Official GMAT results came in

I just received my official GMAT score by email. The scores of course didn't change, but I was given my AWA score, which is 5.5. A great score to seal this part of my application.

My GMAT debrief

Here is my debrief after yesterday's insane performance. I was able to get 760 with 49 in Quant, 44 in Verbal, 5.5 in AWA
I know that personally I get lost in long debriefs, so I'll try to make this as short as possible.

*** My 760 (99%) debrief ***

Prep CATS done

• GMATPrep1 #1 570 34Q 35V
• GMATPrep2 #1 650 40Q 39V
• PowerPREP1 #1 640 47Q 31V
• GMATPrep1 #2 660 45Q 35V
• GMATPrep1 #3 690 47Q 38V
• GMATPrep2 #2 710 47Q 41V
• PowerPREP2 #1 720 49Q 39V
• Kaplan CAT2 540 34Q 25V
• PowerPREP1 #2 710 48Q 38V
• GMATPrep2 #3 730 49Q 40V
• Real GMAT: 760 49Q 44V

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


To create my prep strategy, I had to realize that I have three major weaknessess: 1/ I work full time and couldn't take any vacation. 2/ I have problems focusing for long periods of time. 3/ I am not very strong in math. 4/English is my third language, so English idioms are not well known to me.

In addition I had to realize my strong points: 1/ I can study by myself complicated stuff. 2/ I study best while practicing a lot 3/ I love challenges.

With these weaknessess and strengths in mind, I decided to prep for at least 3 months, and to put at least one hour a day. I also decided to prep by myself because I could solve batches of 20 questions, take a long pause and do another batch. I was afraid that in a prep course I will only do what I have to do, and not push myself to my limits.

From now on I'll refer to some crucial points in my prep:

• GMATPrep and PowerPREP: I took every test at least three times and it was the single most helpfull thing that improved my skills. This is amazing and like someone said: you feel like you're cheating when you see the real exam that looks exactly like GMATPrep. I urge you to solve at least twice every test.

• Other CATS: I did Kaplan CAT2 about one week ago, and got 540. Enough said, this test is pure horse crap.

• Books: I started with Princeton Review 2008 which is great for the basics, then I moved to Kaplan Premier 2008 combined with OG11. I worked on this for about a month and then added the verbal and the quant books of OG11 to the prep. Last two weeks I bought MGMAT SC but I will discuss this later.

• Net sources: The best advices came from http://www.beatthegmat.com . I tried to solve difficult questions that were posted, and also put some the question that I couldn't solve. The forum is great and they have a lot of resources to download. One of these resources are the BTG flashcards that I printed, I used them to refresh old material during the last week of prep.

• Simulated conditions: I believe that the GMAT should be approached like a sports competition, and I trained myself that way. For example, I saw that at the end of quant sometimes I have about 1 minute per question, and that my hit rates are very bad at this point, so I solved batches of 5 questions in 5 minutes and tried to adopt smart guessing techniques. This was very useful during the test as I had to guess about 4 questions in the Q part. Another part of the simulated conditions is again the prep tests, that I took at the exact same time of the day as the real GMAT, I also asked my girlfriend to come into the room where I was doing the test and to disturb me, so I can practice room disturbance as well.

• The part that you can improve easily and that the most significant effect on your score is the Sentance Correction part. I saw that I wasn't hitting above 85% during the last month of prep, so I ordered the MGMAT SC book which was great and helped me improve SC to about 95% hit rate. I am sure that it helped me a lot in the real test. Work on verbal this is very easy to improve and improves your score a lot.

• Psychological aspects and stress: I considered the gmat a challenge, and tried not to stress because of it. I knew that the pause between Quant and Verbal can have wierd effects on your mind, so I drank my redbull and did some push-ups, while telling myself that Quant was hard because I performed well, and that I know how to handle Verbal. It's all in your mind so try to control the stress. Answer one question at a time, and don't try to auto-assess during the exam.

That's it for now. I will answer some questions on the http://www.beatthegmat.com forum if someone wants to ask me something.

Cheers and good luck to you all. Scoring high in the GMAT is an achievable goal for everyone!

SMASHED THE GMAT!!!!

Total score 760 49Q 44V


An amazing feeling when I looked at the computer screen!


I am absolutely shocked right now, will debrief later....

G -2 : Last GMATPrep ...

I took the last prep exam before the real thing today, and scored a record breaking 730 with 49Q and 40V. Like I say after every GMATPrep or PowerPrep - I wish the real exam will look like this!

It's now 17:29 and I will read the flashcards from http://www.beatthegmat.com for the last time, and then take the evening off. Tomorrow I'm going to chill with my girlfriend in an amusement park and try to forget about the GMAT. Tuesday is the G-Day and I'll update you after I'm done.

Good luck to everyone who is about to take the GMAT !!!

G -7 : PowerPREP and more

With the GMAT in a week from now, I needed to get my confidence back after yesterday's Kaplan CAT and my weak performance in it, so I went and redid PowerPREP1 which I have already done two months ago. The scores were OK with 710 and a split of 48Q 38V.

I saw some repeated questions but I tend to fail on these, due to overconfidence, so I believe that all in all, the test is a good measure of my current GMAT skills.

I hope to achieve my goal of a 700+ score next week.... Wish me luck!

Kaplan give me back 3 hours of my life!!!

I just completely wasted 3 hours of my life, doing Kaplan's CAT2 from the CD that came with the Kaplan 2008 book. Kaplan CATs are known to be harder than the real GMAT and to cut your score by 100 points so you would go and join one of their expensive classes. But even though I knew it would be hard, nothing prepared me to this shit... this test was RIDICULOUSLY hard, with every reading comprehension paragraph lasting at least 60 lines, and extremely difficult and long critical reasoning paragraphes.

I managed to get a mindblowing 540 with 34Q 25V split.... I won't even put it in my scores list, unless I get more than 700 in the real GMAT and then I'll put it just to show how stupid Kaplan CATs are.

update: I scored 760 in the real GMAT. Conclusion: don't trust Kaplan CAT scores.

IESE open day in Barcelona

Last week I traveled to the sunny and lovely city of Barcelona, to attend the open day at the IESE Business School. I will write a short article because I don't have much time, as my GMAT is in 9 days.




I arrived to Barca the day before the open day, and enjoyed a nice afternoon of sun by the beach. You don't need me to explain how great is this city, but in case you don't know yet that the location of a b-school in Barcelona is a great advantage, just Google "Barcelona" and you'll understand yourself. Better than that - go there and feel the vibe for yourself!

Fast forward to the open day then. I arrived one hour too early to the IESE campus, a small campus in a rich neighbourhood of the city. I used the free time to explore the buildings and grab a much needed morning coffee in the bar. The prices are low and the service is great.

I then moved to the amphi were the first part of the open day was held. We were about 60 to attend, and first to speak was Javier Munoz, an associate director from admissions. He asked us to introduce ourselves and I was impressed by the diversity of the profiles. He then explained the structure of the open day and showed us the standard marketing presentation of the school.

Mr. Munoz was followed by the associate dean, whose name I didn't write down. He explained about the program in more detail. What I thought was more interesting in what he said:

• 1st year of the program is very rigid academically and very demanding. Consists mostly of core courses.
• 2nd year is more flexible, with lots of electives and a possible exchange program
• Between the two years there are 4 months for internship, exchange or language courses.
• The MBA program is based mostly on the case method, with about 70% cases and 30% lectures in average. Over 700 cases are seen over the two years, and about 2-3 every day!!
• Class size is ~215 (he said that it was the smallest top-10 MBA program, but let me remind you that ESADE is even smaller, maybe the associate dean doesn't include ESADE in his top-10), average age 27 years old.
• Every year, about five students are thrown out of the program due to bad grades. (the system is basically z-scoring and you're not allowed to have too many bad scores below the average)

About Spanish studies:

• A month of intensive Spanish course before the start of the first year
• Followed by Spanish lessons every day of the week except Friday (1.5 hours / day)
• Second year you can choose electives in Spanish
• Your wife/husband can come also to the Spanish classes (even though he/she will for them)
  

About the exchange program:

• The exchanges are during the first semester of the 2nd year.
• The list of possible exchange locations is very long, but some schools are in the global top-20 and worth mentioning: LBS, CEIBS, Wharton, Sloan, Duke, Darden, Kellogg, HEC-Paris, RSM
  

Financing your MBA:

• Tuition fees for the entire program (two years) are currently 64,900€
• You can get a 100% loan with no guaranties only requirement is to be admitted to the program
• He did mention the interest but I forgot to write it down :(
• You start paying 6 months after graduation

After this important lecture, we went on a coffee break in a lovely bar inside one of the campus' buildings. The standard were very high, and reminded me of my visit to INSEAD. From the bar we left in small groups to do a campus tour, which wasn't really helpful. We then returned to the amphi for one of the open day's most attractive parts - the case . We were given by email a case to study about the Barcelona Football Club and some issues it had in the past. To summarize the one hour and a half of the case course: it was absolutely BRILLIANT! very interesting and actually made me want to go into sports management :) I don't want to ruin the surprise for people who will attend the open day in the future, but I really had fun and it only made my view regarding cases stronger, for me the case method is the best one to learn and assimilate new concepts and theories.

After the case we went to the other, new campus just up the street. This new campus is so amazing it will make you go "WOWWWW" even without you noticing it. It's like a modern palace made of the most expensive materiel out there and put on a hilltop overlooking Barca. Simply amazing. We sat in a restaurant-like huge room, 8 at a table, and on each table two current MBA students from 1st and 2nd year. We could discuss with them during lunch, and I really liked this concept. Besides the lunch which was great, we were able to talk freely with the current students and get their views on the school.



To finish the day, we went into another amphi, in the new campus this time, for a career services lecture and an alumni panel. This was very interesting for me, but nothing really new was told. The only discovery for me was an interesting rating of job opportunities drawn by careers rep featuring industries' willingness to recruit MBAs and the MBAs' willingness to join the industry. on the low-low corner were retail, high-tech and telecoms meaning that both the industry and the MBAs weren't so much interested in each other. on the other extreme end were of course finance and consulting. The interesting thing for me was to see that heavy industry is on the high side on its willingness to recruit MBAs and on the low side for MBAs wanting to go there, which will leave me with less competition and maybe better salaries after I finish my MBA.

Some general final thoughts about IESE and the open day:

• The facilities are just amazing. For example each amphi has three projectors aimed at three screens with different angles, so every student can find his optimal viewing angle. You also have a plasma screen on the wall behind your back, it's for the teacher so he can see the current slide himself.. how cool is that?!
  
• The school has a very elite feel, I think it's partly due to the strong relationship it has with the Harvard Business School.
• The case method is great and even though they do A LOT of cases at IESE, I still think it's the best for me.

So, to sum it all up, I think that IESE was so far the best school I've seen, and I put it as the top priority in my list. I encourage everyone who read this and who consider getting an MBA to go and visit IESE to see for themselves, that Barcelona has one of Europe's best kept secrets in its suburbs.

G -11 : PowerPrep2 for the first time

Today I wrote for the first time PowerPrep CAT number 2 and got my highest score so far: 720 with score split 49Q 39V I only wish that the real GMAT will look the same!

TODO today:
* Read RC part of Kaplan 2008
* Do at least 6 RC texts

TODO saturday:
* Review SC in my new MGMAT book
* Do at least 40 SC questions
* Do at least 20 Quant questions from OG11