Are you GMAT slacker? There's hope!

Woohoo! I'm done with the GMAT now!

How I studied
I was terribly lazy studying for the GMAT. I bought the Kaplan 800 book and the "OG," but I did maybe 200 of the 800 problems in the OG, and less than 30 in the Kaplan book. I spent an hour or two every night for a week studying. That's about it. No spreadsheets to track my performance, no Manhattan study guides.

My goal was to get 750+ on the test. Mission accomplished.

There are a hundred blogs and sites that suggest the best method for studying for this test. Here's what worked for me (a certified slacker).

First, I've always been really good at standardized tests. I did well on the SAT, ACT, and GRE, so I had no reason to expect less from the GMAT. If you are a native English speaker who reads a lot, you have a huge advantage on the verbal section.

Second, I studied only the hardest problems in the OG. Don't bother with the easy ones. Start at the last question and work backwards through the section. It's like working with a medicine ball -- by the time you get to the real thing, anything less than the hardest questions seems trivial.

Third, review the answer explanation to each question immediately after finishing it. Rather than flipping back and forth between the questions and explanations, I used the pad I was writing on to cover the explanation, then immediately read it after marking my answer. The 11ed. OG's explanations were almost always excellent.

Finally, I scheduled the test for the afternoon. If you're not a morning person, the ability to schedule the test later in the day is beautiful!

Practice Test Scores
I found the old PowerPrep and new GMATPrep practice tests to be highly predictive. I took both GMATPrep tests, and the scores were 10 and 20 points lower than my actual score. The PowerPrep test I took the day before the test scored exactly the same as my actual test!

The "OG," 11 ed.

I got the "Original Gansta"...er, uh "Official Guide" to the GMAT a couple weeks ago. I never had the 10th edition, so the 11th is all I've known. The book claims on page 10 that the questions are ordered in each section "from easy to difficult." I wanted to see how true this was, with the idea that easy questions appearing late in a section would indicate the question types that get more value than their difficulty warrants (to me at least).

I decided to grade the questions on a subjective 3 point scale of difficulty as I went through the book, just to test this theory. The scale is simple:

• 1: the solution should be immediately obvious with no tricks needed.
• 2: some insight is required to solve the problem, but once you have that insight, actually solving it is straightforward.
• 3: a difficult question. Not only do you have to be clever to see how to solve it, there are several steps in getting to the solution or understanding the problem. These are the type I would expect to be in the program's "700+" bin of questions.
• I allowed myself the occassional '+' or '-' modifier, too. The '3+' questions probably stumped me, and may have even made me angry at the testmaker.
  

Now, I had grand dreams of rating all of the 800 or so problems in the book at one point, but considering that the test is only a couple of days away, I've resigned myself to the fact that I will have done less than 200 of them by the time I test. That said, I did do some samples to see if they truly do get more difficult as you go through them. Here's what I found:

My rating for the Problem Solving questions, numbers 1-20:
1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1-

Same section, numbers 200-220:
2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2-, 3+, 2, 2, 3+, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2+, 3, 3, 2, 3

So, yes, the questions do generally appear to get harder as you go. If they are truly in order of difficulty, certain topics (long word problems, standard deviation, and simultaneous equations?) are rated as highly difficult by the computer, even if the mechanics of solving the problem are simple. My guess is that lots of test takers have been intimidated by these question types, getting them wrong more often than other types. That leaves some pretty easy questions in the "difficult" bin if you are not the type to be flustered by those types.

In other words, learning the simple tricks to solve those problem types will give you the most bang for your buck when you're studying.

The MBA Tour

For those of you who were unable to attend The MBA Tour in NYC this past weekend, let me say this: you didn't miss much. It had some interesting moments, but if you were looking for information that couldn't be obtained in the brochures and websites, you might have been disappointed.

A few comments on the event:

• The lack of PowerPoint slides to work from seemed to flummox many of the B-school representatives. We were in small rooms, and they had about 25 minutes to talk about their school and take questions. There wasn't enough time or space -- there wasn't even a podium for the speakers to stand behind. I was surprised that many of these people, ostensibly professional speakers, didn't handle the situation well.
• The speaker for MIT was not good. Maybe it was too early, and he warmed up as the day went on, but I was at the first session, and it wasn't pretty. He misunderstood several of the questions he was asked. He mixed metaphors and confused several similar sounding words. And he strayed far from the topic at hand, always coming back to "Mens et manus" (MIT's motto) whether it was applicable to the answer or not. There was murmuring among some of the prospective students, and a few left early. My impression was that he hadn't been at MIT long and couldn't really answer questions with a depth greater than what was printed in the brochure. I didn't feel that he knew much about the school, and this was disappointing to me, as MIT is one of my top choices.
• Poor Carnegie Mellon. Only a few people showed up for their talks. Wharton and NYU however, drew crowds. I guess that makes sense, considering the number of prospective i-bankers in the crowd.
• The AdCom from Chicago (sorry, I forget her name) was very impressive. I'm not applying to "the GSB," but if I were, I would feel that my application was being carefully and thoughtfully considered.

On a final note, the worst parts of these MBA fairs are the questions asked by the attendees. 50% of the questions could be answered with a glance at the brochure or website. One guy raised his hand to ask MIT how many admissions rounds they had. Thanks for wasting our time with that question! Another 40% of the questions are covered repeatedly in the Montauk book, the forums, and every guide to admissions out there. My favorite example of this is the ever popular "How much weight do you put on the GMAT score?"

Luckily, the remaining 10% of the questions were actually insightful. This gives me hope that there are still plenty of smart, sane people applying to B-school, and made it worthwhile to get up early on a Saturday to attend.

Who is Nick Carraway?

Well, obviously, Nick's not my real name. For those of you who didn't read The Great Gatsby in school, Nick Carraway is the narrator. He has a small bungalow nextdoor to millionaire Jay Gatsby's mansion, and he serves as a sort of impartial observer to some of the events in the mysterious Gatsby's life. Nick's major observation throughout the book seems to be that the rich are selfishly careless and somewhat (self-)destructive.

I thought this might be an appropriate moniker for someone seeking an MBA, yet trying to observe and comment on the process at the same time. I hope I can provide some insight along the way, and let's hope the MBA isn't just another green light in the distance.