Graduate Management Admission Test!

Well, before I actually start blogging about my MBA experiences, I thought of writing about my journey which ended up with me doing at MBA!!!!

I am listing a few of them here ( so that anyone planning for an MBA in US would get the Big Picture)

1. GMAT -> Registered on 17th December 2008, for an Exam on March 9th 2009 9:00 AM. But I was unfortunate, since that was the time when many from my project in MindTree Took leave and I was loaded with work . Close to 4 Hours of travelling, 9 Hours in Office and a sleep of 8 hours meant I don't have time for preparing. I was adamant not to go for any coaching classes as well. Mean while, since MBA needs a lot of essays during the admission process; I started with that and had set a deadline of 15th January 2009 , though writing essays was time consuming and exhaustive, it made me realize and analyze my need to do an MBA. A zillion thanks to Ambika ( colleague at Mindtree) and Srini ( a friend & a teacher at Mindtree) who reviewed my essays and made sure it sounded as good as my intentions of doing an MBA :-D. But by the time I was done with my essays it was 20th January 2010. I needed to make up for the lost time, when I had no time ;-). I used to carry the humongous GMAT books along with me and used to solve the problems when I was in bus travelling, in the office when I had put the code for a build and even during weekends when I used to travel to meet my friends.

On Feburary 9th 2009 3:00 PM, I just logged into my GMAT profile just to check if all things were fine ( I am usually careful about planning things in advance) and guess what!!!!!!!! my GMAT exam was on that day. Yes!!! while selecting the date in the calendar, I guess I didn't navigate to the March month. There were multiple thoughts flowing in my mind:

1. What if I don't get a date to write the exam again?

2. And the cost of the exam was 80% of the Salary each month !!!

3. And I have not even prepared enough to write the exam on that day!!!!

This was when Ambika and a couple of my team mates helped me, and I was able to re-schedule my exam for 6th March 2009 after 1 week of following up with the GMAT guys. Though I was satisfied with my preparation ( I am a person who would not study if I don't feel like and be happy with what I get from it) I made a huge mistake. I never practised sitting for 3-4 hours at a stretch and take the Mock Exams. This costed me 60 points less in GMAT, I had targetted for a 700, but got a 640. Nevertheless, I was happy with my performance and knew I would not take up the exam again just to perk my scores. Did not make any sense to me!!! That's the end of story with the GMAT ( minus the minuscule details)