Hi all - will try to keep this brief (skip to TL;DR at end if you want).
First post, not too sure how to introduce myself. I am a medical doctor (UK) with a MSc in clinical neuroscience. I toyed with the idea of getting into b-school about 2 years ago, and sat the GMAT then. My score was a pretty abysmal 520 (can't remember the breakdown). I abandoned the idea and went to do a medically-related MSc.
Maths (esp. mental arithmetic) has never been a strong point for me, though I managed to get an A at A-level statistics (I still had to work my butt off for this). I have a natural affinity for the English language, what with it being my native language.
Having recently passed my MSc with a distinction and currently working a pseudo-academic job at a university, I have sent my CV to a couple of (decent) b-schools, who have become more positive in terms of me submitting an application (compared to 2 years ago). Despite this, I do not want to be suckered into applying for a bunch of b-schools before getting my GMAT, which I have decided to re-sit.
First time around I think I made some dumb mistakes:
1.) I was overconfident based on how I scored on online practice tests (since learned that these aren't representative of the real thing).
2.) I did not follow any revision plan - just did questions from various books (though did approx 4-6hrs a day for about 12 weeks (?burnout)).
3.) I did not study verbal at all - just did questions in books (though I used to get approx. 90% of these right).
4.) I used
manhattan books. There were still basic maths concepts that I was not fully comfortable with going into the exam. Got bored of reading them quite easily also, hence knowledge not fully penetrating.
5.) On the day I wore contact lenses (bad for me when reading large chunks of text).
6.) I did not eat before the exam or during the break.
7.) I started to panic especially during the quant section when I got questions that I had not seen before.
I remember getting similarly bad scores in both quant and verbal.
Right now, all I want to do is get a good GMAT score. I do want to apply to b-school, but I want to let my score dictate which one. I am aiming for at least 650 this time. 700+ would be nice but I am not sure if it is realistic (not sure if even 650 is). Even then, the cost of LBS or any of the US ones seems prohibitively expensive and I do not have corporate sponsorship, but will cross this bridge if and when I come to it.
So far, the
Magoosh study plans are looking like the most sensible to follow, namely because they are very structured and they offer a quant focused one, which would be ideal. From a cursory glance I cannot find any others. I am wary of ones that are trying to promote the purchase of their own study materials.
Can any of you guys with similar stories back up the
Magoosh plans with evidence of GMAT score improvement?
TL;DR - got a poor score on last GMAT due to factors that could have been controlled. Want to re-sit GMAT using smarter revision techniques and strategies as I think I can do much better.
Thanks!