Hello world!

Yes, hello and welcome. In this blog, I'm planning to write about my efforts to be admitted to a top MBA program. I hope this blog will be a good milestone for my business education adventure.

In my first post, I want to give an introduction about myself. As it can be understood from my blog's title, I'm a Turk living in Russia. To be more precise, a Turkish guy living in Russia for the last 22 months. I am currently working as a project manager for a mid-size construction project.

As for my background, I previously worked abroad in two other countries (Actually, except my internships I never worked in my home country). I graduated from university as a civil engineer with a formidable - read 2,20- GPA. I may get in to the details of the several reasons of this rock-bottom GPA later.

I'm planning to pursue an MBA for thousands of valid reasons. Although I'll pass this subject because it would be a shame to spoil it all for the adcoms by writing them all here.

For the time being, I can tell that I started my GMAT preparation almost one month ago. The first 15 days of the preparation lacked serious concentration but then I got myself together and managed to study everyday at least for half an hour. My study method is rather contemporary than conventional. One day I solve 15 questions, the other day I read a random article online and write down the words that I don't know, the other day I repeat my vocabulary list and so on... My math is quite strong, so I don't spend much time on it. I can even say that my quantitative practices are limited with the quant sections of the practice tests actually.

I actually took the GMAT almost 5 years ago, just after my graduation and got 680. One month ago, to mark my GMAT preparation start-point, I did a CAT and again got 680(It seems like not much changed last 5 years). My current aim is to try solving one practice test per week. I want/need it in order to improve my meager concentration and to monitor my improvement. My test scores till date are as follows:

- 15.08.11 GMAT Prep2           Overall: 710 Quant: 50 Verbal: 36

- 21.08.11 GMAT Prep1           Overall: 710 Quant: 49 Verbal: 36

- 30.08.11 Manhattan GMAT    Overall: 730 Quant: 50 Verbal: 40

It seems like the preparation starts to pay off. My aim is 770 by the way. It is a stellar score and I feel like it can minimize the current disrepute that I have because of my lovely GPA.

Well, that's all for the first post. I guess I already wrote more than I should for the introduction. In the following posts I want to give more detail about my MBA targets, to talk about the challenges I experience through my studies and to compare the GMATPrep and MGMAT.

Bye for now!