Is 640 on GMAT a Failure? ... Not really - Admitted to INSEAD and LBS?

This post is for people from underrepresented countries who are studying the GMAT. It's a journey, rant and series of lessons all rolled up into one.

My background.
I have always wanted to go to business school. While I have a business background centered around economics, financial and statistics + 5 years work experience - I want be apart of a community that I can grow with and leverage off for the rest of my career.

And it helps that I have the perfect profile that could get me into a top global school. I have a masters degree from a top African university. My work experience is in data analytics for one of the largest and most influential nonprofits on the continent. My team and influence has also increased substantially over time and its easy for me to qualify my impact. I have traveled extensively around the world in my personal and professional capacity and play like every sport under the sun. I definately don't do any cooky cutter "extracurriculars" - as I prefer to spend my weekends playing sport / drinking with friends. But hopefully my day job and other elements of my life would be enough to cover this resume bucket.

All I needed was to get like an above average GMAT score to get into my dream school. How hard could it be right?

One of the worst experiences of my life. Definately the worst testing experience of my life.

It didn't help that I experienced some relationship drama just before this journey while propelled me to tackle it in overdrive - but that is a story for another time.

I also don't give up easily. Particularly in something I have never otherwise "failed" at. I keep going, adjust my strategy, take a break then rinse and repeat. This exam tested my patience and tenasity over 3 painful (and lonely) years.

This exam is poison. Because of the high return on investment that schools have indirectly attributed to this exam - the market is flooded with excessively expensive and (somewhat) universally equivalent test prep companies. Don't get me wrong, GMAT club is great and there is a market for peripheral support around this process. But the excessive emphasis from those that frequent these forus most regularly on this score (mostly by test prep companies and applicants from overrepresentited countries) makes for a pretty demoralizing exam learning experience.

The exam achieves its objective - by finding those that are able to accurately absorb and process a great deal of information in as short a time as possible but does with a massive geographic and language based bias. I wish GMAC openly shared more of the backend data - though I think it would further reaffirm the bias that I am alluding to. I have seen some documents that unpack this data but most of them are outdated / at a single point in time.

Mid 2019:
Initially my objective was to get into a top school in the US or in Europe. I started studying GMAT mid 2018. Think I got like 490 on my first practice test. Nothing a little "strategy + test prep tools" couldn't improve right? I started off with Expert Global (I used Manhattan / Kaplan notes before this). I quickly realized that the platform was of lower quality and that it was best to stick with OG related resources.

Dec 2019:
I wasn't able to break 610 in any of my practice tests. I ended up scheduling and rescheduling my exam but ultimately gave my first attempt in Dec 2019. I somehow got 640. This was the highest score I had gotten to date. As much as I was thrilled I knew that I needed to push and restrategize more in order to have a score fitting for a top global school.

At some point I realized that I had zero interest in working in the US. The overrepresentation and overwhelming emphasis on test scores also put me off.
My plan was to apply to R1 INSEAD with app deadlines around March. I would schedule my GMAT Jan / Feb of 2020. Enter Covid19.
Exam canceled. The online exam wasn't enabled at that stage. Emailed the adcom and they advised that I apply with my given score. I applied - and the feedback was that they were interested in my candidacy but they wanted me to have a higher score. My application would remain open for the next 6 months. All I needed to do was submit a new score.

Over the next few months I explored some other test prep platforms. empowerGMAT is what I started with. Don't get me wrong, the tactics in theory are useful but they are largely impossible to appropriately deploy under the time constraints GMAT gives you. I wish there were examples of people writing this exam in real time. As much as you need to master the fundamentals at a reasonable pace - deploying them at the necessary exam pace feels entirely unrealistic (at least to get a 700+)

Mid 2020
Wrote GMAT again, got a 610. I took a break. Redid the empowerGMAT course. Reached out to Rick a few times (with an equally extensive mail), wasn't awarded a refund and still ultimately didn't see any markable improvement. The next step would be private tutoring.

I went to a very bespoke private tutoring program that I stumbled upon on reddit (I'm not going to mention their name). But ultimately the tactics they teach are still seemingly impossible to deploy in the allotted time. It's unreasonable that you can pay 100 USD to access a world class graduate level course Coursera taught by global leaders in a field - tackling topics from the mundane to technically sopohicated. But you have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for courses / tutoring doe the GMAT. Seriously? The exam tests students on high school level content? Just under a time constraint that shouldn't reasonably be allowed.


At this point I came to wish that there were more resources actually showing top tier GMAT test takers actually writing an exam. I know there are one or two of these resources online - but naturally GMAC will do everything in their power to maintain their IP and prevent people from doing this. Sure, lots of money / skills go into creating and legitimizing questions and they need to keep IP in order to maintain the integrity of the exam. But there has to be a better (and more accessible) alternative.

They should be doing more for assisting marginalized groups to have affordable access to top quality resources.


Mid 2021:
I wrote GMAT for a third time and got 610 again. Note that at this point GMAT + Covid quarantine life + work + trying new sports was pretty much the lonely existence I had lived for the last 2 years. It was beginning of 2021 and I had not able to resubmit an improved GMAT score to INSEAD and I had collectively studies around 800 hours for the exam and was just about over it. 640 ended up being the highest score I was able to achieve despite all the work I had put in at this point. So I was back to square 0. But I hadn't attempted GRE yet.

Dec 2021
I quickly discovered Gregmat. If anything I rated his platform and offering the highest quality out of all the test prep experiences I went though. He actively provides access to top quality and affordable learning. He is also an hilarious guy that facilitates a community around test prep. I wrote GRE towards the end of 2021 and while I still wasn't able to ultimately achieve the 320+ score I wanted, at least I learnt a bunch of cool words along the way. I probably would have been able to do better at this exam if I wasnt so burnt out at this point.

Jan 2022
I was done with these stupid exams. And by this point I had zero interest in applying to any US schools. I may have had a **** GMAT score but hopefully my unique and high impact profile + motivation would get me into a top European school?

March 2022
I was planning on applying to R1 INSEAD in March which lined up with round 3 for a number of other top European schools. I narrowed the list down to 5 schools and reached out to alumni and attended events for all the different schools. Based on the engagements I further narrowed the list down to IESE, LBS and INSEAD. I applied to each school and I got interviews for all 3. Though not all interview experience are made equal and I quickly realize that it is just as much about you picking the school as it is about the school picking you. I similarly cannot understand how people ask random strangers on the internet for assistance for deciding between school offers.

I just had family and friends review the essays that I wrote for each school - but I did (briefly - 2-4 lines) mention my GMAT experience in the optional essays for each school.

I interviewed with 2 INSEAD alumni the one interview was great while the other interview was terrible. In the latter interview the alumni literally was disconnected from the school community, wasn't "convinced" by efficacy of vaccines, actively gaslighted me during the interview and made implicitly racial remarks. I wrote a rage essays after the interview that I didn't ultimately send - but I did ask the adcom whether being "highly disagreeable" was traditional for the interview process. To which they indicated it wasn't.

My interview experience with LBS and IESE were far more pleasant. Met some really cool people along the way and organically had incrementally more engagements with alumni / students from each school.

May 2022:
I got offers from both LBS and IESE and will be attending one of the schools (not saying which) in the coming months. Also got offered scholarships for each.

June 2022:
This was a journey for me. One of learning, sadness, frustration, isolation, persistence, failure and introspection.

I just wish the entire process was more transparent. From schools providing comprehensive data on the importance of different rating criteria to GMAC sharing more data on exam outcome statistics + more openness around sharing OG resources. There are perfectly capable people across African countries, Asian countries and in South America that are excluding themselves from these schools because of the **** online sentiment and exam experience that goes with this exam. I personally feel that a score of 600+ should be more normalized for top schools. I'll see how it goes over the next year or two - but I am confident that my aptitude across a range of topics will make my 640 seem more like a 780 in a classroom setting.

But thankfully I am done with this part of the journey. Will maybe do a PhD one day and will need that stellar GRE score - at which point I will personally know enough people that have crushed this exam in order to point me in the right direction. But for now, I am going to invite some friends over to my place (those that listened to me complain about this exam for 3 years and those whose event invites I had to decline because I was focusing on studying) , and burn the 100s of pages of notes in celebration of the next step of my global career.

Posted from my mobile device