Evan's Story: AKA The Four Year Hike to UVA

Dearest friends, esteemed colleagues, and close acquaintances – none of you on the forum qualify as any of these, especially: bb, Bunuel, GMATNinja, Arro44, souvik101990, jeffn, alexsr, selberenova, Nikhil, Narenn, abhimahna, Innes, daldilaimi, kntombat, yashikaaggarwal, MikeScarn, Wonderwoman31, MsInvBanker, Sajjad1994, catdogflynn, BillyZ, carrotcake, gmatexam439, wraider84, billionaire, thkkrpratik, Dragongirl24, and I’m sure many more.

Today, I break some news that a few of you already know about, but others may not: I am going to business school! Typing those words is an incredible feeling. For those who do not know my story, and for those wishing to have some motivation for their studies, I invite you to read through my experience. For those wondering why I took so long to post this, the answer is quite simple: I was trying to compose a true accounting of my past few years, and this took a while to track down.

First and foremost, I want to say that I am beyond proud and excited to join UVA at the Darden school of business. Approximately five and a half years ago, at the time of this posting, I contemplated the idea of going to business school and attaining my MBA – this was just after graduating from my undergrad. Having little knowledge at the time about the GMAT and the business school experience, I simply googled a few programs. And during a car ride back from the 2017 US Senior Open at the Salem Country Club, I had a conversation with a friend where I said something to effect “Hmm, UVA is a good school. It has nice colors. It’s in a nice state. It has a good ranking. Yeah, that seems like the spot for me. I’d really like to go there”. If this is you at the beginning of your studies, STOP! You have no idea what you’re doing and you need to re-evaluate all the choices you’ve ever made. How I, ironically, ended up at UVA is nothing short of a miracle. And for those thinking “Why should I read this? Evan helps run GMATClub. He’s the king. El rey (Spanish for “king”). He outwrestled a grizzly bear. He outwitted the AI known as Bunuel. He clearly had a huge advantage in applying”. I assure you all, the four-year story below is still worth the read and runs counter to those assumptions.

2017:

I graduated from my undergrad (majored in business) and began, almost immediately, studying for the GMAT. I picked up the 2017 OG set (which was the newest version at the time), I picked up MGMAT’s complete series (again, newest at the time), and began studying like the brainless newbie I was. So many errors were made in this phase of studying. My plan was to study, apply to a program, and move on with my life. Not a bad plan, right? Well, it truly was a terrible plan. And after studying for a few months, and making a good impression on the forum, I had an epiphany that blew up those carefully made plans: I wanted to go to law school instead of business school. Why? Because law school seemed sexy. It seemed glamorous. The law degree and title seemed powerful. This was my rationale, and I will reiterate that if this is your mindset for ANY degree, STOP.

I want to take a moment to talk about the first round of studying I did for the GMAT. Those first few months were brutal, in part due to my complete lack of understanding about how to study for the test. If you are struggling on the exam, I almost guarantee it is, at least in part, due to how you are evaluating your questions after completing them and not understanding how to build your fundamentals. If this is you, invest in a good, online course and read my CR guide. The biggest mistake is thinking that you can learn by doing 1000 problems. WRONG. You need to build your fundamentals by learning the concepts first, then while applying those concepts, break down every question and every answer choice. Doing this is the best way, and in my opinion the only way, to study for the LSAT, GMAT, and/or GRE. But, back to our story. It was in July that I joined GMATClub as a regular user, a nobody, a random name on the general chat. And as stated above, it was not long after that that I had resigned myself to the idea that an MBA was a dead-end, so I began studying for the LSAT. This change occurred as I started my first job post-undergrad and began serving GMATClub as a volunteer moderator. First job, helping run GMATClub, and studying for the LSAT – life is busy but good.

2018:

As I ascended the ladder at GMATClub and became known as the greatest to ever grace these forum pages, I was also pounding away at LSAT practice tests. I would study during my lunch breaks at work, allowing myself an hour to do a section of a practice test (the LSAT has four, individual sections). I would then blind review (see my CR Guide) on the commute to and from my office.

2019:

In June and September of 2019, I took the LSAT and scored very well on both, achieving identical scores. It was with these scores that in October I applied to a variety of law schools. I had scores that were good enough to warrant T-20 consideration, and in doing so, I felt confident that I would land at a marquee program. For those wondering, similar to business school, T-20 is critical to your outcomes post-graduation in law school. As 2019 concluded, and yet to hear back from any schools, a headline was beginning to circulate of an interesting virus spreading in China. No one took it seriously, and we welcomed the new decade with open arms. Whoops.

2020:

The year the pandemic started. What more needs to be said? The virus ripped through the globe. For me, this was bad news for law school. Schools that would’ve accepted me on my score waitlisted me, and those who would’ve traditionally waitlisted me denied me outright. The virus, named Covid, increased application numbers and overloaded the schools; admission standards rose sharply as a result. I still had a job, and working from home was fun, but the crushing blow of not one acceptance hit the ego hard. What’s a guy to do? Reapply! After all, if this is the dream path, you have to be willing to do everything in your power to get there. So at the end of 2020, with Covid still raging, I reapplied to a few programs from the year prior. While I was doing this, I had the great opportunity to work with my firm’s legal department. Concurrently, I had the opportunity to enhance my impact on the business side of things. These experiences showed me definitively that I did not want to be a lawyer, and that I did want to work on the business side (should I call the 2021 paragraph ‘return of the MBA’?). I admit law school would have been a huge mistake, made by someone who hadn’t taken his time to understand what being a lawyer meant to a business. But this is an important lesson: Never commit to something due to a sunk cost; in my case time and money. Always follow your heart, no matter what you have invested into alternatives. And as it turns out, the schools that I had applied to were still dealing with deferred enrollments and thus I was rejected for the second year in a row; 0/2 on grad school. Everyone feeling motivated? So far, the infallible Nightblade has absolutely nothing positive on the grad school side. But if grad school, specifically an MBA or a JD or an MD is your dream, you do everything you can to achieve it.

2021:

Covid is still raging, but Evan is determined. I have referred to myself in the first person, as well as my forum name and my legal, and first name in the third person. I think we’re breaking some major literary walls – quick, someone call Penguin publishing. But back to our story: I had heard a rumor that some business schools were accepting the LSAT as an approved standardized test score. Hope? A shining glimmer? With curiosity, YES LEVERAGING MY POSITION AT GMATCLUB. THE ONE INSTANCE WHERE IT IS BEING APPLIED. YOU GOT ME, I reached out to a few admissions folks across the business school land. Turns out, the rumors were true. The LSAT was being accepted! With renewed hope of not having to waste what was 1.5 years of studying for a test that was now almost useless to my future dreams – and with the hope of not having to take another test – I set out on applying to business schools. I will break here and say that I used a consulting firm to help me. Consulting firms cannot turn a rejection into an acceptance, but they can turn a waitlist into one. They are an investment, and if you choose the right one – avoiding the scams out there – they can help you achieve your dreams. After doing a huge amount of due diligence, I ended up choosing Aringo to help me prepare my essays. I interviewed a handful of consultants that I felt were some of the forum’s best and they were my pick. For those wondering how to avoid a scam consultant, or how to pick the right one, here is my advice: leverage word of mouth. If someone had a great experience, which I did with Aringo, take that to heart. Try to find a consultant who you not only feel comfortable with – they’re going to know a lot of your life by the time this thing is said and done, so this is crucial – but you also believe is telling you the truth. Some will promise you an HBS admit with a 650 GMAT score – this is a scam unless you’ve cured cancer, are famous, or played a professional sport. A good consulting firm will say “We can get you into X most likely, but there is no way that you are getting into Y and Z”. If they’re willing to say anything to get your money, that is all they care about. But, back to our story: I was partnered with Danielle Marom who, in my opinion, did an amazing job! She was there every step of the way to help me through walls and over hurdles. The gameplan was a simple, three school attack: UVA, Michigan, and NYU. All of these schools accepted the LSAT, so they were natural choices.

I applied EA to UVA and R1 to Michigan and NYU. I received a guaranteed interview from UVA because of my EA application, and I received an R1 interview with Michigan. With NYU, I did not receive an interview invite and was subsequently waitlisted. UVA and Michigan had similar results: Waitlists. Was I crushed? A little. Was I worried that I was never going to get to achieve my dream of an MBA? Yes. While Michigan doesn’t give individual feedback, UVA does. In short, I was told that Darden wanted to see a GRE or GMAT score to help give a little more clarity to my candidacy. Reluctant, I held out and waited.

2022:

And the waiting continued through March of 2022. Having not heard any positive updates from UVA or Michigan, I decided to study for yet another test: The GRE. Wait, what? A guy who runs GMATClub is taking the GRE? Yes. After consulting with the highest GMAT power in the land GMATNinja, I took the GRE. From my view point, there are pros and cons to the GRE. But I implore anyone who reads this to truly explore this idea and do a deep dive into which test is right for them. If you can memorize well, do the GRE. If you love math and logic, do the GMAT. But, back to our story: I did some research and bought Magoosh’s GRE prep course. While I found it lacking on the verbal side, the quant side was fairly thorough. In short, after memorizing 1,500+ vocabulary words, and studying for three to four hours per day, all while working a consulting job, my GMATClub post, and maintaining a healthy life style, I took the test. This occurred at the end of May, so it took me about two months to get to where I wanted to be. I also leveraged GMATNinja’s tutoring services to help give some clarity to areas where I was struggling. See? Even the great Evan/Nightblade uses tutors. I took the test at home and scored right where I needed to be competitive for most of the T-15 programs in the U.S. So, having a test score that I was proud of, in June I reached back out to Aringo, and with Danielle in my corner again, we applied to business schools again. That is how good of an experience I had. I used Aringo twice. By the way, for those keeping score, I’m now 0-3 on grad school.

My school list expanded. Given my GRE, I had flexibility to apply to most programs. I chose UVA (reapplication), Michigan (reapplication), Cornell, Duke, and Dartmouth. I was granted interviews with Michigan and Cornell, and I had a guaranteed interview with UVA because I went early action. As with the previous experience, Danielle was awesome helping me prepare!

Now comes the good part of the story when I was finally admitted! Play the trombones! Blast the horns! Evan's coming to town as an MBA candidate! UVA was the first school to admit me, so there was no indecision on my part as UVA was always my first choice; I received the call at 4:30pm on Tuesday, October 18th. I went physically numb. I was very likely babbling nonsensically. I was going to business school! I was on the phone with a friend of mine immediately after the woman who had interviewed me at UVA ended our 'congratulations on being admitted' call -- it was really nice to have her be the one who broke the news to me. And my friend, too, was admitted. We were yelling at each other for an hour on the phone. When you have four years of work finally realized. When you have countless hours of sacrificing finally being paid off. When you achieved something you very much doubted was possible – the feeling is surreal.

I’ll also follow up by saying that UVA, both last year and this year, treated me like I was a human being. I felt like they wanted me at the school. To be completely honest, this was and is huge. When the school genuinely wants you, you know it. And that feeling is when you know that you’ve likely found your school.

From a gratitude perspective, there is no chance I'd be here without bb. He was there to support the dream. He was there to write a LOR. Without GMATClub, I can say for certain that I would not be attending a business school. This is a true community, and it has been built on the strongest foundation possible. Thinking back, as I like to tell this story when I do my Youtube videos, I signed up for gmatclub when I was on a forested island, pretty much in the middle of nowhere in Maine. The username, a childhood name that a friend used and I thought was pretty cool at the time, was used simply to sign up for the website. If I had known I was going to be typing all of the above back then, I probably would've gone for a different name. But the past is the past. And having said that, knowing how close I came to not signing up for the forum, surrounded by various types of trees and wildlife, scares me. In life, we are given turning points; Some are more obvious than others. Signing up for this forum was a colossal turning point, and had I missed it, I would not be going to UVA. My life would be completely different. Which is why I am so grateful for this forum and to those who make it a special place.

Final Thoughts:

I applied to graduate school four consecutive years. If your dream is to go, nothing should stop you. I took the LSAT. I took the GRE. I wrote essay after essay thrown at me. Nothing can prepare you for that final ‘yes’, and it is worth every second of hardship. Never give up!