BeatTheGMAT New Practice Questions Review

Thanks Eric for such a wonderful opportunity to review the new set of questions that BTG is planning to release today. Honestly, at the very outset, let me confess that I could not devote ample time to look into all the 200 questions that were part of the review. I have been very busy juggling deadlines at work-place, applications and interview preparations. Somehow, I managed to go through some of the question sets and patterns. So, lets discuss starting from the dashboard:

Dashboard:

The Dashboard is very interactive. The first thing to point is the Summary chart that gives a comprehensive status of the questions you answered. It is divided into various criteria such as Questions Answered, Your Percent Correct, Average Percent Correct, Your Pace and Average Pace. Additionally, the factors are judged both as section wise (Quantitative/Verbal) and area wise (Quant-Data Sufficiency/Problem Solving and Verbal-Critical Reasoning/Reading Comprehension/Sentence Correction). So, one can judge the competency and improvement level as per the area itself.  Click on any are and you can revisit the question that you have answered and attempted.

The Dash board also allows to start either Quantitative Test/Verbal Test or a customized test. Personally, I liked the concept of customized test a lot. I can choose the areas that I want to test on. This format may be useful when I have covered one area of study and would like to build my competency. Both the Quantitative and Verbal sections have lot of exhaustive list of areas to cater to these needs.

Additionally, I feel the customized part caters to the needs of all GMAT takers. If one is confident of a good score, he can test his competency level set to 700+ only. If one is less confident, he can choose his level of competency or just go for the Adaptive mode of test. Isn’t it interesting?

Now, lets come to the question/answer section:

We have two options:

• Answer one question at a time: Suitable for people who are busy and not sure that they can sit for certain amount of time continuously w/o distraction. Ideal Scenarios could be office.
• Choose number of questions you want to answer and start the test. Useful to build the stamina gradually. Suitable for most of us because being out of college for substantial period of time, this is perfect way to start building the stamina for 4 hr duration real GMAT.

What is good here?

1. It records your time you take to answer the question and submit the answer. You can judge your performance relative to other users. Improve if you lag.
2. There is a text explanation to the answer.
3. Still not clear, look at the video explanation. Trust me when I say the video explanations are definitely better or at par with other trainers and you would definitely not miss the opportunity of being in a class and getting explained by an instructor. You have an instructor right with you always.
4. The “Your Result” Section shows the various parameters that might be useful for your own introspection: Difficulty Level, Your Pace and Average Pace. Work on the parameters, if you level goes into the RED color. Strive to be in the GREEN color always.
5. The “Question Details” Section gives the Title, Section, Subject parameters.
6. Please don’t forget to “Rate the Explanation” because that is how we at BTG, can improve on the quality of questions.
7. On a final note, I must say the questions are definitely of very high quality and resembles the REAL GMAT to a great extent. A must WIN-WIN situation for all those opting for the course.

Lets come to the final and most important part: The Review Section.

• You get to know all the details of the questions of each section that you have attempted and answered.
• Other than the available parameters such as your pace, average pace and other, one thing that sets the review page apart is the ability to choose your areas. For example, if you want to look into the questions that you have attempted in last 3 days since you finished studying the algebra, just look at your progress and competency level of algebra by setting appropriate filters.
• Still in doubt and want to reconsider coming back w.o forgetting about a question, “FLAG” it.

Overall, I feel BTG has done an amazing attempt to familiarize and assist students of GMAT in their preparation. No need of carrying books. Study anywhere any time with just a click away. I did not test the application over mobile but I feel it should be compatible too because from the technology point of view, I felt the application is very light and robust.

In the words of BTG, I feel happy to share some of the salient features of the product:

• More than 700 GMAT math/verbal practice questions.
• Every GMAT practice question features a video explanation for the given question, written/produced by a veteran GMAT instructor.
• Completely online practice – study at work or at home, without carrying book around.
• Ability to customize you prep based on subject area with just a few clicks.
• Performance reporting to identify your strengths, weaknesses on GMAT subject areas.
• Adaptive practice algorithm that mimics the real GMAT – the better you do, the harder the questions become in your practice session.
• 30-day Money-Back Guarantee if you’re not satisfied.

Now, the most important question: how much would it cost for me? Just $99 for 1 year access.

When is it going to go Live?: November 2nd, 2010.

What are you waiting for: Go immediately to http://practice.beatthegmat.com and register yourself.

Finally, I take this opportunity to thank Eric Bahn, the co-founder of BTG, for entrusting me and giving me an opportunity to review the practice questions. I, also, thank David Park who is now a very dear friend of mine and have been very supportive and helpful.

Surprise: Oh yes, there is a surprise. Do come back because Eric has assured me of some prizes to distribute in lieu of this review on the blog. So, watch out this space for more!!!

The first attempt to prep test1

Well, today I gave the first GMAT prep test after a long time and scored pathetically. I got 610 (Q47, V27). Verbal section continues to haunt me. I noticed the following errors in my approach:

1. I am not able to concentrate hard for the test duration.

2. I am still doing pretty badly in Reading Comprehensions; almost all of them went wrong in the test.

3. I was left with almost 15 min and 10 min in verbal and quantitative section respectively. It clearly shows that I am not managing my time properly and I need to fine tune my strategy further.

4. 30% of the questions that I attempted wrong were very close and I chose the wrong answer from the two options that I had in my mind as the answer. So, as usual LUCK does not support me, which does not surprise me at all.

5. In quantitative section, I bumped into a lot of standard deviation questions, all of them going wrong. I need to brush up the fundamentals of standard deviations and its relationship with the mean.

I am going to give the second test tomorrow and I hope that I could plan it well and get a good score for moral boost. I am feeling pretty low after so much hardship gone for some time. I will update you about the test tomorrow.

Cool Quantitative tricks

Hey guys, lets look into some cool faster mathematics tricks, that we generally call as Vedic Mathematics. We will discuss some of them, which have application almost every time with examples.

Trick 1:  1/(<any_number>9) = ?

The condition here is the denominator ends with 9. Increase the digits preceding  by 1 and divide 1 with the result.

Example: 1/19 = Dividing 1 by 1+1=2 gives ) with remainder 1. Divide 10 by 2 gives 5. Dividing 5 gives 2 with 1 as remainder and so on. The final answer is thus formed with all the quotients, which in this case is .052 (up to 3 digits).

Trick 2: Multiplication with Base 10: Always remember that RHS has just the same number of the digits as the number of 0′s in the base.

Lets us multiply 13 * 17. 13 is +3 than 10. Similarly, 17 is +7 than 10.

13            +3

17            +7

——————————————————————

(13+7 or 17+3)20 | (+7*+3)21 = (20+2) | 1 = 221

——————————————————————

Trick 3: Multiplication with base 100:

Let us multiply 93 * 111

93                             -7

111                          +11

——————————————————————————–

(93+11 or 111-7) 104 |           -77 = (104-1) | (100-77) = 10323

———————————————————————————

Trick 4: Trick 2 and Trick 3 can be extended to any number with bases multiples of 10.

Trick 5: Multiplication with something half of multiple of 10.

For illustration, let us say 50 as the base and we are multiplying 41 * 41

41                          -9

41                        -9

————————————————————————————————-

(41 -9)32 | 81 = 16 | 81 = 1681.

————————————————————————————————-

Trick 6: Squaring

(Base is 10 here ) Square of 12 = (12+2)|(square of 2)= 14|4= 144.

(Base is 100) Square of 94 = (94-6) | (square of -6) = 88|36=8836

Trick 7: Multiply 2-digit number

ax+b and cx+d, where x =10. The result is (a*c)(x^2)|((a*d)+(b*c))x|(b*d)

21 * 43 = (2*4)|((2*3)+(1*4))|(1*3) = 8|10|3=(8+1)|0|3=903

Trick 8: Multiply 3-digit numbers

a(x^2)+bx+c and d(x^2)+ex+f, where x 10. The result is (a*d)(x^4)+((a*e)+(b*d))(x^3)+((a*f)+(b*e)+(c*d))(x^2)+((b*f)+(c*e))x+(c*f).

Trick 9: Squares of number ending in 5.

25 = (2*(2+1))|(square of 5)=(2*3)|25=625

55 = (5*6)|25 = 3025

The above mentioned 9 tricks should help in faster calculation in all competitive exams.