Monday, 24 December 2007

Day 1: Arithmetic, Algebra, Applied Arithmetic

Today .. my first real day of preparations ... The focus for today is on the Maths (pg 58 - 117 of "Cracking the GMAT" book)

The Princeton Review book specifies some test-taking tips, such as:
  • POE (Process of Elimination) - allows you to eliminate answer choices even when you dont know how to do a problem.
  • "Joe Bloggs" answers - these are the answers which would appeal to the "average Joe Bloggs" test taker. Joe is attracted to easy solutions that he can arrive at in 1 step and answers that repeat numbers from the problem.
    • For easy (1 step) questions, the Joe Bloggs answer will almost always be correct.
    • For medium (2 step) questions, the Joe Bloggs answer will be right 50% of the time.
    • For hard (3 step) questions, the Joe Bloggs answer will always be wrong.
Also read about the concepts of "pluggin in" values into equations instead of using algebra to solve them. This helps solve the question much quicker than using algebra (in Princeton's opinion !).

Summary of Day 1:
- Completed what I set out to do at the start of the day: Arithmetic, Algebra, Applied Arithmetic sections of the Princeton Review "Cracking the GMAT" book.

Insights/thoughts from Day 1:
- I can see how the "plugging-in" method will be helpful ... also helps verify if some of the answers are in fact correct ... I am wary of relying on this too much ... especially under the strict time conditions of the real GMAT exam.
- Need to become better at figuring out what math to use when solving problems. This should come with practice.
- Also need to become better using algebra to solve problems, as opposed to becoming too reliant on the plugging-in method
- Need to focus on the getting through the content in the PR book, and not get distracted by browsing through the GMAT online forums etc, and other books. I will be doing plenty of that later. This week, my objective is to complete the Cracking the GMAT book, and have my first PR CAT practice test.

Today has been a good review of some of the basic fundamental math which I havent touched since school !

Tomorrow, I plan to do a quick review of the main topics covered today, and then jump into Geometry and Data Sufficiency sections of the PR book.



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