Hi, if I'm not mistaken this is my first post in the forum. I've taken out so much and given back so little but I hope to correct the situation little by little.
I'm 27. I'm a computer science engineer and since I graduated from college (When I was 21) I hadn't touch maths or science in general since I became an Internet entrepreneur and as rewarding as the experience was, financially and spiritually, it didn't give me much in the intellectual department. Anyway, in January of this year I sold my business and joined Google on the business development side of the... business, and I decided to get into Stanford, or Haas, or UCLA. So I started researching and first things first I started preparing for TOEFL in January 15, did My test on February 11 and scored 112, on the lowish side but enough, I think.
Anyway... I was confident and booked my GMAT for April 1 and took the rest of february to rest... then on March 1 I did the first CAT from mba dot com and scored 520! Damn, I panicked and then I tried to reschedule my test and realize that the test was changing on June and then I panicked even more, and then I realized that the only available date in my city was on April 11 and I panicked even more.... without many options I change the date to April 11 and started studying.
My routine from monday to friday:
- I woke up at 4:00 am every day and studied until 6:30 am. Then I took a shower and head to the office.
- I worked from 7:30 am to 6:30 pm at the office.
- I took a conference room at 6:30 pm and continued studying until 10:00 pm.
- I went home to my wife and slept at 12:00 am (Yes, I', still married).
My routine on Saturday:
- I studied from 8 am to 10 pm
My routine on Sunday:
- All day for Wife!
I did that for 35 days straight, after GMAT I'm not willing to do the Math but is obvious that I put more than 100 hours on the endeavor.
The sunday before my test I did the other CAT from mba dot com and got 740. My test was this wednesday so I took Monday and Tuesday to do nothing at all but sleeping and eating, I didn't even go to the office.
On test day I went to the center with my wife and since she drove I just had one ID (voting ID) that was not accepted at the test center so we had to go back to our house to get my ID (I arrived very early to the test cite, the traffic on my city is unpredictable). I arrived again, but now 10 minutes before the test, I put my butt on the seat and started doing the thing, AWA was OK, in Math I panicked because the last question was so basic that I though I had F... Up. Verbal was a piece of cake. I didn't take any of the breaks. At the end I was sure that I was doomed in Math and was reconsidering applying to the MBA since that hell of a month was not an experience that I wanted to repeat. Final Score: 740.
So, what's the moral of the story: set your own path and use everyones story as inspiration but not as a recipe. Before doing the test I read all this wacky stories and tips of how to study and what to read and what not, I started feeling frustrated of reading stories of people with months of study and perfect practice tests and then busting the real thing. I read about the importance of sleep, etc.
I don't know if 740 is really high but I can tell you that I'm not a genius nor particularly bright, I think I'm smart for business but I'm in owe of some of my friends from college that really do science. I usually get less sleep than average (6 hours) but I had never slept so little and work so hard, I was forced by the situation and everything went well.
Study Material:
- 8 Manhattan
- Manhattan Flashcards
- 2 practice CAT from mba dot com
- The "hardest section" of the
gmatclub tests (by the way, in most of them I got more than half of the problems wrong but helped a lot with speed) and gmatclub math book.
I hope to contribute more to this forum in the future and to be as lucky to get into Stanford as I was with the GMAT.
close
12 Apr 2012, 16:43
