Looking back at the GMAT One Year After Getting Into Business School

I was just reading a article about the GMAT and Business School...

I distinctly remember someone at one of the information sessions I went to for my school asking how the program viewed the GMAT. The person leading the talk (her name was Sunny) had a response I didn't expect. What I did expect was for her to say that the test was somewhat important, but things like GPA and work experience were much more important, or that the GMAT isn't that great pf indicator of how well you will do in business school. However, what she actually said is that there is a very high correlation between an individual's GMAT score and their academic success in Business School. She went even further to say that it was the number one criteria out of nine used for admittance.

So, after one year, what do I think of all that? I think its mostly right, but probably deserves a few corrections. First of all, yes if you do well on the GMAT you probably think the right way to solve the types of problems thrown at you in B-School, but it by no means indicates that it will be easy. Second, academic success does not equal actual success in an MBA program. Cliche as it is, it is all about making the right connections and networking not only within the program, but with the community at large. Last, I know several people who had very mediocre GMAT scores that got into my school. However, they are all people that had strengths in other parts of their applications and they are some of the smartest people I've met in the program.

Is the GMAT score everything? Absolutely not, but it is important and it can make your admissions experience a whole lot better when you know you've got a 700+ GMAT score on your application. So, if your interested in Business at a graduate level... study up. Most of getting a good GMAT score is just plain practice. The Official Guide is a great place to start. Once you get it, do lots and lots of practice questions. You will thank yourself when you walk out of the test center with 20 minutes to spare and a shiny piece of paper with a big number on it.

Then, you can go back to being a human being again :)

Business School Lessons Part II: Oilily, & the 5-Hour JC Penny Coupon

…So the result of months of discounts led to what I experienced at a European store called Oilily in early December. Those of you that are familiar with the store know that it is an uber-high end store of the $100 T-shirt variety.
Here’s how it went…

I walked in the store and was greeted by a sales girl who instructed me to draw from a hat. When I asked why, she said that I was “drawing my discount”. I reached in and pulled out a small piece of paper with “40%” written on it. She grabbed it out of my hand and said, “Oh, you can do better than that”. I reached in again and found a 55% paper. She seemed satisfied by this. The deal they had running was that anything not already on sale would be discounted by the amount you drew. So, my discount was a minimum of 55%. The thing was that most of the store was 60% to 70% anyway.

This was shocking! Demand had dropped off so much in this mall and particularly for this specific retailer that they were liquidating there merchandise at a two-thirds discount. Amazing! Business School showed me supply and demand in depth, but that day Oilily cemented it in my mind.

A few weeks after my Business School lesson from Oilily, I took my $500 flight home (strange how airlines don’t seem to be adjusting to the recession- and they have been going bankrupt lately… hmmmm.) I spent a week with my family and then headed to Macy’s.
I pulled up to the mall at around lunchtime and stumbled in to a mad house of people. It seemed the store was having a one-day sale. On top of the one-day sale, there had been a coupon mailed out for an additional 20% off of the first $50 purchased in the store before 1PM. Here again, Business School taught me a concept, but JC Penny’s brought it home…

Price Discrimination.

JCP was so desperate to capture more sales that they catered to a group of people they normally wouldn’t sell to… the people who clip coupons and are willing to wake up in the morning the day after Christmas for a deal. And it worked. At least they sold lots of stuff – I do question how much money they were making on the items they sold to the people with absolutely no opportunity cost of time. I guess we’ll fins out next quarter.

Between Christmas in October, Oilily, and JC Penny, this has been a retail season to remember. It certainly rooted many of the lessons I learned in Business School into my head anyway. I hope for your sake and for mine that I stop learning lessons from the real world soon.

Getting into Business School - GMAT Test Taking Strategy

The GMAT is required by most Business Schools. I have outlined below the method that I used to study for the exam. I scored a 650 and 720 (95th percentile) on my first and second sittings respectively. The below process can be very effective if you are a self motivated individual, but it is by no means perfect. If you decide to follow any of my advice and run in to issues, feel free to contact me by e-mail or by commenting…

*It is important to know the score you need to be competitive at your choice Business School before you begin preparation*

1. Start out with a computer practice-test to see where you stand.

2. Practice all quantitative and verbal sections of the exam using the questions in the official guide starting with the easy ones(the questions range in difficulty as they go – question 1 is the easiest). Do every tenth question or so. When they become difficult, start doing clusters of questions (every 3rd or 4th question) at that level until you begin to get them correct. Then resume practicing every tenth question until you start missing again and repeat as before. Do this until you proficient to about the last 20 questions in each section.

*It is important to leave several open questions as you go so that you can do some capstone testing on fresh questions at each level of difficulty at the end of your initial preparation.

3. Once you have some reps on each section and you are getting most of them right, do several mini tests. A mini test should consist of 3 to 5 questions of varying difficulty from each section. It is important to do easy, mid-range, and hard questions during these mini tests because this is what the actual test will do. I found myself sometimes over-thinking the easy and mid-range questions until I had enough practice to recognize the approximate difficulty of the question right away.

4. Once you are getting most of the questions in your mini-tests correct on a consistent basis, take the second computer practice-test. If you are scoring where you want to, go ahead and make your exam appt. and keep mini-testing yourself until the day of the exam. If not, focus in on the areas that are lacking with some more reps. Maybe 10 or 20 questions from the sections you are struggling in. Try and pick questions that are similar to the ones you missed. Once you feel comfortable go ahead and do some more mini tests. This is the hardest part of the prep. I actually did 50 or 60 data sufficiency questions in a row at this stage as I was severely handicapped in this area at first.

5. If you feel comfortable you have two options at this point. The first is to schedule and take the exam. The second is to re-take the first computer practice-test. It should show you very different questions than you saw your first time through since your aptitude will be dramatically increased by this point. If you score in your target range go ahead and schedule the exam and do mini-tests every day to keep your mind sharp. If not, get some more reps and take the computer practice-test 2 again.

This 5 step process is not only cheap, but it is a very effective way to prepare for the GMAT.

If you find yourself at a serious sticking point the best solution may be to search craigslist and find a private individual who has experience taking the test who can help you decipher the questions that are giving you trouble- but stick to the official guide. Some of the other test prep books will help you marginally, but they don’t mimic the style of the test. Again, understanding the way the questions are worded and the style the problems are in will be the hardest part of the exam.

If all of the above doesn’t work for you, then you may want to seek alternative preparation techniques including classes and other resources, but these five steps will be a productive foundation even for those individuals who need more.

Getting into Business School - The Big Hairy GMAT

The first step towards the illusive MBA is the GMAT (Graduate Management Aptitude Test). There are a lot of myths out there about this test and some unwarranted fears as a result. Also, as with any standardized test, there are several companies ready to help you “crack” the exam for a few thousand bucks. I hope to demystify what is a mostly straightforward exam process and give some insight from my own experience over the next few posts.

So lets start with basic information about the GMAT:

-The test has three sections: Essay (Analytical Writing Assessment), Quantitative, and Verbal

-The AWA portion requires two types of essays: analysis of an issue & analysis of an argument

-Quantitative has two subsections: Data Sufficiency and Problem Solving

-Verbal has three subsections: Critical Reasoning, Sentence Correction, and Reading Comprehension

- Scores are based on an 800-point scale (530 is the median score). The scores are always multiples of 10 (630, 640, 650, etc.).

- There are an 37 questions in the quantitative section and 41 in the verbal

- It is a Computer Adaptive Test

My Experience

I began to study for the GMAT in early January of this year (2008) and took the test in March and again in April. My preparation included a math refresher and some self-directed test prep. My first score was a 650 and my second was a 720. My percentiles for the higher score were 81 and 95 in Quantitative and Verbal respectively – Overall percentile was 95. To give you an idea of where this score measures up consider that the median GMAT score of the current Harvard Business School class is a 710. I am not telling you this to brag, but so you know that what I am sharing with you is battle tested.

I will have some more posts soon about GMAT myths, interpreting scores, test taking strategy, what the actual test day is like, and more.

Stay tuned.