I figure I owe at least this post after being a GMAT Club member for about a year. My GMAT story is as follows.
I'm 28 years old now. A year ago I was dating a girl who went to an ivy school for undergraduate, and a top 25 school for law. She was quite the .edu snob, now that I look back on it. Her life was school. If you met her, she would let you know all about her education within, oh, 15 minutes or so. She didn't mind I was a lowly UNLV graduate. We dated for a solid month or two, and then off and on after that. Anyway, about a month into our relationship she said I should go to business school. I considered going back to school for economics because economics seems fun, minus all the math. She bought me one of those cheapo $29 "learn the GMAT in 7 days" books. We would travel a bit and I would bring the book along and we would answer the questions together. She would bug me about looking into schools, and studying to take the GMAT.
So, she is to blame for me wanting to go to business school. Mostly I was intrigued by the idea of making good money fresh out of school -- she got an offer after a summer internship, so hey, I could too, right? Financial security is part of a happy life. Eventually she went away, but I was hooked on the idea of going to business school.
So I decided about nine months ago that it was time to study. I've always had solid verbal skills, so I mostly studied math. I found an old beginning algebra book from community college and worked through the first few chapters on my own. I finally purchased the tests here at GMAT Club around that time. I only worked through about five of the quantitative tests and a few of the verbal.
Then I got lazy. I eventually bought the books from the GMAC people, but I rarely studied them. I would go through these study-spurts. Then come August of this year I knew I had to get my act together. I had to seriously study if I was going to get into a top 50ish business school. Well, I didn't start studying full-time, but I picked up the pace a bit. I took my first full practice exam using the GMAT Prep software and scored a 680. Boy, was I thrilled! I wish I scored lower on it, because then I didn't study too much from there on. I took the GMAT for the first time on September 24th and scored a 610 (34Q, 40V, 6.0AWA). I certainly was not thrilled with the score. It was a real eye-opener for me.
I knew I didn't have a chance to get into any of the better schools with that score, so I immediately scheduled a test just over 30 days from the original date. I studied my GMAT books a bit more, searched google with terms like "negative square roots" and "quadratic equations", and even visited math-themed chat rooms for help.
I took the test today and scored a 660 - 42Q and 39V.
It's good enough for me. I honestly do not want to go to one of the top 10 or even 15 schools. I just don't need that to be happy. If I can graduate from a respectable program with a good football team (just kidding), and make $70k+ upon graduating, then I'm happy. I'll still apply to a few of the 10-25 ranked schools, but I won't be heartbroken when I don't get in.
The best part about having achieved a 660 is now I don't have to worry about the GMAT ever again!
Good luck to all, in all endeavors,
Chris