Five times.....yes.....five times......I took the GMAT five times for admission to business school. Was there something wrong with me? For a while, I thought there was but now that I look back....Absolutely not.
Standardized exams are just one of those things that I've always had to work hard at to score decently. I should have taken a hint when I scored about average on the SATs in high school.
My mind just works in mysterious ways and I'm sure that if the GMAT tested for emotionally charged responses, I'd score very well.
Regardless, scoring high on the GMAT is definitely possible when you put in the effort to think like a standardized test taker. This involves various pieces of knowledge, logic, systematic thinking, and a lot of practice.
So...how does one get there?
For me, it was a long road. 2 years to be exact. But it was worth it.
For starters, according to the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), better known as the guys who make the GMAT exam, about 10% of GMAT retakers obtain a significant gain of 100 points or more.
That 10% takes a lot of hard work but with the right attitude, you can accomplish anything!
Tags: gmat tutoring, GMAT prep, GMAT Blog
If you haven't read GMAT Combinatorics 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2, you should do that before you read any further. Even if you're familiar with some of the material, you may not be familiar with my approach. Though the subtitle of this posts suggests that I'm going to discuss permutations and combinations, I'm never going to formally define either one - that's right no formulas. Just careful application of the fundamental counting principle with a couple of modifications.
Tags: Probability, Quant, GMAT Blog, Combination, Combinatorics, Permutation
1. Suppose you perform the following experiment - You flip a coin 5 times and record the results. How many different outcomes are there? (A result being a 5-character long string of H's and T's, such as HHTHT)
Tags: GMAT, GMAT Blog, Combinatoircs, Solved Problems
This post will give you some GMAT practice problems related to the post GMAT Combinatorics 1.0: Introduction. These will not be GMAT type problems as MyGuru takes a bottom-up approach to test prep. We want out students to learn the fundamentals first. At a later point we'll focus on useful tricks and traps to avoid in the problems solving and data sufficiency format.
1. Suppose you perform the following experiment - You flip a coin 5 times and record the results. How many different outcomes are there?
Tags: GMAT, GMAT Blog, Combinatorics
This is an introductory post on combinatorics - the art of counting. Combinatorics is one of the most difficult parts of the GMAT because it is not part of the standard American high school curriculum. With many other troubling types of problems, such as rate questions, fraction / decimal / percent problems, etc., a bit of review and a lot of practice will do the trick, but, in general, to get a handle on combinatorics problems students have to learn something new.
Tags: Probability, GMAT, GMAT Blog, Combinatorics
Applying to business schools is a daunting exercise. For many of you, this may be the first time you come in contact with extreme competition. By the time you are contemplating business school, you will have already been successful in your career – graduated from high school with stellar grades, landed in a top-tier undergrad program, and got the highest paying jobs out of college! However, in most cases, you were the big fish in a small pond compared to what you are going to encounter while applying and studying in business school (think Lake Michigan vs. Pacific Ocean). Many of you will experience failure for the first time as in not getting into your top choice school - in no way this is a reflection of your capabilities, but is purely a numbers game – the total openings in all elite schools combined is miniscule compared to the number of applicants!
This is the first in a series of articles where we will de-mystify the entire application process and share with you the tools that will enable you to succeed. The same tools will help you succeed during business school and also your career!
First, let’s distill what we mean by the APPLICATION PROCESS. Is’nt it just taking the GMAT, filling out a few forms, writing a few essays and voila!... you get admitted to Harvard? You could not be more wrong!!
It all starts with understanding what you want to do in your career, what critical skills gap that you currently have, which school will help you bridge that gap, and how do you successfully get into that school. While most of us (including yours truly) focus on how to successfully get into a school, we do not pay enough attention to the other aspects which strangely enough is the “magic” that helps you land in the right school.
So, in other words, the APPLICATION PROCESS broadly has the following steps:
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Introspection and truthful self-assessment
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Identify your “personal narrative”
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Identifying and selecting the school(s)
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Preparing the application package (GMAT, essays, etc.)
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Finalizing the school to attend (for all the lucky ones who will have multiple admissions)
In a perfect world, going through the above steps will help you get into a right school. But, we need to be pragmatic and smart about b-schools. After all, we do not have all the time in the world and need to move on with life. We will be sharing with you here on how to achieve your goals without compromising on the integrity of the above approachWith regards to planning and timing, you will need to start approximately 2 years in advance to the start of the school term. i.e., if you need to start your MBA in August 2014, you should begin your self assessment and school selection (steps a & b) by mid 2012! You will be taking the GMAT in early 2013 and begin preparing the application packages to submit by late 2013. It is a long drawn out process!!
In future posts, we will dive into each of the five steps discussed above.
To listen to MyGuru's podcasts on the MBA school admissions process, visit MyGuru's Podbean Podcast site on the MBA School admissions process.
Good luck!
Tags: GMAT Blog, MBA Admissions
