3 Comments:

 Dave for MBA said...

Thanks so much for your feedback. I think I agree with your comment about the Kaplan in the last week. I'll move it to the week before. As for GMAC, I think I'll go through a couple of the tests and scan for questions that I find are in the general areas of where I need more practice. Verbal mostly. I'm running out of good tests. I think Arco may be a good choice though. I find that I need more practice in problem solving and DS in the areas of two rates of travel and meeting, dilution, overall rate word problems, exponents, theory w/ variables, complex probability where math theory @ the end is needed and paying closer attention to the question to not oversolve the question. Sometimes, one doesn't need to solve for X all the time. Thanks for the encouragement.

2:06 PM  

 Dave for MBA said...

I thought there were three when I wrote the plan. After taking the PowerPrep yesterday, I saw that there were indeed two. I need to correct my study plan and come up with a replacement test. Thanks for the feedback. I spent part of last night and will finish the rest of the adjustment to my study plans today. THANKS. Best wishes to you and your application as well Metal! Let me know how things go for you.

8:40 AM  

 Dave for MBA said...

To answer your questions.
1) Probability, combinatorics, dilution are most definitely on the GMAT. Moreover, so is counting and Permutations. For probability, or permutations, there are such problems as class percentage makeup of subjects and figure out odds of what subject matter they are in, Total probability, ring probability (have 6 people and how many combinations would there be if they sat around a round table.) From Ursula who frequents www.testmagic.com, her postmortem of the actual GMAT reads, "The Quant section was pretty much what I expected from OG. Slanted towards the more difficult end of the OG spectrum, but nothing totally unexpected. I was a bit surprised about the number of DS questions - I would guess about 50%, compared to the 33% suggested by Kaplan. Questions covered a pretty broad range – arithmetic, algebra, word problems (surprisingly no work or mixture problems), geometry, coordinate geometry, number properties, and 3 or 4 combination and probability questions. " I've read other peoples postmortems and I've never seen anyone get more than 4 probability or permutations questions. But there is almost always at least 1.
b) Kaplan covers, dilution, combination and probability on pages 196-198. I have the 2003 book. Just looked it up for you. In the Kaplan test, I'm looking at the book and see #26 is a probability question, #27 is dilution. Don't know about the CAT questions as I haven't done them yet. Overall, Kaplan really doesn't cover these areas well. It's like an afterthought level of coverage. Princeton is about the same. I don't have the 2002 and 2004 versions to compare, but I know the 2003 Princeton and 2004 differences were just like you said about Kaplan. The study guides were not touched and only questions were added. I just went through the Princeton Review 2003 book and found that in all three tests, I found a total of 2 probability questions and 1 permutation. That's pretty weak.

Regarding Verbal. I've come to the conclusion the difference between someone who does well on the SC and one who doesn't is the one who overlooks their "sounds right, I'll go with that" bias. Consequently they have a difficult time with the SC sections. That would be me as well. I get on the average 3-7 wrong in SC every sectional test I've taken. That's enough to destroy a 700+ GMAT chance. I've just recently picked up the pace on my SC and find quite a few awkward sentences but they don't break any grammar rules. That's the key I think. Despite the awkwardness, does the question follow known grammer rules. The 8 rules in Princeton are fabulously well documented and should be memorized. The Kaplan book and Princeton book, both define the 8 major rules of grammar. The Kaplan book has better drills after each rule, but the Princeton book in my opinion does a slightly better job in explaining the rules.

2:08 PM  

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