Military officer,Doctor to GMAT 750 & HEC Paris

My Unconventional GMAT story: perseverance, determination, failure & a fairy-tale end for an ex-military officer, doctor.

Coming from a non-traditional background, my GMAT story too is unconventional.

I’m a medical doctor and ex-military officer, thus I didn’t have the traditional advantage of a strong quantitative background. Even though I’d been good at Maths at school (even went to Maths Olympiads) and had both Maths and Biology in pre-university, it’d been almost 8 years since I actively used complicated Mathematics on a day-to-day basis, unlike most engineers/CAs/those from a commerce background (majority of GMAT takers).

Thus, I’d to kind of start from scratch when it came to GMAT Quant & Integrated Reasoning preparation.
Add to this the nature of my duties (military deployments, often in mountainous areas which were no network-zones), attending to emergencies in military hospitals (thus being on call 24x7) and all this would mean a stop-start prep for an exam that is highly quantitative, logic-based and adaptive (high speed internet a must for good GMAT prep, given the computer algorithm to select the difficulty of questions based on response time and accuracy of answers).

Hence, it was imperative that I plan well for GMAT and much in advance. (Planning well beforehand, taking into consideration one’s situation is one of the traits top B schools & firms look for in managers who are aiming big).

Thus, all the blogposts I read about people acing GMAT in 2 months etc., was not something I identified with (it’s one thing to sit in a comfy AC/centrally-heated office and give few hours of a weekend for GMAT prep and entirely another to prepare for the same sitting in a tent in a jungle on a military exercise or in a doctor’s room while on 24-hour hospital duty). Nevertheless, I’ve been there, done that.

I started my GMAT prep enquiring about books and coaching institutes nearly 2 years before I achieved my target score, just as I was being transferred from a posting in an insurgency prone zone to a city proper. Here, I would definitely get enough time to prepare for GMAT, or so I thought, but this turned out to be wishful thinking, as I was sent on a high-altitude military deployment for some months very soon after.

As I couldn’t be stopping my GMAT prep altogether, I bought the Official GMAT prep books, enrolled in a coaching institute and continued whatever offline prep I could manage in the mountains (no/limited network zone). Immediately post return, I took permission from my unit seniors and joined the coaching (this was pre Covid, online GMAT coaching proper was just growing). The coaching teachers were impressed and recommended me for high-potential achiever classes. Then, I got involved in various hospital activities, which took a big toll on my time. It was decided that I appear for the real GMAT in May, given my job constraints (about 10 months from my GMAT research start).

I took numerous mock tests then, although I wouldn’t take the timer seriously etc. I was confident of scoring 700+ (was scoring so on several mocks) and it came as a big shock to me when I landed a score much lower on the real test, the Quant score being disastrous.
I was shell-shocked, so were the teachers, but it seemed like Exam pressure had gotten to me. Here, I would like to add the incessant why GMAT questions family and some among the medical fraternity would ask me. The disastrous score only emboldened the naysayers.
But I didn’t give up. I started by analyzing the mistakes buying the Detailed report available with GMAC, at least that gave me the correct idea that I’d stumbled on timing (if you take too long to respond and worse still, you respond wrongly for a question, you are in for a whammy: GMAT lowers the level of questions by several notches, so that your relative scoring is badly affected).On the other hand, a standard GMAT question, though seemingly innocuous, would have some hidden/trick element had would change the answer (so going at express speed is not a solution either, one would commit mistakes, losing out on accuracy).Thus, it’s got to be a good mix of showing-respect to the question and taking reasonable risk, adhering to the timing.

I started working on this and taking even more mock-tests (all free tests I could lay my hands on & a few paid ones) to correct my timing and risk-taking issue. In between, I was doing well at work and my seniors at work were helpful, but the 24-hour hospital duties, field-exercises in mountains and additional military duties continued, so I decided to schedule my test for next December (a near 6-month gap from the last test). By this time, I’d also nearly exhausted reading all possible GMAT related content people guided me to read. I took the mocks more seriously and was confident of getting 700+.
I failed again, improved my score, but still ended up at below 700, sub-par for a male candidate applying to top B schools globally, especially being from an overrepresented group, non-traditional profile notwithstanding.

It had been a little short of a year and half of me starting my GMAT endeavour now and I was distraught. Even my institute teacher, who had backed me so far, didn’t know what was going wrong and where, this time around. Naysayers got louder; people started giving me suggestions to pursue further medical degrees, etc.

But I didn’t give up.
I was determined to fulfil my dream of getting into a top B-school and I was motivated to ace the GMAT.

However, destiny had more challenges in store for me. Covid-19 erupted and the world changed, totally. I was promoted in military rank and also made head of a Covid-task force cum Head of medical services for a military garrison/Brigade. For the next 6 months, I was working 18 hours a day (12 hours a day at work, 6 hours on GMAT prep: entirely self-study now, no concept of weekends etc. remained anymore).

Luckily, I got invaluable advice from a college senior with a similar profile to focus more on the Manhattan prep materials and in the meantime, I discovered a company called Experts’ Global that was already reputed in GMAT prep circles/education industry . These proved to be game-changers.
I had been taking the Manhattan Prep mock tests before and while they are good, they are a bit too difficult (harder than GMAT in parts in my opinion). But what I had been neglecting was focusing on theory and concepts. Probably, focusing too much only on mock tests earlier was my undoing.

The text books of Manhattan Prep were too good for conceptual clarity I feel and I devoted maximum time to reading and re-reading concepts and practising questions, both Quant and Verbal (please note that my Verbal scores were always pretty good, yet to ace an exam like GMAT, one needs to put in maximum efforts for all 4 sections: Quant, Verbal, IR, AWA).

I took a couple of Experts’ Global mocks initially (they offer a 7-day free trial). Impressed, I bought their complete test series’ pack. What was most impressive was that the standard was near the actual difficulty of the GMAT exams (I’d already taken the real exam previously, so could make out). The explanations for questions too were pretty good and detailed and the timing was well aligned to the question difficulty level, in short very similar to the real GMAT experience. Best part was the 1–2-minute GMAT shots, that was perfect for revising concepts, prior to each mock-test and the real exam.
Finally, I also bought the official GMAT Advanced book (has some really good questions) & completed all the official GMAT mock-tests.

This time, I seemed pretty confident having consistently scored 700+ in all these 20+ mock tests, adhering strictly to timings (if someone rang the doorbell when I was taking a mock, I wouldn’t refresh the question, I would continue where I left off, even with some time disadvantage, ideal preparation would include no disturbance but unlike to achieve always).I even bought GMAT style marker pen and scratch pad for mock tests practice ( in essence trying my best to replicate exam centre conditions).

After 6 months of rigorous practice again, I reappeared for the real GMAT exam and scored a 750. (Q 48, Verbal 45, IR 8, AWA 6). I was ecstatic, my hard work and perseverance, determination had finally paid off.

Next step, MBA applications.
I did my homework there, joined a consulting fellowship (I’m interested in consulting, so would give me some edge and exposure to a real industry-client, on a learning project). I also worked hard on my Resume preparation, essays’ writing, answering application questions, got a close-friend to proofread them, etc.

Ultimately, this culminated in my joining the prestigious HEC Paris MBA program, my dream school, the best in Europe and among the top 5 to 10 globally, as per several top rankings. I also did get admissions from several other top B schools in Singapore, Australia (also was interviewed/waitlisted at other leading European/UK schools).

My advice to GMAT, MBA aspirants: hard-work, determination, perseverance do pay off; do show courage, don’t be dejected by failures, don’t give up on preparation midway; you’ll ultimately ace the GMAT and your MBA application.

Posted from my mobile device