Hello everyone,
I know this might not be the correct section for admission counselling. However, my concerns revolved around GMAT as well. So, requesting your patience with this post.
I wrote GMAT with 50 days of preparation, scored 710, and then completed the application for ISB round 2 at the eleventh hour. Everything was done in a hurry. I was confident of landing an interview invite until I got a reject from SP Jain Institute of Management and Research with this very same profile. This situation got me demotivated pretty much, and ISB invite was the last thing I had expected. I got the invitation with 4 days of notice, and I clearly couldnt prepare it to my best. At the interview, I was told specifically that I seem to be more of a technical person, and believe this is what went against me. I received the reject invite on 5th March.
Now, having provided all this data, I want to mention my plans for the coming year. I believe with a better GMAT score(in excess of 760) will be helpful. Of course, I am concentrating on improving my overall profle and for this I have considered taking a couple of MOOCs from coursera or edx to get a much clearer overview about my reasons for an MBA, something that I can explain much clearly next time around to the interview panel. I have plans to take up more leadership oriented roles at work. So, I believe with these additional things on my profile, I will have better chances.
A bigger reason I believe is that 710 is around the median score for ISB and other colleges that I am targeting (NUS, HEC, INSEAD, IE. Havent considered US universities yet, so the list will get bigger).
My understanding is that even though GMAT isnt a dealbreaker after getting an interview invite, a 99 percentile score will have some value, especially considering other attributes of my profile are average( General, Engineer Male from India with 3.8 years of IT consulting experience with 1 year of lead role in Paris as a distinguishing factor).
What do experts here think? Should I really invest 3 months of my time on writing GMAT again, or can this time be used to improve other aspects of my profile, considering I will have to start applying again with 6 months now.