gmat prep
Going into my final 3 days of analytics and the last week before officially matriculating into the mba program here… I’ve leared a ton. And I feel extremely well prepared to begin tackling the real challenge that lies ahead.
Several times in the last week, people have emailed to ask what I did to prepare for the gmat. Granted, I think that prep for the exam is going to be an individual thing and no one method will guarantee any one result, I thought I’d quickly post what I did, so that it’s here and on the record. I started out with the big purple kaplan book and then went to the big orange gmat book. Then I started taking practice exams on the computer. I then went back and focused on specific problem areas with the help of selected mahattan gmat prep books. No right or wrong thing about this method, it just worked for me. One thing I will say, is that I felt the kaplan questions were harder (or worded more poorly) than the actual exam questions. So, starting with that book freaked me out into working extra hard, only to find the exam a little easier than I was expecting.
Not telling anyone what they should or shouldn’t do, just sharing what I did.
first impressions
So far I have been through eight cases and I am currently working on preparing two for tomorrow. And so far I can confidently say that I wish that my education up until this point had been entirely case method. (Except for film school, I’m not sure how that would have worked…)
Being in a classroom for 80 minutes where there is a perpetual ping-pong of conversation going on between prof and student, and also between student and student, has kept me so much more focused and alert than I ever have been during a class before.
So you can tell I’m liking it so far?
The class experience has been different from anything I’ve ever done. From what I can tell one of the other big differences from my past educational experiences is in the preparation for class. I spend lots of time preparing, with the same anxiousness I would have had in high school about making sure my homework was “right.” Except that now that doesn’t matter any more. I can bring in a balance sheet, and if it doesn’t balance, it doesn’t matter (insofar as I’m not going to lose points for it)… as long as I understand the concepts and can reason my way through an argument in class, I’m fine. This is a weird paradigm to get used to.
I finally made time to go to the gym today, and I felt really good afterwards. Think I need to get into the habit of doing that more often.
The people here are beyond amazing. Everyone in Analytics has a wild story about something (whether it’s work, their education, their personal interests…). I’ve had more fun just meeting people in the last few days than I’ve had in a while.
Someone said to me the other night that they’ve heard b-school described this way (and I’m starting to agree):
Where undergrad was a lot of people who looked similar on paper (impressive GPA or extracurriculars, etc.) but were vastly different in terms of personality and aspirations, the b-school crowd seems to be much more similar in terms of personality (no, everyone’s not the same, more on this later) and aspirations and wildly different on paper (in terms of work experience, home country, etc.).
I hope to be able to go into more detail about some of these things soon, but at the moment I wanted to squeeze in an update between case prep and my learning team meeting tonight.
the calm before the storm
After a few days of break from the internet, I’m returning. On Friday, I made the 16 hour drive from Chicago to Cambridge. It was a relatively smooth drive and I was exhausted when I got to the house. The last three days have been spent cleaning, floor to ceiling the new place, unpacking all the stuff I dumped here in July, and getting ready for class to start on Wednesday.
Analytics (aka “Math Camp”) begins at 8am Wednesday morning. There’s a full schedule of events that day which will take us right up until 11pm Wednesday night. I’m excited for things to get started, I’m just hoping I can last the whole day. I’m not used to intensity starting so early and ending so late. Hopefully the last few weeks of rest will pay off.
Tonight is the first big social event. A lot of the people going to this program on Wednesday are meeting up for drinks and I’m looking forward to finally meeting some of the other people here. Tomorrow will be a day of rest, relaxation, final errands/chores, and hopefully some Olympic-viewing…
