A Few Thoughts on GMAT

Sorry for writing the note in English. No Chinese input is available
with the public computer I am using now. Anyway, here are a few
thoughts, from my a short experience on GMAT, on the exam. It took me
one to two serious weeks to nail the exam with a Q51/V44 score. I read
a couple of threads of "JJ" yesterday, finding the impact mixed.

The
test I took at Chicago was somehow as difficult as those of the PREP
software downloaded from MBA.com. I took two mock tests this week
and only got 50/38 and 50/40. So I set my goal for 50/41. 

I
did see some familar questions in the Q section: about 5-10 in the
June's reports. However, I could not remember the answers when I was
working on the exam, partially because of my anxiety. The only one I
remembered is x^20's last digit is 6. There were difinitely several
difficult questions. Indeed, the difficulty is above my expectation.
I managed to wrap up the section only with a 5-minute margin. But
nothing is beyond what we, Chinese, have learned from high school Math.
So don't be afraid. The V section turned out to be relatively
simple, making me doubt whether I had made enough right answers in the
previous questions. Several SC questions only underlined a couple of
words. although none of SC questions appeared familar. As a matter of
fact, I was not traditionally strong at SC at all. In my self-training
with OG and "Da Quan", I could only make 60-70% right in SC. On the
other hand, I did very well in RC and CR, with a track record of
90+% correction rates. So, I guess I messed up the SC in my exam but
got recovered from the other two, although the RC and CR I
encountered were tricky. I found a short article familiar: solving
airport icing problem. But, again this familiarity had little help, as
I had to read the article and review the questions anyway. The
other short one was about three different views on an evidence
regarding stars and a concept of "microlensing". I almost skipped from
the reading because it was hard to read and I ran short of time. The
only long one was about earthquake. Someone measured the S and P wave
to reveal something. The reading was not too difficult, but the
questions involved some reasoning and comparisions. I have not seen any
familar CR, only noticing that most of them were very tricky. I had
to guess at one since both the questions and choices are long
and complicated.   

Those were all I remembered. Rather than
encourage you to remember these JJ, I would urge some of you to
think beyond the exam. I confess that my experience will not be of
great help to many of younger applicants who are going to take the
shot, as I have spent many years in the US. My sense is that most parts
of GMAT exam are useless for a long run. It is a waste of life to
invest too much of your precious time in preparing for it. Many years
ago, I prepared for GRE for a long time, a couple of months, and got a
reasonablely good socre, 2290. But the score contributed very little to
my application. And I know people who got into top graduate schools
without GRE at all. The same principle applies in GMAT: it is only a
small portion of your MBA application. Your essays and recommedations
are most likely playing more important roles in your applications. If
you are close to the school you are applying to, I bet your interview
will be vital! In that sense, I only consider two parts of GMAT useful:
RC and CR.

In your future study, no matter in China,
US or EU, your capability of reasoning is critial. The preparation for
GMAT will facilitate you to analyze things in a more logic manner. That
is what I gained from my GRE preparation, and such a skill will be with
you forever. Also, you will have to read more and more in your
future study, despite that the reading will not be as difficult as
those in GMAT. But, you will have to read much more and grasp the
meaning fast! Again, this skill is almost universal. The grammar of
both GMAT is too tricky and renders little practical help in your
future. The math? No comment.

Therefore, my suggestions to
those who have not yet taken the exam are following. If you still have some
time, for example, a couple of months or even a year, practice reading
and reasoning! You will find the exam not very difficult after all. For
those who plan to take the exam shortly, you may benefit more by
allocating more time in SC as it often offers a quick boost to your
final score. It clearly requires more investment of time to improve RC
and CR. But in a long run your work in them will pay off handsomely in
terms of both scores and real capability.

Thanks for your sharing!

You are quite right.

Thanks, actually i quite like your comments on the exam and the exprience on cracking them.

Very likely i will have the test without JJ, so feeling quite uneasy these days. And those comments help.

Good luck.

Two plastic cubes (Shai Zi with 1-6 on the 6 facets): what is the probability that the sum of the numbers on facets facing up is not 8.

The answer is 86.1%, right?