The Fishbowl MBA

Here is a practice question to get you started on the GMAT:

A triangle has sides that are all 15 cm long. What is the area of the triangle?

Answer options (pick one):

A. The answer is 22.
B. The answer is 24. Or maybe 12. And with 12, I really mean 31.
C. A full hour of this? Kill me now, please.
D. The answer to this divine riddle must forever remain among the Illuminati faithful. Die, infidel.
E. My father is very wealthy, so can we please stop this charade? My trust fund isn’t gonna squander itself.

Satire aside, the key to a good GMAT score is rather simple, if sometimes hard to do in reality: practice, practice, practice. So if you are new to the GMAT, here is what you should do:

1. Go to the website of GMAC, the company that administers the test, and check out the official GMAT pages. This is a good starting point for getting up to speed about the test, especially regarding new requirements (for instance, they are planning to change the test format in 2013). They also have free prep material available.

2. In addition to the free online material, buy a test prep book that contains at least two full GMAT tests. I recommend the one that GMAC publishes. I used some other test prep books as well, including Kaplan’s, but found them less useful than the GMAC-authorised version.

3. Set aside time to practice. I’d recommend locking yourself up in a room for one full week or more if you can, doing nothing else; it is more efficient than studying in the evenings, spread out over a few months.

Personally, I practiced for almost two weeks, full-time, and got a score of 710. I did relatively worse in the quantitative section, though, which is the most important one, so I spent another week practicing, took the test again, and got 720, nudging my quant score a bit further up. It is really all about putting in the time to practice.

Should you take a paid test prep course?
Kaplan and many other companies offer paid courses where they train you for the GMAT. I have heard varied reactions to these courses; some people swear by them, others thought they were a waste of money. Under all circumstances, you can do fine without taking one. The core value-add of these courses, I suspect, is that they force you to actually set aside time and study.

So: if you have the time and the self-discipline to study on your own, my recommendation would be to ignore the test prep courses and save the cash for the tuition fee. That’s what I did. However, they may be a useful tool if you have trouble freeing up time to study – say, if you have kids at home, or if you, like many people, are somewhat undisciplined and tend to end up watching TV on the days you should be studying.

Why do schools use the GMAT to screen people?
Anybody who takes the GMAT sooner or later asks themselves a question: why am I being measured on my ability to do high school math without a calculator? The many questions about triangles and circles don’t seem too related to the ability to run a business. And in fact, they aren’t – but they are related to your ability to make it through business school.

According to a study by GMAC, your performance on the GMAT is not related to your success after the MBA, or even your performance in the second year (if you are doing a 2 year MBA). It is, however, a fairly good predictor of how you do in the first year of the MBA, and this is why the schools rely on it to screen prospective students. In other words, the admissions people can’t use it to tell who will become the next Warren Buffett, but they can use it to screen out people who would otherwise be in danger of getting kicked out for bad academic performance.

So, at the risk of introducing an unusual metaphor, failing the GMAT is like getting caught by the police for drunk driving: it is a bad experience, but it may also be a blessing in disguise. It is bad to be rejected by your dream school because of a low GMAT score – but it is a lot worse to be accepted by your dream school, only to be kicked out again six months later because you couldn’t meet the academic requirements.

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