Gmat queries !

[leisuresoul.avi]

I am a Student of 2nd year B.tech, I have planned to take up Gmat in Dec 2010 in my 3rd year. I have following queries- (a) Which book to use at start of prepration ? I have ard 1year for prep so what should be prepration strategy ? (B) I am planning for score of 730+ . So is it worthless to apply to colleges without work experience ?

[StaceyKoprince]

There are a lot of books, materials, classes, etc available - part of your task is going to be to figure out what to use. You are really planning ahead, which will make it easier for you to find the best way for you - that's great.

Just pay attention to who you ask for advice. If you ask here, you're going to get advice about ManhattanGMAT because this is our forum. If you ask on another company's web site you're going to get advice about their stuff. So it's also a good idea to talk to friends or others who are studying but who are not affiliated with a company to ask what they think from an unbiased point of view. :)

You'll have to make several basic decisions about how to prep:
1) on your own
2) in a class
3) with a tutor

1 is the least expensive but also doesn't provide you as much direction or feedback. 2 is more expensive and provides you with a study syllabus, feedback, and the opportunity to have questions answered by an expert. 3 is the most expensive and provides you with a customized study plan and extensive one-on-one interaction with an expert.

There's no one right way to do this - it just depends on what you think will work best for you.

Regardless of how you study, you will absolutely need the Official Guide books. These are filled with official GMAT questions that are no longer used on the official test, and they are the best source of study questions. The three most recent books are The Official Guide 12th Edition, The Verbal Official Guide 2nd Edition, and The Quantitative Official Guide 2nd Edition.

Those books will not, however, teach you how to get better at taking the test; they'll just give you the best practice problems on which to test yourself as you learn how to get better. To get better, you're going to need some materials (or a class or tutor) from some test prep company. Most test prep companies offer free stuff - sit in on a class for free, a free practice test, etc. So sign up for all of the free stuff, test it out, and see what you think is best (don't forget to talk to friends, too!).

Re: work experience, it really depends upon where you apply. For most full-time, English-speaking programs, they want to see at least 2 years of experience. The requirements can vary at some part-time programs, especially in other non-English-speaking parts of the world. Check with the specific schools to which you want to apply to see what they say about their requirements.

[leisuresoul.avi]

Actually I had chat with my friends who have give GMAT recently....So he told me to go for mANHATTAN and Kaplan 800. So I actually asked here with respect to Manhattan only that which book should we start with of Manhattan and then how to proceed ??
Secondly, I have a program here in India which is 'Fellowship' which is equivalent to Phd in Management....Can you tell wheather Fellowship give me good or equal opprutunity as MBA ???

Thanks for previous answer, I appreciate it !!

[StaceyKoprince]

Ah, I see! Well, our books are split up according to question type (verbal) or content area (quant), so you can choose whichever books you think cover your areas of weakness or you can get them all - it's up to you. (Students in our classes use them all.) Take a look at the Store section of our website to see the table of contents and get an idea of what's covered in each book.

On the verbal side, there's one book each for Sentence Correction, Critical Reasoning, and Reading Comp, so that's pretty straightforward. On the quant side, the 5 books are:
1) Number Properties
2) Equations, Inequalities and VICs
3) Word Translations
4) Fractions, Decimals, and Percents
5) Geometry

In terms of frequency, the first two books are the most commonly tested (though you should also think about your own strengths and weaknesses).

You can find a copy of our class syllabus on this web page:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/freegmatlearningforum.cfm

It's called "Official Manhattan GMAT Course Syllabus [pdf]"- just go the page and click on that title. It lists some materials that you will only have access to if you take a class or use one of our self-study packages - so, if you don't do those things, then ignore those parts of the syllabus.

Re: whether Fellowships will give you the same opportunities as an MBA, unfortunately, I have no idea. My area of expertise is the GMAT, not business school. You may want to try asking your question in the Admissions Consulting forum, but even then - I would bet the answer will be that there isn't really an answer to that question. It just depends on how any particular employer views the degree. In general, the more an employer knows about a particular school or type of program, the more of a positive it will be for you (assuming the employer has a positive view of that program, of course!).