Where to apply

By Randy Zwitch - June 27th, 2009 Category: CCMBA 2010D| Fuqua Application

Given my disastrous first GMAT attempt, I decided it would be better to first figure out the caliber of business school I would like to attend, then determine what GMAT score I would need.

I already have a Masters degree in Economics from the University of Delaware, and at the risk of sounding haughty, I determined that if I was going to return back to school I should choose a school at least as good (preferably better!) as UD.  Luckily, living in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S., there is no shortage of top-notch schools in the area.  I started my list with the following schools (in no particular order):

Villanova, Delaware, Wharton (UPenn), Stern (NYU), Temple, Columbia, Fuqua (Duke)

While each of these schools have excellent executive/weekend programs, I decided that if I was going to return back to school I should really push myself and attend a Top 10-15 school.  With that decision, I eliminated Villanova, Delaware and Temple, and now had to focus on getting a 700+ GMAT score, a near universal requirement for each of the remaining schools.

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The dreaded GMAT, part 1

By Randy Zwitch - June 26th, 2009 Category: CCMBA 2010D| Fuqua Application

Now that I had decided to go back to school to pursue an MBA degree, I figured the first step was to take the GMAT.  Even before figuring out what schools to apply to, I knew that getting a “decent” score was a must.

For those of you unfamiliar with the exam, the GMAT tests skills that are supposed to be indicative of management ability, mainly reading/writing, math and logical thinking.  As a quantitative analyst at a major financial services firm, I figured I could fake my way through the math portion of the exam, so I focused on the reading/writing portions for my studying.

This turned out to be a very costly mistake, in both time and money!

My first time taking the exam, I received a 590 out of 800 (Ouch!).  It seems that in my haste in studying, I had only done most of the “easy” problems in the GMAT study guide, and little in terms of overall math review…had I read the book a bit more closely, I would’ve realized that the problems were organized by increased difficulty.

So rather than figuring out what “tier” of business school I could apply to, the only info I received from the $250 cost of admission was that I would be taking the GMAT exam again.

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