don't underestimate the time it takes to do the applications. Like rhyme said, while the time it takes varies between people for the GMAT and apps, you'll need AT LEAST one good month of studying every night and weekend to get a good GMAT score (unless you're one of those awesome people
). As for apps, you want AT LEAST 1.5 months to get all the recommenders ready, school research, resumes, work history, EC history, fill out applications, and of course, the essays.
Here's a timeline for me last year:
GMAT: Started studying early July, took test early August. It depends on your diagnostic test and your first GMATPrep test. I guess I was lucky that math is not hard for me (engineer trained) and RC/CR came simple to me. Most of the studying was in Sentence Correction (isn't it obvious in my posts?
). If you need to study for more than one section, then add 2-4 more weeks to the prep time.
Applications:Resumes, Work History, EC history - 1 week (using work hours, night hours, and weekends - thank goodness work wasn't too busy)
Recommender Guide - 1 week
First set of essays outlines - 1 week
First set of essays drafts - 1 week
Final "cleanup" and editing - 1-2 weeks
School Research, Applications, Class Visits, Informational Interviews - Roughly 1-2 weeks total time
So that's about 1.5 months for your first school. And remember, your first set probably won't be that great (I did Berkeley first, and then looked back at it after I submitted Stanford and UCLA, to realize how crappy those essays were. And I thought I was done too!
)
After that your 2nd set will be MUCH easier.
2nd Set Essay Outlines - 0.5 week
2nd Set Essay Drafts - 1 week
2nd Set Essay Edits and Polish - 1-2 weeks
and so forth.
Remember, you need to give your editor/readers time to comment and critique, which often takes 1-2 weeks. Granted, you can do other things during that time, but keep that in mind.
Also, Recommenders NEED to get the recommendation packets AT LEAST 1 month in advance. Even then, they will procrastinate and probably won't write it until the weekend before it's due. You'll have to manage your recommenders intelligently, which will take up some of your time.
So what am I trying to say with all that? If you start studying now, and you're one of those very smart ones, then you'll take the GMAT in early September, and will probably get ONE, at most 2 sets of applications (pick two that overlap in essay topics as much as possible) by R1, which are normally mid-October. You can aim for a 2nd school that has R1 due in November, like Berkeley-Haas or NYU. That may work out better.
I would probably do "safer" schools in R1 and your top choices in R2 in this case. Otherwise, you'll end up like rhyme said, mediocre in both GMAT and application.