My GMAT Experience

I personally felt that the most stressful part of my MBA application last year was the GMAT... only because I gave myself 1 month to familiarise with the format and study the key concepts of the test. Now, before I share my GMAT prep experience, it might be worth mentioning why I only had 1 month to prepare...

I've been looking for the right time to pursue my MBA education ever since I joined the workforce, way back in 2008 but I never really started any research on the whole admission process until about a year ago and the only admission process that I bothered to check was HBS'. Basically, I just know that I need to fill in an online application form, sit for GMAT, write essays to recap my achievements and why I want to study MBA at a particular school.

Last year, without going into too much details, was not a good year for me. I was part of a product development team (engineering team lead) who managed to deliver stretched results but was sideline during the annual appraisal cycle because my new line manager "didn't know me well enough" to vouch for my contributions to the project (he came to the project AFTER we completed and passed all of our internal review for funding). Well, things like this happen every day in the business world, but to me, it was really the kick that I needed to start considering MBA seriously.

That happened way back in October, so at the end of the month, I decided to submit my application to HBS for 2012 intake.... and yea, I know... I was way unprepared!

From my readings, applying in R3 is not advisable, and you might as well apply in R1 for the following application season. By end of October, R1 deadline had already passed, so I was hard-pressed to submit my application in R2, and the last date of GMAT offered by the only test centre in Kuala Lumpur was in the middle of December, before the Christmas holiday rush and the next available appointment was in March, after the Chinese New Year holidays (!)... hence why I only had 1 month to prepare for my GMAT!!!

Cue drama...

But if it wasn't for the extremely strecthed and ambitious timing that I set for myself, I don't think I'd have the discipline to actually study GMAT in a structured way. From the moment I booked my session, I diligently spent 3-4 hours after offfice hours to revise for GMAT. In a month, I clocked a total of 130 hours of revision time, so that averaged at 4 hour 20 mins -ish a day (I read somewhere that said the top scorers put at least 100 hours into revision).

OK, here's the obligatory disclaimer - putting more than 100 hours into your GMAT study doesn't automatically guarantee great score (and on that subject, what is a great score?). I think, I was being extremely paranoid about my own Quant performance that I spent more hours than necessary into revising the Quant portion of the test, whereas I only spent half a day going through sample AWA anwers and I scored 6.0...

The point I'm trying to make is, before you start any study plan, know your weaknesses... I was a trained engineer and my ego let me think that I don't really need high Verbal score and low Quant score on the other hand would really hurt my reputation... clearly I was misinformed...

If you're aiming for a high overall score, pay more attention to your Verbal skills. Apparently, people who scored 99% in Verbal and only in the low 70ish% in Quant have overall score of 730++... whereas those who scored close to 90% in Quant and 80ish% in Verbal can hardly break 700...

OK so back to my experience, I went to the test centre on the fated day, feeling completely horrified after doing a last online test and received a 640 score from the official GMAC tool... to make matter worse, I had to guess last 3 questions in the Quant section and my paranoia-o-meter just shot up the sky... I was completely sure that I just messed up my 1st attempt at GMAT...

So during the break, I had to recollect my thoughts and had to pull every shred of motivation that I could muster to focus on the Verbal section. Ironically, I became calmer and managed to finish the Verbal section well on time. Now come the dreaded decision time - should I cancel my report or press the submit button?

I thought to myself - what the heck?!! I spent countless hours worrying about this and I was not about to chicken out at the last minute, so I chose to submit my result... and....

Imagine my relief when I broke the 700 barrier!

I think my GMAT test day was one of the most intense days of my last 3 years... it almost gave me a heart-attack!

In the next post, I'll share my revision plan and the resources that I used to help me break into the 700 club... I seriously need to give a lot of people credit for my GMAT accomplishment!