Day 2

Wow, so its Day 2.  I did a lot of house work today - washed dishes, cleaned clothes, attempted to make some kind of sense of my room.  I decided to crack open the books I bought from Barnes & Noble - The Princeton Review’s Cracking the GMAT 2008 Edition and Kaplan’s GMAT 800 (2007/2008 Edition). The author of BeattheGMAT.com does a great job of outlining thier study experience.  Using this experience as a framework I decided to start reading Princeton Review’s book first. 

As I started to read the book I realized that the DVD would probably be a better place to start.  I quickly popped in the DVD and was presently surprised that it gave me such a good overview of the GMAT. 

If you don’t get excited about the idea of cracking open a 3 inch page book filled with math problems you haven’t done since high school then this DVD is excellent. My only qualms with this DVD is that they focused so much on this one Asian chick who was totally annoying.  Some of the other instructors seemed well-rehearsed, talked with ease, and seemed very competent.  This chick was rambling and stumbled over ever other word.  All of the people on this DVD claimed to be Princeton Review instructors - I just kept thinking if I got her as my instructor I’d ask for my money back!

So besides the annoying chick the DVD did a pretty good job of going over the format of the GMAT, mentioned some of the strategies, and even gave some sample questions.  Now don’t be discouraged (I was!) when you see them going over these problems.  The really don’t give much explination - and the explination that they do give you don’t make sense….  Well, that’s where the book comes in and long hours studying it. 

I like the Princeton Review because it goes step by step and they keep it real.  They know most of this stuff is barried in your head somewhere - they do a good job of dragging it out without all the bullshit.  They get right to the point and tell you only the stuff you need to know.  

They start out with math and give you some pretty good basic strategies to use and start practicing for the test immediately.  I suggest having some note cards on hand and a good stack of scratch paper.

The book is easy to read.  Today I put in about an hour and of studying and whipped through the first 7 or 8 chapters no problem.

This entry was posted on 19. August 2007 at 01:54 and is filed under Day to Day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.