Hi Folks,
I understand this is a common query.. to do or not to do? Though I do not want to pose the same question many have asked before.. somehow I felt that my situation could be different. Hence, decided to ask anyway..
Here is the deal. I made my decision to go for EMBA pretty late in the game (1/20/2013). After speaking to few of my friends I started registering for info sessions of some selected schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. My first info session was with UC Berkeley on 1/24. At this time, I was just trying to get a feel to questions such as what school? What EMBA means? Schedule? Application Process? Deadlines? GMAT? By the time I could get some grasp on things I was nearing deadlines to two schools. I started working on essays, transcripts, LoR s and also figuring our what GMAT is and who offers what course.. ordered
MGMAT guides with self-study package,
Magoosh & GMAT Tutor. Long story short, I scheduled my GMAT test date to 2/25 and TOEFL to 2/15 with roughly 3 weeks of preparation time for both (since some days were occupied with school application and essays). I was able to submit my application w/o GMAT to two schools and my GMAT test date was set to meet their deadlines.
I started working on GMAT Tutor while I was waiting for
MGMAT guides. When the
MGMAT guides arrived I was trying to split my time between
MGMAT and GMAT Tutor but that didn't seem to be working as I was not making much progress in covering the subjects. During the last week before the test, I realized that both
MGMAT and GMAT Tutor would not help me cover the subject matter at the pace I could handle them. I then switched strategies went for
Magoosh Videos to cover the subjects and focused on my weak areas after reviewing my practice test results. In between all these I spent some time answering practice Q's but honestly probably covered less than 10% of available material among
OG,
MGMAT,
Magoosh & GMAT Tutor. I took 5 practice tests and the scores ranged from 470 to 610 with the average being around 540.
I went into the test hoping to score above 600 and mentally preparing myself for another test soon after. Before and during the test I constantly reminded myself that I need to be composed and do justice to what little preparation I had made. Well, I got my best score in the test of 680 (V37, Q46). Certainly happy with the score considering the amount of time I had for preparation (BTW, spent an avg of 8 hours per day by cutting down my work schedule). The question is.. is it worth making another attempt, personally I feel I can do better given more time to practice. Your feedback is appreciated.