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GMAT: two weeks, and your time starts... NOW
Top business schools and MBA programs, while vocally marketing their differences, are united by a defining factor with very few exceptions, the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT). This is a pre-requisite for 99% of MBA programs. While you can get your transcripts and applications together relatively quickly, the GMAT is a totally different challenge; candidates are recommended to get their thinking caps on and start practising the GMAT as early as possible because two weeks, as mature student Adam Davies discovered, makes the MBA application challenge even tougher.
So I am off to London Business School in August. It wasn’t the easiest of choices - I was also offered places at Oxford University and Henley Management College. Plus the decision was made harder by the fact that, unlike for Oxford and Henley, I didn’t apply for the MBA at London Business School, but rather their Sloan Fellowship program, a kind of MBA for old guys (or, as they put it, ‘senior managers’) like me. I am 38 years old, and an ex-film lawyer.
At an early stage, Cambridge (Judge Business School) was the clear front-runner. The rankings couldn’t say anything bad about the place, and it was only an hour away from where I live. Their open day had been great, and they didn’t even charge a fee to apply. So I shot off a rushed application form in time for their next approaching application deadline, and quickly turned my attention to the dreaded GMAT. Continuing the school selection process would now have to wait a couple of weeks. I needed to send a GMAT score in to the Cambridge admissions team. And I had two weeks to do it!
Suddenly the reality of what I was doing hit home. I had to study. I hadn’t revised for a proper exam in over 15 years. I didn’t even know what GMAT really entailed, assuming it was some kind of glorified IQ test. But as I had to get a result within two weeks, I figured if I was capable of learning enough at speed to get a sensible score on the GMAT, then that might be a good signal as to whether or not the MBA thing was a good idea in the first place. That said, I wouldn’t recommend anyone to try to do GMAT in two weeks. It was pretty insane.
First, I booked in for a test online and ordered the official GMAT study books from the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC). I had read that Kaplan and Princeton (amongst others) also do some great study aids. As I could only afford one additional set, I plumped for the Kaplan book and CD. By the time the books arrived, I had only eight days left before the Cambridge deadline in which to prepare. I cleared out my entire diary (except for football matches) from morning to night, and submerged myself in re-learning things they had half-taught me more than 20 years ago.
The explanations in both the GMAC and Kaplan books were pretty useful at refreshing the concepts I’d last seen during high-school maths and English classes. The mock tests in the GMAC book were brilliant and invaluable, as real GMAT examiners had written them, and they explained the answers very well. I did test after test after test, in as close to exam conditions as possible; I even turned off my mobile phone. Where Kaplan came into its own was its CD. Although the questions were sometimes a bit off the mark, the CD was computer adaptive - it knew whether to give a harder or easier question based on whether I’d got the previous one right or wrong. It forced me to answer on a computer instead of my notepad, and - most importantly - the tests were timed, so they allowed me to get used to that kind of pressure. I even read a bunch of essay questions in the books, made bullet-point notes, and typed out a few full-length essays that no one will ever see.
