I bought tickets to the Van Cliburn concert over 6 months ago for $150 a ticket.  And finally, it looks like the show will go on (after being rescheduled twice)…knock on wood.   For me, this is like going to the Super Bowl.  There’s also a preconcert reception that I’m looking forward to. 

Seeing that Van Cliburn is around 72 years old, I’m not expecting the performance to be anything like his performances during his prime.  His recording of the Tchaikowsky Concerto No.1 is still one of my favorites (S. Richter’s playing of Tchaik1 is also pretty darn good). 

 

Just because someone watched Terminator 2 and learned how to say “Hasta La Vista!”, does that mean that he speaks Spanish? I think it’s funny, both the frequency and the extent to which people would pad their life resumes.

 

As much as I enjoy listening to symphonies, concerti, and piano solos, it’s really hard for me to concentrate on my studies while listening to these.  Instead, I’ve turned to chamber music (at low volumes).  I bought the above CD’s to add to my chamber music collection and as an added incentive to study harder and longer.  I don’t know what it is about chamber music that intrigues me–perhaps it’s the ‘Bach effect’? 

So far, my favorite chamber music includes the Brahms, Schubert, and Schumann Piano Trios.  If you know of any good recordings out there, please pass the sugar!

 

I can’t take any more Manhattan GMAT practice CATs because my account apparently expired recently, so I bought this GMAT book that came with 6 practice CATs on CD-ROM (McGraw-Hill). 

Instead of assigning a score range (like Manhattan GMAT’s practice tests do), McGraw-Hill assigns an actual score.  My score: 660.  I was disappointed really pissed because I thought I had aced the verbal section; instead, I scored a tad higher on Quantitative (to my surprise) than on Verbal.  What’s interesting about the Quantitative section is that DS questions used to be weakest area (for both Verbal and Quantitative), but now, is actually one of my strengths (got 14/16 correct).  I really goofed (rushed things a bit) on the Problem Solving portion (got only 16/21 correct).  I thought I missed less than 5 questions on Verbal but ended up missing 8 out of 41.  For the third straight time, for Verbal, I did best on Reading Comprehension (11/13) and worst on Critical Reasoning (10/13).  Sentence Corrections section was ok, but could be better still (12/15). 

I think my performance on this test was similar to my last one (Manhattan GMAT returned a score range of 670-690).  There’s no way to determine which score is a better reflection of the actual GMAT, but I’m going to play it safe and say that it’s the lower score.  Some good news:  Whereas on the Manhattan GMAT practice CATs, I’d almost run out of time, with McGraw-Hill’s, I had a lot of time remaining for both sections.  I’m getting about 80-81% of my questions correct.  To hit 700, I’ll most likely need to score between 85-90% correct on both sections.  In other words, had I gotten 3-4 more questions correct on this practice test, I would’ve scored around 700.  

I’ve rescheduled my exam date (was supposed to be September 19th, but rescheduled it to October 10th–cost to reschedule = $50) because I realized two weeks is not enough time for me to get 700 or above.   So now I’ve got a full five weeks to prep for this while still having the option to take it one more time in November (should I need to take it again, lets’ hope not). I’m getting more serious in my studying (yesterday, I put in 8-9 hours) and am taking a systematic approach.  I’m pretty optimistic that I’ll eventually meet my goal of 700+ on the GMAT when it’s all said and done.