optimus Prep. Their teaching material was helpful, but there practice questions for actually getting in shape for the test weren't high quality.
I highly recommend using the official questions as much as possible.
2nd of August I tested for the third time. Q47! It was actually surprisingly easy come test day. I breezed through the first half. Got stuck on a hard questions and because I was so far ahead on my timing I decided to try to solve it. I used 4:00 and ultimately had to guess. Then towards the end I got some other tough questions that took my timing a bit off and because of that I had to blindly guess on the last two questions. Big mistake not keeping a strict timing strategy. I could've gotten a 48+ I'm certain.
Regardless, it was enough to get my accepted into the top school here and with a full ride! Free MBA for me, yes please! I studied literally 425 hours to get it and in the end, I acheived my goal.
In short:
-I am not your typical quant guy. I had to start from the beginning of beginnings. (I didn't understand fully what a prime number was when starting out!)
-By virtue of perseverance I went from Q36 to Q43 to Q47. It took 425 hours spread out through 8 months
-I used a classroom course and Optimus Prep to understand the theory
-I recommend not trying to save money on study materials. I was reluctant to spend and I have a feeling it cost me in many wasted hours spent on ineffecient study questions. Optimus Prep is just OK, not terrific. Do your own research but remember the opportunity cost for everything.
-I spent the last 100 hours just drilling OG and GMAC questions in sets of 37 questions and doing GMAC CATS. This was key to hone my mind to the style and time frame experienced on test day.
-Bunnel's explainations were great. 10/10, I hope he gets paid well for his work.
-Error Log was critical in getting improvement. I tracked all the details of wrong questions and did them again to verify mastery.
-BB's "how to improve your score from Q44 to Q50" is pure gold.
My final message to he who still has to battle the GMAT:
"Successful people get where they do because they act. Grinders win, period" -Ryan Burgess
and
"Most super IQ 780 GMAT types make good engineers and spreadsheet monkeys, not dynamic determined business leaders. If there is one thing that characterises self made millionaires it is incredible drive and ambition. The kind of drive that forces people to spend a year improving their GMAT score from 450 to 700. If I were to pick a wingman for a future business startup, I would pick someone with this drive every time." -quoted from a wise person somewhere on GMATclub
Thank you GMATclub and good luck to all you readers in all of your endeavors!
I've lurked here during my struggle against the GMAT yet felt compelled to write my first post in the hope to encourage some other mental wrestlers somewhere out there in cyberspace.
My situation is unique in that I am not applying to a top tier American program. I live in Israel and will be attending the Hebrew University (Einstein was one of the founders is it's claim to fame).
My story is thus:
After my military service I had many directions wide open to me. I was always attracted to investing as I see it as the ticket to more freedom of choice in this short tenure we have on Earth. I had the fortune to attend a small group of recently released soldiers where we studied philosophy and politics for 4 months near the Dead Sea. One of the courses was actually Capital Markets, taught by a Wall Street hedge fund manager. We used HBS cases, some that he wrote, to learn the basics of finance. It lit a fire in me that brought me to where I am today. He strongly recommended that I study finance and after researching, I saw a perfect fit. After I finished my studies in the desert I applied to several universities and started out against the GMAT.
Now, I was never an exceptional student of math in high school. My BA is in International relations and Chinese, I'm definitely what one would classify as "non-quant". While researching MBA programs I saw that the requirements for Israeli universities are largely only the Quantative section. This is obviously a blessing, I didn't have to study for half of the test!
I made a foolhardy mistake the first time around, barely thinking that the test could faze me. I was only months out of the military and still had the aura of a combat soldier about me. While its true that the body can be pushed to amazing heights by sheer will power, learning does not take kindly to such methods. I studied using free online materials for about a month and a half and got a laughable score of Q36. Admissions flatly denied me. The rest of my application is quite strong. Yet there is no getting around a basic math aptitude studying a MBA.
After the first time I was already close to the final deadline for the school year, so ulitmately I missed the window of fall 2015. I took some time off, enjoyed life. I started studying again in late November 2015. This time I started from the very bottom. I took a class taught in my city and ordered Optimus Prep for additional work. I hadn't touched math in roughtly ten years at this point and it was a slow climb out of the hole.
To complicate things, I proposed to my girlfriend and married. All the errands of wedding planning coupled with daily GMAT study and working in a job with no fixed schedule wasn't easy. On June 29th, after a total of 325 hours I tested again. I got a heartbreaking Q43. So much effort and yet still I was missing something. The universites told me that I need to get a Q47 or higher to be amitted. Everything was riding on that, including a full scholarship from the army waiting for me once I was granted admission.
For the whole month of July I studied 100 hours. I used Bunnel's explainations, various strategy posts and the OG & GMAC questions only. I saw that I was using low quality questions with Optimus Prep. Their teaching material was helpful, but there practice questions for actually getting in shape for the test weren't high quality.
I highly recommend using the official questions as much as possible.
2nd of August I tested for the third time. Q47! It was actually surprisingly easy come test day. I breezed through the first half. Got stuck on a hard questions and because I was so far ahead on my timing I decided to try to solve it. I used 4:00 and ultimately had to guess. Then towards the end I got some other tough questions that took my timing a bit off and because of that I had to blindly guess on the last two questions. Big mistake not keeping a strict timing strategy. I could've gotten a 48+ I'm certain.
Regardless, it was enough to get my accepted into the top school here and with a full ride! Free MBA for me, yes please! I studied literally 425 hours to get it and in the end, I acheived my goal.
In short:
-I am not your typical quant guy. I had to start from the beginning of beginnings. (I didn't understand fully what a prime number was when starting out!)
-By virtue of perseverance I went from Q36 to Q43 to Q47. It took 425 hours spread out through 8 months
-I used a classroom course and Optimus Prep to understand the theory
-I recommend not trying to save money on study materials. I was reluctant to spend and I have a feeling it cost me in many wasted hours spent on ineffecient study questions. Optimus Prep is just OK, not terrific. Do your own research but remember the opportunity cost for everything.
-I spent the last 100 hours just drilling OG and GMAC questions in sets of 37 questions and doing GMAC CATS. This was key to hone my mind to the style and time frame experienced on test day.
-Bunnel's explainations were great. 10/10, I hope he gets paid well for his work.
-Error Log was critical in getting improvement. I tracked all the details of wrong questions and did them again to verify mastery.
-BB's "how to improve your score from Q44 to Q50" is pure gold.
My final message to he who still has to battle the GMAT:
"Successful people get where they do because they act. Grinders win, period" -Ryan Burgess
and
"Most super IQ 780 GMAT types make good engineers and spreadsheet monkeys, not dynamic determined business leaders. If there is one thing that characterises self made millionaires it is incredible drive and ambition. The kind of drive that forces people to spend a year improving their GMAT score from 450 to 700. If I were to pick a wingman for a future business startup, I would pick someone with this drive every time." -quoted from a wise person somewhere on GMATclub
Thank you GMATclub and good luck to all you readers in all of your endeavors!
08 Aug 2016, 13:52
Kudos
Bookmarks
08 Aug 2016, 23:06
Kudos
Bookmarks
I wasn't required to submit a Verbal or total score. Therefore I didn't study at all for Verbal. On test day I took the verbal portion just for fun and got V34. Total score 650.
