cat 1 princeton review 550 (42,26)
cat 2 princeton review 490 (43, 19)
cat 3 princeton review 490 (36,22)
cat 4 princeton review 540 (39,25)
cat 5 princeton review 600 (45,28)
GMAT powerprep 1 640 (48,29)
GMAT powerprep 2 620 (48,27)
Kaplan 1st test 660 (45,34)
Crack GMAT 590 (46,19)
MGMAT Maths- 40
Actual GMAT : 580 (48,22)
My AWA argument topic was about postal service increasing postal service price, to increase revenues and lower mail amount for better efficiency. Analysis topic was Amense good cooperation among countries and technology advances should we be citizen of a country or citizen of world. I gave a good lecture on how to be good citizen of the earth and our responsibility to help the poor.
Maths was good, I went with a very positive attitude. the 1st 2 questions were very tough i took 7 mins but did not get shattered, did solve it and moved ahead , there was a series DS question in which C could have given answer as both had 10 as a common number is the second term but after expanding upto 7th term I could another common number at 38. So taking from this if you are going good and such easy qustion comes there will be 100 % a trap in that. I was in a very positive atitude singing while answering the questions. GMAT is no longer an easy exam , All questions upto 17th where tricky with some traps. I had to do last 8 questions in 5 mins :) Dont regret that as I have learnt from all my mock that the end questions matter very less. GMAT goemetry is also tough with three dimension figures question in which we have to find details of angles. There were many percentages questions, standard deviation.
English was a blow. 1st question a tough SC, about tenses. Then a clause one. After a logical conculsion CR, then a short RC (like a big CR )with primary purpose , 2 CR type questions.
The sentence correction was testing much more that common 9 errors.
The SC level was also tough one SC in middle arround 14th question took me more tahn 3 mins, with POE I had two then was getting confused .
2nd RC about a damsremoval and effects of water was 9-13 question, I still dont understand what the passage is talking about.
Third RC was about rRNA and study of its nucleotide for comparison of what not. This was 3rd RC at arround 18-21 question , It ate up alot of my precious time, After this I only had 25 mins left to do 20 questions.So had to rush through it, at end for 5 questions had to blindly guess.
At end of test I was not that sad and devastated I was last time. I had given a fight and did very well in Maths had a positive attitude and a force that I could do it . The day before gmat I had done 30 mins exercise that got away all my tension and in morning of GMAT again I did exercise mainly pushups which again gets a positive energy in you, had a heavy breakfast and tea, After AWA I had rebull , little apple and hersheys.I did 20 pushups also in the canteen.Believe me this gets lot of energy back in you. Then again after Maths section was really happy had redbull, apple and lots of water. Then again the pushups. Remember to pee just before going in to the testing area. I was in a good mood and fighting till the 21st question of the RC , but the fact remains that RC has become tough, They are giving more of critical reasoning types RCs Also Sentence correction section of GMAT is testing more area of grammar then before including quotation marks , commas etc
If you people think I havent prepared enough for GMAT, the next post will tell you about my preparations.
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In the first human trial of its kind, a vaccine grown in genetically engineered tobacco plants has proved to be safe, paving the way to one day use it to help combat a potentially fatal form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.Researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA that the experimental vaccine triggered the immune systems of 11 of 16 volunteers (with so-called follicular B-cell lymphoma) to attack their tumors without any apparent dangerous side effects.Some 18,000 Americans, typically between the ages of 60 and 65, are diagnosed annually with this incurable, slow-growing type of cancer. Study coauthor Ronald Levy, an oncologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, says that physicians generally take their cues from the disease, waiting to see how fast it is moving—and treating it with toxic chemotherapy (sometimes with radiation) only if it becomes aggressive.
He says that if future trials are successful, the experimental vaccine, which can be made relatively quickly and cheaply, could become a short-term therapy administered immediately after diagnosis to try to keep tumors in check."This may not be a replacement for chemotherapies, but a supplement for them," Levy says. "A technology that is fast, like this one, is more amenable to a watchful waiting approach than a technology that is slow to produce."This and other anti-cancer vaccines work by pumping a patient full of the same protein or antigen that is on the surface of tumor cells. Researchers believe that if the body contains enough of the protein, the immune system will recognize it as a potential danger and send out armies of disease-killing cells to seek and destroy tumors harboring it.To make the vaccine, researchers took a sample of a patient's tumors, which in this trial were made up of B cells (white blood cells that help the body battle disease and infection). They then extracted the gene from the cells that coded for the antigen they needed (to help the immune system recognize the tumors as threats). The key, researchers say, was to make enough of the protein quickly to prompt an immune response.In this case, the scientists achieved this by inserting the gene into a plant microbe known a tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). Plants are infected with TMV simply by scratching their leaves and depositing the virus into the tears. Researchers discovered that the virus spreads throughout tobacco plants within a week, in the process cranking out a surfeit of the coveted proteins. The scientists ground the leaves and separated out the antigen, which they then injected into volunteers.They found that the immune systems of 70 percent of participants perked up when blasted with antigens specific to their cancers. The researchers report mild side effects, such as swelling around the injection site and mild to moderate flu symptoms in some participants within a week of getting the vaccine. Of the original group of 16—who ranged in age from 30 to 64—three died (from the disease, not the vaccine), but 13 are still alive and their diseases are in remission up to eight years since being given the vaccine.All of the patients also received chemotherapy, so researchers cannot be certain what role, if any, the vaccines played. Levy says more work is being done to assess the vaccine's effectiveness.Charles Arntzen, a plant biologist at the Arizona State University Biodesign Institute, says a major plus is how fast the vaccine can be whipped up. "I think without the speed," he says, "it would be hard to convince a cancer patient to wait for a vaccine to be developed, rather than going on some other therapy."Levy is trying to find a new biotech company to begin efficacy trials on humans as soon as possible. He says that a vaccine like this one could be on the market as soon as it proved effective and safe.
Following are my thoughts on why it’s equally important to do well on last few questions on the test. I am not sure how many of you may agree but this strategy has worked for me.
§ 33% questions of each section on GMAT are experimental questions. Your score is not affected if you get them wrong. SO, it’s really important that you do well on all non experimental questions.
§ Where are these experimental questions?: GMAT places these questions to gauge their relative difficulty level so test makers will place these questions around the areas where it’s more likely to receive average attention on the test – neither too much so not at the beginning nor at the end – so not at the end.
§ Here’s where most of the students may get it wrong. We try to take care of first 10 questions of each section because 95% chances are there that they will not contain experimental questions. However, because of improper time management students rush through last 5-10 questions. BUT, there are 95% chances that the last 5-8 questions are NOT experimental questions and if you get anyone of this wrong you will be penalized.
o Your score will be affected due to your bad show in last few questions.
o It will also ensure that you push yourself to quickly pass through some of the experimental questions that may waste your time OR pass some of the difficult questions that unnecessarily waste your time. These difficult questions, at times, bring your morale down or more importantly break your rhythm. Remember: 1 wrong answer will not affect your score that much if you didn’t spend more than 2 minutes on it because it will give you an easier question to make up lost ground.o Psychologically you will feel that you never rushed through the section and hence it may not affect your spirit. (at least it worked for me!).
§ How did I come to this conclusion?: I know after doing many CR’s, most of you will want to deny this argument by finding some assumption J But do the following:
o Take old PowerPrep as a part of your practice.o While taking test, make sure you number each question of both sections on your scratch pad.o PowerPrep tells you that it omits all the experimental questions from review section. So, after the test, when you review the answers, please observe which questions are omitted. You will find that first 5-8 questions and last 5-8 questions of each section will stay there whereas the questions from middle will disappear. This observation strengthened my theory that last 5-8 questions hold high importance too.
§ GMAT notifies you that if you don’t answer all the questions then it penalizes you. Now if it wants to penalize you then it would not include experimental question in last few questions of each section, will it? I hope this make sense J
§ Maths: Avoid mistakes on first 7 questions and last 7 questions (31st to 37th)
§ Verbal: Avoid mistakes on first 8 questions and last 8 questions (34th to 41st)
Source: tranquilstorm (http://tranquilstorm.wordpress.com)
