MBA Abroad –II - Strategy for preparation and Study Material

Strategy for Preparation
Group with like-minded people

I advise all the aspirants to prepare in a group. Form a group of 3-4 but not more than 5 people and then start preparation. Don’t commit the mistake of all booking the GMAT on the same day, group members book your GMAT dates over a period of one month with ideally a gap of one week each, I am telling this, because one can benefit from the mistakes of others. The Advantages of group preparation are plenty: -• Books and Material required for preparation are costly, group preparation helps in sharing the costs and it gets reduced to a significant extent. • Individual people are good in individual areas and thus it helps in learning from one another. • Group mates will be greatly helpful in analyzing schools, and completing your applications, you can distribute the load and discuss the schools. • Group preparation prevents your morale from going down during preparation days. Believe me, it would be very frustrating when you appear for mock tests especially of Kaplan, so it gives you a lot of comfort when you know other people preparing are also sailing in the same boat, the discussion on mistakes will also be helpful.


Study Material

Books to Refer: -• Official Guide (OG) to GMAT, the book is available from GMAC, but its costly, I advise purchase one and share the cost or get it Xeroxed, this is the bible to crack GMAT. • Kaplan Test preparation Guide. • Kaplan 800 GMAT guide. • Princeton Review GMAT preparation guide. For GMAT preparation these four books are more than enough, I advise to start with Kaplan Test preparation and OG simultaneously. Then go through Princeton Review and finally 800 GMAT. Finally in the last 10- 15 days just revise the material, and go back on mistakes previously made, especially in the OG. For those who are poor in English, in the initial attempt its rare that one gets more then 60% correct. Revise the material and your accuracy will increase. Do OG 2-3 times and increase your accuracy to around 85- 90 %.Where to Purchase books?These books are pretty costly; each will be more than Rs1000. Search the Internet, one can get cheaper copies of originals at net, I had purchased mine from Fabmall and ebay. The copies at Internet are up to 40-50%, less, so a handsome amount can be saved. Software Required: -Kaplan Guide is available in two versions with and without Test preparation Software’s. I suggest purchasing one without Test preparation software for those who live in metros and one with test preparation software for those in non-metros. This is because; pirated copies of Kaplan Test preparation software are easily available at very low cost of Rs 80-100 in metros. GMAC also sends official preparation software to all the people who register for GMAT. Internet Internet is a big source of help; there are plenty of study forums and groups. I was late in searching these but one must join daily digests of these. I am listing some prominent ones: -www.scoretop. com www.edulix.comwww.xoxohth. comYahoo groups like Step2006intakeI recommend searching for more groups for the class you are preparing for. Every year students create these groups. People say paid version of score top is good, I had not used that one but I used its discussion forum, which I joined 5 days before my exam. I advise all aspirants to utilize maximum benefits of the score top discussion forum; also some of my friends have told me that edulix also has excellent discussion forums. I would also advise all future aspirants to read Samba’s postings at http://simba. pagalguy. com/Simba aka Sowyna is an Indian Girl. She constantly writes about her life. She is currently studying at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. In her posts one can find lot of insight about B- Schools and their admission process. In fact only after Inspired by her I am writing this series of articles.

Free Tests

There are plenty of free tests available in Internet. Kaplan, Princeton has a sample free test on their web site, similarly other websites also have few free tests available.


Tip’s to Score High in English

English is the most difficult portion for most of the Indian graduates, if one doesn’t agree then I am sorry but at least it was difficult for me :-) Indian Graduates are poor in comprehension. Generally the GMAT consists of 4 – 5 passages, which are quite tedious and boring. The passages are generally on American history, social differences or some new scientific discoveries. The words used are difficult and unfamiliar ones. How to crack? I suggest one should read few novels on American history. I improved my comprehension to a great extent after this. I had read Roots by Alex Haley. The novel is very boring initially but is one of the best on American history and covers a lot about life of slaves, and blacks in America, a favorite topic of GMAT exam setters. The author traces the journey of his 6 generations from African forests to current America. The other novel I had read was To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee. Also I suggest all aspirants to read Harvard Business Review, and Economist.One can improve his comprehension to a limit, but with practice one can achieve 95- 100% accuracy in Sentence Correction and Critical Reasoning. So I suggest preparing for them with full rigor.

Tip’s to Score Full in Math’s

For Indian applicants who have prepared for CAT, math’s section in GMAT is a cakewalk. For those who haven’t prepared for CAT just strengthen your fundamentals of class Xth Math and prepare for Data Sufficiency section. DS section is somewhat tough. Hope these articles are helpful to you all, in the next article I will write about selecting B-schools.

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