Crossing the GMAT hurdle!

This 2^nd entry of the Schlog reviews the period when I decided to take the GMAT and how I went about doing that.

After I had been working for about a year, I started feeling the need for an MBA. My educational background did not equip me to handle all situations I came across in my professional life. Besides helping me to handle such situations more effectively, an MBA degree would also help me gather a more holistic view of the business world rather than just rely on the snippets of information dropped by others. Also, I felt that my learning curve had stagnated and I needed to do something to nudge it northward again. I decided to take the GMAT and seriously considered higher education.

The work at our firm is project driven (understandably, being a consulting firm) and subsequently is rarely a 9 to 5 affair. Additionally since the office was quite small at that time, establishing a steady routine was exceeding difficult (it’s more difficult to escape your boss’ eye in a small office as compared to a large one). This, I felt was of utmost importance for my preparations. I decided to take time off – a month at that.

I wanted to avoid the trials and tribulations associated with living on one’s own i.e. I did not want to cook/ clean/ pay bills and wanted to avoid parties and outings. I decided to move to my parents’ in Delhi for that period.

After a bit of trouble regarding the sanctioning of my leave, I moved to Delhi in the 1^st week of November of 2006; only to lose about 3-4 days to illness. Post recovery, I started in earnest. I was pretty clueless of how to go about the whole thing – the only thing I had done till then was book my appointment for the 1^st week of December. So besides test preparation itself, I had loads to do in terms of finding/ sourcing of study material and researching of universities. And, I was to find out later that work tends to rust the grey cells.

Luckily, I happened to speak to a few people who set me in the right direction for my preparations. Also, I attended some MBA fairs which coincided with my study leave. These helped me shorten my b-school research considerably. I got hold of plenty of computer based tests which I put to good use later. I also utilized online forums and even social networking sites by interacting with other prospective test takers and even downloading free stuff off the internet.

Initially my strategy was pretty simple. I would attempt blocks of 30 questions from the Official Guides (vol. 10 & 11) in each of the sections and at the end of each block check my answers. Subsequently, I put in more time and effort at sections in which I consistently scored less. I followed this strategy till about 2 weeks from the exam by which time I was getting a little tense. I had expected my daily study times to go up from the 3-4 hours everyday to substantially longer times, but that wasn’t happening. I despaired at the thought of having taken that much trouble for the exam and eventually screwing it up.

I decided to ding the study method all together and instead made up my mind to take practice tests everyday. I did not score particularly well at these but with that change of approach, motivation (or rather, the lack of it) ceased to be a problem. I could easily write and correct a test in a day and still go on to study for some time. That was, by far the most valuable lesson I learnt from that period.

The last practice tests I took in the days preceding the exam date were the 2 tests provided in the PowerPrep package. I scored well in excess of 700 at those so I knew I would do okay at the actual test.

On the actual day of the exam, I did not prepare at all. Instead I busied myself with packing as I was leave for Bangalore immediately after the exam. I went to the exam center fairly confident despite being filled with nervous energy.

The exam itself was uneventful. I utilized the 10 minute break in between the verbal and quantitative section to unwind. I discovered that I was one of three people from my firm taking the test that day as I met a colleague of mine at the center who was due to take the test after me. My lack of AWA practice told but I was satisfied with the rest of my score. As for the school selection, I intend to apply to 3 of the 5 schools I picked at the time of the test.

As it turns out, that decision to take GMAT early was a really good decision. When other applicants are fretting over GMAT, I can spend my time researching for my application. This should enable me to come up with a better application and possibly even offset some of the weaknesses in my application.

And you @#$%^, how about some comments this time?