BoB Nominee!

Yes, I realise I have realised this very, very late! But I wasn't really around the last few months, so I'm elated NOW!
I was a Best of Blogging Nominee :)
And my blog won under the Best GMAT Preparation Advice category! Wow, this feels really good! Although, since I didn't campaign for getting any votes, I really do want to know how many votes came in. Because if I've won with a grand total of 3 votes, I'd feel silly placing any importance on the win. So, how happy should I be?

Also, I want the java script for the "BoB Nominee" or "BoB (something!)" box! Anybody?

An MBA education costs HOW much?! *fainting with a thud on the ground*

What I've learnt today after a full day's research:

1. Cost Matters (pun intended) -
MBA from top US B-school: atleast INR 70 lakh
MBA from European B-school: INR 50 - 57 lakh
MBA from ISB Hyderabad (12th ranked in the world?): INR 20 lakh
Damn, if I got into ISB Hyderabad, I'd feel super guilty about opting for a US B-school. That's a 50 lakh difference! Half a freaking CRORE of a difference!!!

2. What exactly is Investment Banking?
Found this beautiful description on GMAT Club:
Investment bankers serve a variety of functions, depending on their specific position. They advise clients on financial organization; underwrite, sell, and trade stocks and bonds; and manage assets, among other responsibilities.

If you are working in corporate finance, you will serve as a financial consultant for corporations. Often banks will assign bankers to work in a certain industry (health care, communications, finance, etc.); you’ll be responsible for helping firms execute financial strategies, analyzing their financial needs, determining valuations for new offerings, and underwriting equity and debt offerings, among other responsibilities. Mergers and acquisitions is related to corporate finance and sometimes serves as its own department; if you’re an M&A banker, you’ll give advice to companies that are merging with or being acquired by other companies. M&A requires a detail-oriented, strategic mind to ensure you’re able to work out all the specifics of the merger or acquisition deal.
If you are working in sales and trading, you will buy and sell securities and commodities; traders must keep track of the markets constantly while communicating with buyers and sellers.
Research analysts become experts in their given industry. They use their expertise and do continued research to predict the movement of stocks, usually either in fixed-income or equity. Traders rely on their educated advice. Research analysts do many different types of research on a company’s financials as well as economics trends in general.

3. Can you take mini-MBA-lessons and get a sneak peak into what you'll learn during your MBA?
Yes you can! At this Financial Times MBA Gym.

That's all for today. Hopefully I make use of tomorrow's holiday equally well. Happy studying and researching!

PS. I am open to any suggestions on how to raise a substantial amount of MBA financing funds over the course of the next 2 years. Anyone?

Update: There are full-scholarships up for grabs, according to this BusinessWeek article. Although it was written in 2008, I guess it must still be somewhat relevant. Also, not sure how many of these are given to non-US citizens. Still, there is hope :-). When else will the Secret come into use right?

Kick-starting Career (read:MBA) Planning

Look who's back!
So the last 4 odd months have been spent on a 5 day Mauritius/Dubai holiday, getting back to a super-light workload followed by a 6 week back-breaking workload. I honestly have not spent too much time thinking about my MBA plans. Till my father kindly kicked my a** back into gear yesterday.
We discussed how I will probably want to continue down the consultancy path - I enjoy working in this kind of a role, the wide scope it offers in terms of experience across sectors, and obviously I seem to be doing well for myself here (see how I have so quickly forgotten [read: stopped giving a rat's a**] about parallelism rules).
But, there are still a LOT of other things to consider. Let me break it down -
1. Career options - consultancy, finance (investment banking/private equity), media/publishing (management side of it), entrepreneurship (restaurant industry), non-for-profit (or NGO, as we call it in India). Yes yes, it does seem to be all over the place. But, I could potentially do something in any of these.
2. Qualification - The one thing that ties together all of the above is an MBA. That degree will (I hope & assume) give me the skill-sets and foundation required to get onto any of these career paths.
3. Secret ambition - to become a renowned writer :) but I'm keeping that aside for the time being. I need the security of bank balance amount containing many, many, many 0's to be able to consider this seriously.

Anyway, keeping aside #3, you can see how I need to seriously start chalking out my career plans now. I'm not quite sure yet how I'm going to go about figuring my life out. I need some serious help. Action points anyone?

Done

Got a 730 (96%)
Q48 (82%)
V42 (95%).

Yey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Off to holidayyy now.

Update: Got 6.0 in AWA. Yey! But why is 6.0 only a 91%?

700 (+100) :p

Got a 700 on GMATPrep #2 on Saturday afteroon. Q47 V38. Will try not spending over 2 minutes on any question which is leaving me feel blurry in my head... :) whatever that means!
All that's left to do now is revise my SC notes - mainly the 2 chapters I didn't get to revise before the test. Might flip through the condensed Math notes I made. That's about it.

Ready to hit it, and smash it :) on Tuesday morning. Can't wait!

Who vs. Whom

Both of them should be "whom".

This is the man to whom I wanted to speak...

Marvin wondered to whom he should give the message...

We use "whom" when we're referring to the object of the sentence.

We use "who" when we're referring to the subject.

There's a very simple test you can use to figure out which version to use:

Turn the statement into a question and answer it with a pronoun.

For example:

Quote:

This is the man to whom I wanted to speak.

To whom did I want to speak? I wanted to speak to HIM.

Quote:

I really hate the guy who stole my girlfriend.

Who stole my girlfriend? HE did.

If you answer the question with him/her/them, then "whom" is the right choice.

If you answer the question with he/she/they, then "who" is the right choice.


--
As explained by Kaplan instructor Stuart on BTG.

Final Stretch

Hey...so I'll fill you in real quick. I gave an MGMAT test on Sunday morning and scored a crappy 670 (Q45 V36). Felt really crummy post that, obviously. And then I fell sick on Monday, and have had fever since. I've tried studying a little from OG. Finished reviewing my Math FCs today. Now I need to buckle up and really revise my SC notes from MGMAT's guide, and probably practice a few questions from OG to reinforce those rules. Other than that, today's the first day I've not had fever. So I guess I'm getting better. Feeling a little tired though - I guess it's just a little weakness.
I know I wanted to do a whole lot more of fine-tuning before my actual exam, and obviously the falling test scores weren't helping my confidence either. But, you know what, I think I've put in a lot of effort over the past few weeks, and hopefully I shall be fully fit to give my exam on the 1st. I don't feel like giving up just yet. The only change in plan is that I will give my final practice test - GMATPrep #2 on Sunday instead - so that I can review/practice a little bit more before the test. I'm sure the practice test will go well, and I'll be on my way to scoring well on the GMAT.

Parting words for today...

"I promise myself...
To be so strong that nothing can disturb my peace of mind.
To think only of the best... and to expect only the best.
To be too large for worry, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.
To live in the faith that the whole world is on my side..."

710...

710 (Q49 V37) on GMATPrep v1 #1 - DO NOT USE THIS TEST. It has repeats from the OGs and from GMATPrep v.2 (more than I would've liked).
Argh! Q49 can be partly attributed to repeat questions, although I had to redo them. Still, it means I might have known how to solve them.
And V37 to overconfidence? Yes, I thought I was having trouble with the questions because they were "too difficult". Haha, no. I was just being lazy/tensed. I don't know. 7 SC mistakes - why is this on the rise? I need to review my MGMAT SC notes - maybe I'm forgetting things? :( 5 CR mistakes - some were confusing, in some I didn't feel like thinking. :( Was very tired after AWA and Quant.

I'm getting a little frustrated. Today's practice test might as well have been a waste of my time, since Quant had so many repeats, and I got complacent in Verbal. Hmmm...or maybe it wasn't. Now I know NOT to use GMATPrep v1 ever again, and also to NOT be complacent during Verbal. Oh, and I finished Quant on time. Other than seeing repeats, I realised one thing. If I'm calm, my accuracy increases in Quant. Or I don't let anything I can't solve get in the way of trying my best to solve the next question. Useful to give this test then? Yes, maybe.

I don't think I'm going to study today. Feeling like, well, to put it straight, crap. I'll moan over this for a while more and then move on.

Thanks for listening! Keep up the good work with your padhai!

13 days to go!

Hello! I went through incorrect questions on last 2 tests, and found 2 math topics to focus on: Number Properties (specially Divisibility & Primes), and Inequalities. Done going through all the Number Properties questions from OG11, 12 and OG Quant supplement. Might go through "Integer Properties" category of questions from my BTG account.
Going to do the same for Inequalities today.
Finished Modifiers from MGMAT SC. Need to go through my notes again, and practice some more questions from OGV for those topics.

Another practice test tomorrow morning.

Happy studying you guys!!!

Practice Test - GMATPrep - 720

GMATPrep #1.
720 (Q47 V42) - with AWA (most of my practice tests are with AWA - FYI).
Ummm...so...good to know that the 740 on MGMAT last time was not a fluke. I guess I did get better over the last 1 month.

Q47 - 13 incorrect (9 DS, 4 PS - obv DS seems to be the problem.)
V42 - 6 incorrect (1 CR, 5 SC!!! Hmmm...SC needs a lot more work.)

Now, my problem is Q47. I thought us Indians were supposed to find this section easy? Hmmm...
Plan of attack:
1. Review Math section of last 2 tests and see which category of Math questions need to be handled. Do questions from these categories from OG12 and OGQ (using MGMAT's OG Tracker excel sheet).
2. Finish all Quant questions from OGQ, going through answer explanations for EACH AND EVERY question, even if you got it right (need to figure out quicker ways to solve questions, especially DS - where I end up plugging in too many numbers and am confused by the end of it). - THIS REALLY NEEDS TO BE DONE!

3. Review which SC category questions I got wrong in last 2 tests. See what kind of mistakes I made.
4. Revise SC chapters from MGMAT guide, and also continue going through it like I have been in the last few days.
5. Continue to do CR & RC questions, and understanding why you're getting it wrong from OGV (and some RCs in OG12).

Phew.

Good luck to the rest of you...
And 800, here I commmmmeeeeee! :)