Kaplan’s Game-Changing GMAT Prep

Welcome to MBA Podcaster, the only broadcast source for
cutting edge information and advice on the MBA application process. I’m
Catherine Girardeau. On todays show what to do about low GMAT scores. We’ll
talk to schools, an admissions consultant, the company that created the GMAT
and a first year students about what the GMAT does and doesn’t mean to the
various players in the MBA admissions process. Near the end of this show our
student interviewee gives step-by-step advice based on his own experience of
what he did to improve his initially low GMAT score.

Let’s give a little background: in a 2008 Kaplan survey of
250 MBA admissions officers 55% said that the GMAT is the most important factor
on the business school application. Over 90% said it’s one of the two most
important factors. Research correlates every 10 point increase in your GMAT
score to another $5,000 in your starting salary after business school. Why?
Higher scores help you gain admission into more competitive, higher ranked MBA
programs which in turn brings more job opportunities and higher salaries. In
other words, prepping for the GMAT can have a big payoff. That said; two top
MBA programs we interviewed, NYU Stern’s School of Business and UC Berkeley’s
Haas School of Business down played the importance of the GMAT. At least as an
isolated indicator of an applicant’s potential for success. The schools that we
talked to agreed that the GMAT is most relevant to admissions directors when
viewed in context with the application as a whole.

Let’s start with a little background on the GMAT itself.
Eric Chambers is Director of Key Initiatives at the Graduate Management
Admissions Council, the company that brought us the GMAT, “Back in, I believe
it was 1954 there were nine business schools that wanted to have an extensive,
fair and unbiased test to be able to evaluate candidates that were applying to
these business schools. And so they wanted to have an organization that would
provide a test. So that’s where the GMAT came from.” Chambers explains how the
GMAT works, “Test is now computer adaptive which is pretty unique to people
that are in my generation that took the SAT or ACT or other standardized tests
back in the day when you sat down with pencil and paper and took the test. So
you now every question that you get determines what the next question will be.
If you get the question right you get a harder question, if you get that
question wrong you get an easier question. What it does is it starts to pin you
into a particular bracket and that’s what provides an incredibly reliable and
consistent score. Which allows for fewer questions from candidates and I think
a better experience for the candidates as well. The test is always being
reevaluated every year to make sure it is fair, objective, and unbiased and
obviously a great predictor for the programs that are using the test. But the
test is an incredibly reliable predictor of academic success within the core
curriculum of business schools.”

At NYU Stern School of Business Executive Director of
Admissions, Isser Gallogly offers a more nuance perspective on the GMAT, “It
only measures how they will do in their core academic classes. It doesn’t even
measure how they do academically throughout the entire program.” Corinne Kang,
Associate Director of Admissions for the full-time MBA program at UC Berkeley’s
Haas School of Business comments on the GMAT’s relative importance in a Haas
application, “The GMAT is important but it is certainly not the most critical
factor when we’re viewing the applicant.” Isser Gallogly of NYU Stern concurs,
“Yeah, it’s one indicator of someone’s academic potential but it’s certainly
not that only indicator that we use.” What exactly does the GMAT measure? David
Petersam is President of Admissions Consultants Inc. and a University of
Chicago MBA, “The GMAT is supposed to be a measure of aptitude and analytical
skills. It’s not supposed to be a test that you can study, it’s how quick do
you pick up on new concepts.”

Isser Gallogly, Executive Director of Admissions for NYU
Stern’s School of Business outlines the indicators he uses to assess candidates
besides an applicant’s GMAT score. We also take a look at their undergraduate
record, the strength of their program, we look at the major, we look at each of
their grades in that program, we look at the trends of that program. We also
look at if the person has any other education, graduate degree, continuing
education classes, certifications, professional achievements. We also look at
what a person does professionally and how long they have been doing in terms of
affecting how they will do. For example, someone who may have a slightly lower
quantitative score on their GMAT but for five, or seven years has been doing
sophisticated econometrics modeling clearly we have seven years with
quantitative ability, a proven track record there that can also help off-set a
standardized test.”

Corinne Kang of the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business said
Haas also looks at the application as a whole rather than making it purely a
numbers game, “We’re looking to admit not just numbers, we’re looking to admit
people. We’re really looking to get a holistic picture of each applicant and
you’ll see if you look at our application that it lends itself to giving the
candidate an opportunity to share with us different aspects of their
background. You know, we’re looking for additional information from their
recommenders and all of that really helps us build a cohesive picture of who
the applicant is.”

To understand the GMAT it’s important to keep in mind what
the GMAT doesn’t measure, “It doesn’t tell you who are the best candidates or
who are going to be the best teammates, or who is going to be successful. I
think the people though that are comfortable, have taken the steps necessary to
prepare for the test, then they should perform at their capacity.” As Eric
Chambers of the Graduate Management Admissions Council said, they should. But
what if you don’t? “If you’re fully prepared and you felt perfectly comfortable
while you were going through the exam and you finish the exam and all of those
kinds of factors then the question is do you take it a second time?” Not if all
things are equal Chambers said. If you’re as prepared, feel just as well and
comfortable during the exam and answer all of the questions the second time
probability is very high you’ll get a similar score to the first time you took
the test. But if those who weren’t prepared or didn’t finished or weren’t
feeling well or were anxious the first time around, take the test again,
Chambers said, “They typically go up about 30 points.”

How can you prepare to do your best on the GMAT? Isser
Gallogly of NYU Stern, “I actually suggest that people prepare extensively for
that test (courses, self-study, tutoring, whatever they feel is appropriate).
Give themselves more than enough time to do that, do that very early in the
process, well before you’re starting your essays and that part of the
application.”

David Petersam of Admissions Consultants Inc. gives his
step-by-step prep tips, “First thing you want to do, get an official GMAC guide
and do a self-diagnostic. Take a test, score yourself out and let’s see how did
you do? If you did very well on all areas of the test, go to the nearest test
center and take the test. If you did well on most of the areas and you only did
poorly in one or two then look at the answer explanations, do they make sense;
do you understand why you got those questions wrong? If you understand the
explanation and you feel like you can re-teach yourself exponents, fractions,
right triangles, whatever it was then by all means you don’t need a test prep
company, you can start self-study. If those areas aren’t clear to you you’re
probably going to benefit from a tutor. Now if you have trouble in most areas
of the test or if you need to improve in most areas of the test and you don’t
understand the answer explanations then you want to consider either a prep
course or a tutor. I think a lot of people go to the test prep companies
prematurely.”

How can you tell when you’re as ready as you’ll ever be to
take the GMAT? “Study until your score plateaus. Over time you are going to see
that you are no longer seeing any gains from continued study. When that happens
just take the test. You did the best you could, rather than bang your head
against the proverbial wall over the GMAT perhaps there are other things that
you can do to boost your candidacy whether it’s extracurricular activities,
alternate transcript, whatever the case may be.”

MBA programs have different opinions on whether you should
take the test again if you didn’t like your first score. Stern suggests you
actually schedule two test dates just in case, “They may or may not get the ideal
score on their first test and it’s nice to have a second date built in there is
a continuance. At Stern there is no downside to retaking the test. We look at
the highest overall score so I always tell people if they are not scoring at
what level they want they should retake the test. That is the most
straightforward and simple way to attack that, at least at Stern. Every school
probably varies on their policy with respect to retaking.”

Haas recommends retaking the test only if the applicant was
under prepared especially if they have a low quantitative score. “When they sat
for the exam we may encourage them to consider retaking it if they do feel that
that is an area that they can improve upon.”

Corinne Kang of Haas said the GMAT is also not the only way to
assess a candidate’s language and communications skills. The TOEFL would also
be required in general, if an applicant did their undergraduate coursework in a
language other than English. Kang lists other ways Haas assesses a candidate’s
verbal ability, “We’ll be looking to their writing ability and the clarity of
the writing in the application. For candidates who are invited to interview,
the interview also serves as a way for us to assess speaking ability.”

Admissions Consultant, David Petersam has slightly different
advice than the two schools that we talked to, “We advise people try not to
take the GMAT any more times than necessary. If they feel like they can improve
their score by minimum 30 points and assuming that they are not too too low to
begin with by all means retake the test. Face that demon and try to knock it
out. If the admissions committee is looking at two applicants, applicant A and
applicant B and if they had the exact same undergrad record, exact same career
progression, the exact same extracurricular activities applicant A takes the
GMAT four times, incrementally improves to a 750, applicant B only has to take
the GMAT once to get a 750, applicant B has a slight advantage in the process.
Applicant B appears to be the type of applicant that ‘plans his work and works
his plan’.”

According to Admissions Consultants Inc. test anxiety tends
to affect 25 to 35% of GMAT test takers. “There is good anxiety,” that would be
the kind in which you are fully prepared and are anxious to get in there and
find out just how well you do. “There’s bad anxiety,” that’s the kind in which
you know you were under prepared for the test, you don’t know exactly how to
get to the test center and you’re really not ready to sit for the exam. Experts
agree that the best way to fight that kind of anxiety is to fully prepare,
understand how the test works, know the range you need to reach for the schools
that you’re applying to, “Know where the heck you’re driving to the day of the
exam. There is no need to get yourself worked up wondering if you missed the
exit for your test center.” Of course there are direct ways professionals can
work with people to help reduce test anxiety. “There are some good test anxiety
tools out there now and the schools are becoming more aware of them and more
and more applicants are becoming aware of them.” But David Petersam said if
test anxiety is serious or debilitating, “They are going to want to speak to a
professional and try to figure out exactly what it is that is affecting them
and then how they can best address that.”

When it comes to the application how should you address a
relatively low GMAT score? The Graduate Management Admissions Council’s Eric
Chambers said you need to let the committee know that you will do whatever it
takes to prove you’re ready for the MBA. Whether it be, “taking some additional
courses, if it means coming to a math camp or a MBA boot-camp, write a letter
to the committee do you want me to take the GMAT again? Whatever you want me to
do, I want you to know that I am fully committed to this and I know you
wouldn’t just pick up the phone for every candidate so I certainly want to help
you and help the admissions committee understand that I will be ready to
perform in that program when it starts.” David Petersam of Admissions
Consultants Inc., “We might advise them to retake Stats and Calculus.” Corinne
Kang of the UC Berkeley Haas School’s full-time MBA program said that’s a
suggestion Haas might make. Stern, Haas and Admissions Consultant, David
Petersam agreed that it is crucial to use all parts of the MBA application to
show the committee who you are, what you have done and if necessary to try to
outshine a low GMAT score.”

David Petersam, “If there is going to concern about their
ability to handle the work then we probably need to address that perhaps in an
optional essay. Maybe it is as simple as using a significant professional
accomplishment that highlights their analytical skills and aptitude. Sometimes
we advise people to retake the GMAT. Sometimes we advise them to build an
alternate transcript. Sometimes we just want them to emphasize how technical
their job is if their quant scores have been low we could always have the
recommender potentially….one
of their quantitative skills as well.”

Corinne Kang of the Haas School has some tips of what not to
do on your application, especially if your GMAT score is low. “One common
downfall is just trying to ignore it and hopefully thinking that we’ll miss it
too. I think it really is to the applicant’s benefit to acknowledge some
potential weaknesses but then really kind of then take the opportunity and
responsibility to really highlight the other aspects that stand out as
strengths. I would say something else that we see is applicants that take the
initial step and do acknowledge the score but then do nothing to address it. If
we’ve seen that someone has only taken the GMAT once without really taking the
effort to really improve their chances in doing everything that they possibly
can I would think any applicant would do everything that they can to really
stand out.”

Just how low is a low GMAT score? “Low for the school you’re
applying to is going to be where you are compared to the median for your
demographic. And if you’re somewhere in the right around the 20^th
percentile or even slightly below you might be fine. Low would be if you’re
more than 50 points below that.”

Isser Gallogly, Executive Director of Admissions at Stern
said it’s important to focus on the right number when comparing your GMAT
scores to others who have been accepted to the school that you’re applying to.
“In general with the GMAT people focus way too much on the average and not
enough on the 80% range. The 80% range is really 80% of the people who have
actually been admitted to our program and what those GMATs are within that
range. I think for people if they feel like when they look at their GMATs or
how they perform in a test and if they are below that range that would be
relatively low. But then again we still accept 10% of our incoming students who
have a GMAT below the 80% range.”

Corinne Kang of UC Berkeley Haas explains how she hopes
applicants will use the middle 80% range information provided by the school,
“We provide that range really to give candidates who are considering Haas and
looking into business schools a sense of what that competitive range really
does look like. So you know especially when you’re thinking about the different
schools that you might be competitive for that’s a great way to start and that
is the middle 80% range so that does mean that there are candidates who have
been accepted who do fall below that as well as go above that.”

Both Stern and Haas said they view the application
holistically and evaluate all parts of it in context. Isser Gallogly, “I think
one of things that people overly fixate on is looking at the GMAT in isolation
and it’s one element of many elements that are within an application and it’s
going to vary individual by individual and I’ve seen many students come in who
are on the low end of our range and do exceptional from an academic
standpoint.”

Let’s turn now to a first year student at the University of
Chicago’s Booth School of Business, Ronald Rolph. Rolph was an infantry officer
for the Marine Corp for the past eight years. He shared his personal experience
of taking the GMAT with MBA Podcaster, “Initially I bought several of the test
prep books just at a local bookstore and went through a few of them. I also
took kind of a crash course, like a weekend seminar in Durham, North Carolina
near where I was living at the time which provided some insight into the test.
I think it gave me a relatively decent overview of the format and some of the
types of questions and subject matter that was going to be covered but I really
did not have sufficient time to prepare adequately. I was constantly being
deployed as an active duty Captain in the Marine Corp, so trying to cram in
studying between deployment and while overseas I really didn’t do it justice.
So when I took that test initially I really felt that I was under prepared so
much so that I actually canceled the scores when the test was over. I really
wasn’t comfortable with even recording that score officially because I really
didn’t know how to go about attacking the test appropriately and I ran out of time
on I think both of the sections, the verbal and the quantitative section. Then
after taking that test once it was really kind of a cold bath and a harsh dose
of reality where I quickly realized that if I wanted to do well on the GMAT I
really needed to dedicate more time and energy toward preparing sufficiently to
do as well as I would have liked on the test. I think because of the unique
format of the GMAT being not only academically but psychologically prepared to
take the test is a key component to being successful on it.”

But Rolph said he was far from being mentally ready for the
GMAT the first time he took the test, “As I was taking the test and you know,
you see the clock ticking right there on the screen and struggling with the
questions kind of a vicious cycle and I really didn’t do anywhere near as well
as I had hoped on that initial test. By design the test is supposed to foster
that kind of anxiety and make sure that people have adequately prepared and are
able to handle those kinds of situations and I guess it just took me accepting
the fact that I couldn’t do it on my own that just relying on my own previous
academic experiences and my own studying wasn’t going to get me to the score
that I really hoped to get. Just going through the books and doing self-study
was not going to be enough, that I really needed outside help. I’d been out of
school for about seven years at the time so the quantitative aspects in
particular among my skills were very rusty.”

Rolph contacted a test prep company in New York. Because of
his military deployment schedule, Rolph had to cram his test prep course into a
single week. The company suggested he come to New York right away to work with
a team of tutors who specialize in the GMAT. “I spent exactly a week up in New
York City staying with a friend, having daily sessions with both verbal and
quantitative tutors as well as going through some of the more intangible
aspects of the test preparations, psychological aspect of the test, and
confidence, etc., etc. Which really enabled me to go into the test from a much
stronger, more confident perspective. And that sort of intangible aspect of the
preparation I thought was as important if not maybe more important than the
actual hard skills of the sentence correction or the data sufficiency problems
on the test.”

Rolph explains some of the techniques the test prep company
used to help him use to calm his nerves, “Mental exercises, stress reduction
routines, breathing, relaxation, mental cues to keep yourself calm during
stressful situation specifically as you’re taking the computer based test. And
just kind of reinforcing your mental capacity to go about taking that kind of a
test and just building your confidence. Initially I was a little bit skeptical,
coming from the military background sometimes those sort of touchy feely things
sometimes I’m a little adverse to but looking back on it that really was
invaluable and I think helped exponentially my performance on the test.”

Rolph had only one math class as an undergraduate so he said
he was especially unprepared for the quantitative section of the GMAT. “What
the tutor did which I thought was really prudent, he kind of gaged my ability
level through some initial tests and interactions and we kind of determined
that trying to master everything, all of the quantitative content of the GMAT
was going to be a loss cause. We would get diminishing returns there was no way
we could do that. So he kind of picked and choose some of the most or more
important concepts and we sort of conceded the fact that there were going to be
some questions on it that were going to be beyond my level that I wasn’t going
to be able to get or memorize the formulas for but he focused on some of the
more general concepts, some of the more prevalent ones on the test and really
reinforced those and just focused on those. And we were able to I think to
mutually get me to master those.”

The test prep tutors covered the verbal section as well,
“Repetition, repetition, and more repetition. She had me get the full GMAT
official prep book as well the verbal supplement and do literally every single
question in both of those books and really by doing that you start to sense
patterns for the questions that they ask you the types of questions they ask
and some of the over arching concepts that they really like to test on the
GMAT. And she sort of gave me some insight as to how to go about recognizing
certain concepts within sentence correction and the reading comprehension and
to really pick up on those quickly to save time.”

The Saturday after his crash course in New York, Rolph flew
back to North Carolina. He took the test on Monday, two days later. “I didn’t
cram the day or the night before. I think that can be counterproductive. Just
focused more on getting a good night sleep, eating right and make sure I was
fresh for test day and really just kind of trying to clear my mind the day
before.”

I asked Rolph how his experience of taking the test the
second time compared to the first time, “It was night and day. In a way it was
good because I took it in the same test center so I already knew what it the
place looked like, I knew where it was, I was just much more confident and I
had a much clearer concept of what to expect and I was as close to fully
prepared as I could have been under the time constraints.” Rolph his score
wasn’t quite as high as the highest he had gotten on one of his GMAT practice
test but, “You know I guess ultimately the proof is in the pudding. I was able
to get in to one of the programs that I had been hoping to get into so it did
the job.”

Rolph said his score was in the lower end of the middle 80%
range for the programs he applied to. But his unique qualifications probably
helped. “Being a military applicant I think helped. What I had been told, you
need to get a score that is kind of in the ballpark so it won’t be a
disqualifier and that is what I was shooting for to get into that window to get
in the ballpark and I was able to.”

As schools and admissions consultants suggest, Rolph did use
the optional essay on his application to explain his score, “Where it asks on
the application for additional information I did explain the situation and my
unique job history and my inability I think prepare for it as I would’ve liked
to have were it a perfect world.”

Just a few days before starting business school Rolph
officially became a civilian. Rolph has some first-hand test prep advice from
his own personal GMAT battle ground, “You need to kind of treat it as sort of a
second job and not just something you do when you have free time but actually
carving out time in your schedule to study, to work with tutors, to take
practice tests because I think ultimately business schools are looking for is
not necessarily somebody who can ace the test itself or can master the material
but they are willing to demonstrate a dedication and a desire to get to that
program, to get that degree. And I think the score on the GMAT that you get is
a reflection of that dedication and desire and I think really, ultimately that
is what they are looking for and that’s what they are testing by making you
take that test.”

We’ll close with some encouraging advice on the GMAT from
Isser Gallogly, Executive Director of Admissions at NYU Stern, “I think if
somebody feels they’re a strong candidate for business school they should
believe in themselves and go ahead and apply. Yes they should keep in mind what
the schools general statistics are and calibrate it appropriately in terms of
choosing their programs but just being a little bit below average is not a deal
breaker.”

For more information, a transcript of this show or to
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This is MBA Podcaster, I am Catherine Girardeau. Thanks for listening and be
sure to tune in next time when we explore another topic of interest in your
quest for a MBA.

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