Disclaimer: I am still awaiting my Visa, so I really dont know how itll be until I get there. I am also not mentioning obvious stuff like ‘ GRE has a Verbal and a Quant section etc etc’. I am assuming that you have some basic idea about stuff.

The pursuit for an American Masters degree begins with GRE. Most universities have a certain GRE cut off, some consider only Quant marks as their criteria for selection, some give importance to AWA. But generally, 9 out of 10 universities dont disclose their parameters. It is my understanding that Universities have to address several issues like cultural diversity, male/female ratio and a host of other issues. There is no way they are disclosing all that.

Preparation for GRE:

Depending on your academic footing, the approach might be different.

If you were a topper all your life, went to a school where English education was serious and you loved Mathematics all through school, then you dont need coaching. (This however is somewhat risky, because when you join a coaching, you not just attend classes and read books, you live in a ‘culture’ and that does help.)

If you were an average guy and need some help/need to get in the flow, coaching is strongly recommended. On the other hand, coaching is not the answer to a good score just like going and sitting in a corner in a gym will give you six packs.

The SPOILER ALERT is that RCs in the Verbal section will trouble you a lot. Even those who think they read books, newspapers and have done hell lot of RCs in their school will find them disturbing. For GRE Verbal, all you need to do is FINISH BIG BOOK. Every coaching material, every Barrons, every Kaplan is derived from the Big Book. So if you finish Big Book, its like you have done everything. Finish it inch by inch, every word, every possible meaning, every possible approach in the RCs.

Yet another realistic but slightly pessimistic approach is that you know you are anyways going to screw up your Verbal, so why not focus seriously on Quant. Big Book Quant is not very charming. GRE Quant has improved over the years, its not as easy nowadays as it is in the big book. Revise high school fundas, solve some problems and eat well on the day of the exam, thats it.

As for AWA, start preparing about 15 days before the exam. Most of us have so much pending Verbal and Quant to read that we just forget AWA, thats also cool because a) not many universities give a damn about it and b) there isnt much you can do anyways.

Practice POWERPREP on the computer, if you are a book nerd, itll be very difficult reading stuff off a computer during the exam. The exam font can be described as ‘disturbing’ to say the least.

GRE preparations takes 4-5 months if you are an average student with average enthusiasm, 3-4 months if u are smart or have very high enthusiasm. IDEALLY you must prepare for six months. Studying for anything less than 3 months is JUST NOT RIGHT. (This is only home study I am talking about, excluding the coaching etc)

Best of luck and if you still have any more doubts contact me.

What is life ?  What brings happiness ? Whats really important ?

Ive really begun to think that Life is Living me rather than me living it. Days turn into months and months into years and nothing quite changes. We continue to live because quite frankly, there isn’t another option. They say you must follow your dreams but the truth is that Reality beats the shit out of your dreams. It disturbs me to think that what used to be important a while ago doesn’t really matter much now. We know that the world is very big and our roles are insignificant, then why can’t we stay put with it ? We know that perfection cant be achieved, then why do we run after it?

The closest we can come to satisfying ourselves is by following our hearts. Believe me, even that is not easy. For reasons totally unfathomable, the heart isn’t always the best lighthouse. The only gratification you can allow yourself after everything is messed up that you at least weren’t another cog in a machine. But if your heart does succeed, then thats another story. (this case normally happens in books and movies) If happiness is what we seek, then I am afraid even thats not worth the bargain, once again, we really don’t know what brings us happiness.

In short, we are in a deep mess and there isn’t much we can do about it. We can try, but thats it.

P.S:

On the 11th of May, 1996, Carl Sagan pointed at a certain blue dot and spoke about it.

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

/’aʊtd’eɪtɪd/

Synonyms:

adjective: out of date, obsolete, antiquated, outmoded, old fashoned, outworn, superannuated, archaic, passe

If you describe something as outdated, you mean that you think it is old-fashioned and no longer useful or relevant to modern life.

Outmoded

/’aʊtm’oʊdɪd/

Not in fashion, unfashionable

No longer usable or practical, Obsolete

________________________________________________

I was describing my blog. Not me.

I am coming back.

I was hibernating. I was trying to come up with some original fresh ideas for my blog. Bullshit. I just didnt feel like blogging. Now i feel like, i am back again. 

Of course some people did miss my blog, they even told me to start posting again. The ‘some’ counts to five as of now. 

If you hadnt noticed the change by now, let me tell it to you, I started using proper Caps. I weighed out ‘originality and something different’ against ‘popular market demand’ and the latter won. You see people like seeing proper Caps, im giving it to them. Ive learnt from life that when people want something and you can give it to them for free, you really should. 

I am not getting any proper ideas for this post. I lost the touch, itll take some time to get back. I dont want to corrupt my blog. Besides, I am too sleepy.

1. Mark Cuban, blogmaverick.com 

These investors, including myself, know what you don’t, and they are not telling you. The minute you ask for money, you are playing in their game, they aren’t playing in yours. You are at a huge disadvantage, and it’s only going to get worse if you take their money. The minute you take money, the leverage completely flips to the investor. They control the destiny of your dreams, not you.

Investors don’t care about your dreams and goals. They love that you have them. They love that they motivate you. Investors care about how they are going to get their money back and then some. Family cares about your dreams. Investors care about money. There is a reason why venture capitalists are often referred to as Vulture Capitalists. The minute you slide off course from the promises you made to get the money, your dreams fall in jeopardy. You will find yourself making promises to keep investors at bay. You will find yourself avoiding your investors. Then you will find yourself on the outside looking in. The reality of taking money from non family members is that they are doing it for only one reason, to make more money. If you can’t deliver on that promise, you are out. You will be removed from the company you started. You will find someone else running your dream company. If this sounds like a scene out of the Sopranos or an episode you would watch on TV about a loan shark, you are right. The only difference is that it’s all legal.

There are only two reasonable sources of capital for startup entrepreneurs, your own pocket and your customers pockets. I personally would never even take money from a family member. Could you imagine the eternal grief and guilt from your mom, dad, uncle or aunt because you blew your nephews college money or the money for grandmas last vacation… I cant.

You shouldn’t have to take money from anyone. Businesses don’t have to start big. The best ones start small enough to suit the circumstances of their founders. I started MicroSolutions by getting an advance from my first customer of $500. The business didn’t grow quickly in the first couple years. We didn’t grow past 4 people in the first couple years, and we all worked dirt cheap.

So what’s wrong with that? It’s OK to start slow. It’s ok to grow slow. As much as you want to think that all things would change if you only had more cash available, they probably won’t.

The reality is that for most businesses, they don’t need more cash, they need more brains.

2. Also from blogmaverick.com 

At no other time have their been 3 financial news networks and thousands of websites providing so much financial information and opinion. The sum of which  has definitely lead us into a situation of  “Paralysis by Bullshitalysis”.  Everyone is afraid to buy. Everyone is afraid to sell or short.  Sales forced by de-leveraging is the catalyst for the market.  However, there are so few buyers, the de-leveraging sales are taking forever.

Who knows what the new normal is. No one has any idea what is going to happen in this market. NO ONE.  Personally, I am completely hedged. I bought puts, sold them. Sold Puts, bought them back, then decided to hedge every long dollar and then some with big puts on the market. This allowed me to be protected on the down side, and tip toe on the long side. As stocks go down, my hedge allows me to buy more of the stocks I like. If the market takes off on the up side, hopefully my longs will more than cover the cost of my puts. If the market does nothing. I’m stuck right where I am, with my puts losing time value every day.

Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t.  What I do know is this, everyone is a genius in a bullmarket. The last 5 years, that wasn’t a stock market. THIS is a stockmarket. This time it is different. This may just be the new normal.

The impact of tax rates on productivity and development is something economists masterbate about,  enterpreneurs don’t waste their time thinking about it. We have business to do. 

3. Paul Graham, paulgraham.com 

For example, initially I thought maybe this principle only applied to Internet startups. Obviously it worked for Google, but what about Microsoft? Surely Microsoft isn’t benevolent? But when I think back to the beginning, they were. Compared to IBM they were like Robin Hood. When IBM introduced the PC, they thought they were going to make money selling hardware at high prices. But by gaining control of the PC standard, Microsoft opened up the market to any manufacturer. Hardware prices plummeted, and lots of people got to have computers who couldn’t otherwise have afforded them. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect Google to do.

Microsoft isn’t so benevolent now. Now when one thinks of what Microsoft does to users, all the verbs that come to mind begin with F. [3] And yet it doesn’t seem to pay. Their stock price has been flat for years. Back when they were Robin Hood, their stock price rose like Google’s. Could there be a connection?

You can see how there would be. When you’re small, you can’t bully customers, so you have to charm them. Whereas when you’re big you can maltreat them at will, and you tend to, because it’s easier than satisfying them. You grow big by being nice, but you can stay big by being mean.

You get away with it till the underlying conditions change, and then all your victims escape. So “Don’t be evil” may be the most valuable thing Paul Buchheit made for Google, because it may turn out to be an elixir of corporate youth. I’m sure they find it constraining, but think how valuable it will be if it saves them from lapsing into the fatal laziness that afflicted Microsoft and IBM.

The curious thing is, this elixir is freely available to any other company. Anyone can adopt “Don’t be evil.” The catch is that people will hold you to it. So I don’t think you’re going to see record labels or tobacco companies using this discovery.

4. Steve Jobs, stanford.edu

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

…..

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

…..

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

i thought this was a moment of reflection, atleast a statistical moment ! 

thankyou very much for reading my blog, for appreciating, arguing, commenting, criticizing,  discussing it. (i wanted the ings to be in alphabetical order.) 

keep coming back. 

warm regards.

i wanted to put things in order, why ? i think, and then, i think again. 

order is a creation of the mind. the obsession with order is hardwired into our psyche. we like arranging things, giving ranks to people, arranged books, neat ipods, decent hair, perfect clothes. 

and then, i remember robert frost ! 

i have two roads, 

1. fight the system, struggle hard and change things. try to bring ‘order’ in the nature around you. 

2. accpet stuff the way it is, see ‘order’ in nature around you.  

you have been reading philosphical, unrealistic stuff all your life, so you’ll probably expect that the first option will be chosen. wrong. lets be real, life is too precious to be spent for things like these.  

instead of trying to arrange things in the way you see fit and bringing about some order and sequence and saying ‘wow’ , now this feels good ! 

why cant u simply change your ‘ordering’ and ‘sequencing’ in your head and then say ‘wow’, now this feels good ! 

instead of changing the world, change your mind, its lot more simpler, lot more effective. also, the mind is much closer to you than your hands.  

talking about the mind; well,you see understanding the mind is something science has been struggling for quite sometime now. to me it appears weird. a mind trying to understand another.

reminds me of m.c. escher.

have a look !

• character building is important. 
• money is not everything, but it is a very big thing. 
• character, culture, ethics and values are important, but if you expect people to love you, like you, respect you for these, then its lame. 
• credentials carry more weightage than the ‘person’. 
• every secret keeper has a secret keeper. 
• when you feel like shouting, you must. 
• constipation is bad. 
• moderate continuous efforts generate better results than a one time fiesta. 
• the more you work harder, the luckier you get; not necessarily. 
• you are in full control of your life- untrue, true only when taken in an empirical sense. 
• philosohphy and psychology are modern man’s voodoo. 
• you cant always be positive, sometimes be real, run !
• theory very rarely is same as practice; not rarely- never. 
• people stink, dont poke your nose everywhere and dont be disappointed.
• everyone thinks everyone else is a fool. 
• in his mind, he is never wrong.
• the road to everyones good books often leads to the making of a loser. 
• personality is a direct function of confidence is a direct function of knowledge.
• if everything is good about somebody, he is faking it. 
• know your flaws, dont accept them, never. 
• people love being miserable, there is nothing you can do about it. 
• when advised, follow. 
• you are too insignificant to claim honour, dignity and self respect, let go off it. 
• very soon you’ll die and your friends will forget you before they get their next toothbrush, stop gving a damn about self respect, ego and your fashion statement. 
• be selfish, stay that way, smile at others. 
• save the environment, not the cheerleaders. 

the thing has been switched on, were all safe, we were not gulped by the black hole. As a matter of fact even if we were gulped and have become antimatter and emerged in a parallel universe through a white hole, would we be able to know? 

FYI, the real experiment is in october, the thing just got switched on. 

heres something interesting, 

a CERN spokesman said: “It will not be producing anything that does not already happen routinely in nature.”

So, these dudes spent billions to do something that happens routinely in nature. i thought this was a moment to ponder about.

here we go, i wanted to define ‘love’. 

‘a meaningless gush of emotional adrenaline which the subject induces in himself/herself over another person, thing, place or idea which often results in the loss of logical, mental and resoning faculties of the said subject.’ 

we have been born and brought up in a culture which escalates love as something great, we are told to look for ‘the one’. this is a crooked ideology and does more harm than good. it should be banned. now. 

love as such has a great destroying capacity. it is a weapon of mass destruction which the victim somehow likes. it is not even like a drug, in the case of drugs, atleast you realize later on that you were a fool once. here you dont. 

if you’ve been thinking about all what you read above in the context of another person, then you are probably in your teens or mentally that much. 

we’ve all known people who did a lot of weird things for the sake of love, it turns the smartest of men into morons, remember the iloveyou virus. remember that neighbour of yours who used to clean his rotten worthless car every sunday and never use it. i always think such people could’ve spent threir times a bit more constructively, or atleast with their families. remember that model who loved her body so much, she starved it to death. 

on the contrary, love as such is not such a bad thing after all. it’s no crime to block yourself of all sanity and enjoy it. its a good thing if you indulge in it once in a while, not always.

had it not been for the love of recognition, money, power, country, group or even an idea, there would have been no civilization. thats something which separates us from animals. love as such is great if the lover has a control over himself, but the problem is we dont, most of us cant. 

i claim no immunity from the above discussion, as i write this i totally agree that i love money and power(ive not known anyone who love money and power more than me, yes you can call me characterless), i continue to love girls with fat arms, and if ‘fat’ is uncultured, then yes ‘hillaryduffarms’.

i conclude with an assertion that love is more of a curse than a boon and that tomorrow is not going to be the doomsday, hopefully. 

PS: to those who ask why i dont use capital letters, i think its an unnecessary complication.

to those who feel that i write nonsense but still love my blog, i love you too.

to those who feel my blog sucks, you have no idea about what sucks and what doesnt. the doctors are open 24 hrs. 

PS2: i strongly suggest you to click on ‘doomsday’ and read it, its hillarious, and yes: this is not a Sarah Palin post.