Where did I go wrong??

How much ever people say that GMAT is s small portion of MBA application, it is the major part when we are planning to write it/or when we are studying for it. Right now, all I want is to get the score I want and rest everything has taken a back seat. On and off I do think about the essays or the schools or do I want to do MBA but for now the major air time is captured by GMAT.  I am retaking GMAT and yes the date has been booked..its 22nd October (and we leave for our vacation to India on 23rd..yay 🙂 so even if I screw the exam, I am going to be in a good mood). While preparing for the retake, I did some introspection to check where did I go wrong. Here is my analysis:

• Quants: I got overconfident on timing. In my mocks, I could finish maths with atleast 10 mins remaining and always got a 48 or 49. (Except for once when I got a 45 in MGMAT). During the test, I ran out of time, had to guess a couple of questions and barely pressed the submit button. In retrospect I think that I did not practice lot of difficult questions within time limits. GMAT quants is a bitch. Anybody can get all of them correct if there is enough time but within time constraints the tricky questions tend to takeover. So this time I am placing lot of importance on short-cuts and am attempting to do different types of problems. The objective is to be accustomed with as many tricks as possible and use them in the real exam.
• Verbal: My scores in the mocks fluctuated a lot. I would get anything between 35-44. And the major contribution towards this fluctuation came from CR. On a good day, I will get all CR correct and on not so good day, I will make silly mistakes. RC was good and SC was consistent. So this time I am going to be consistent and then increase the benchmark.

The target is Q:49 and V: 40/41. Total score target 720-740.

Yeah..you can say aim high, aim for 780 and you will get 740. This time I don’t want the scope of error. This time when I enter exam hall, I want to have 720-740 in atleast 3 mocks consistently with the breakup I mentioned. Amen!

Personality fit???

I have a very basic question here. Is there any specific and definable personality which is ideal for MBA and a personality which is not at all ideal for MBA. Can we design a graph may be to represent the ideal personalities who should go for MBA and who should NOT. Why I am asking this?? Because I want to know what the junta perceives about it and then may be analyse myself also on those parameters and see where do I stand. Sometimes I think I am way off than normal people are and I wonder should I be doing not-so-normal things and hey I don’t even know what those things are!

Yeah, you guessed it right, I am C.O.N.F.U.S.E.D and I am at a very strange crossroad at this point in my life and I really need to make the right decision. What if I am not made for MBA and I could do something better like I could become a writer (which is a dream btw) and what if I go for an MBA now and realise that it was not for me? That would be a very expensive realization.

Let me tell you what I think of an MBA personality and lets see what do you guys think:

1. A go getter – I am but in spurts. I mean some days I am so lazy that I don’t want to do a thing and don’t want to think about anything at all.
2. A visionary, someone who can plan well ahead for future and see things clearly – I think I am more of a short to mid term thinker.
3. Very ambitious – Now here I want to ask that are only type A personalities good for MBA (to know about types A,B and AB personality click here). I am surely type AB professionally and I hang more towards Type B personally.
4. Entrepreneurial mindset – How important is this trait? I think I can always dig in to get some great ideas and have a great eye for execution.

Remember the graph I was talking about in the beginning of this post, well, I drafted one and may be this is how it should look like and people falling on the graph are ideal fit for MBA and rest are not (what do you guys think??):

Pour in your thoughts people. Collectively we can solve the mysteries of the world.

P.S. The graph is inspired by Efficient Frontier Theory 🙂

Ni Hao!!

Hello people,

Welcome to my blog!

Well, this blog is going to be about MBA – my journey (if it happens) and my analysis of why I want to do MBA and why I don’t want to do MBA. As of today, I have already given GMAT once and the score was 680 (Q46, V37) and am reappearing within a month to breach the coveted 700 mark. Having said that, my mind is in splits regarding whether I should go for an MBA 0r not.

Lets discover the answers together and who knows this learning experience may be helpful to someone.

Cheers,

SM