I am a guy in his my mid twentys from a European country trying to study for the GMAT. For informational purposes and because it is important to understand my situation, let me just give you some short background information about me. Like I said, I am in my mid twentys and graduated with a dual degree (homecountry and U.S.) in business with a major in finance last year. Sadly I did not go to any target school, however I took the obligatory internships during my studies and after (from Big 4 to MM bank to a BB bank) and I will now start full-time at a MM bank in my homecountry.
The reason why I want to pursue the GMAT is that I still do not know if I want to get a Master's degree or not. A year ago my initial plan was a gap year in which I would do my GMAT and then apply to business schools for a master degree. Now that I will start working full-time, you can see that my plans changed. But still, I think maybe 2-5 years down the road I might get a master degree. However, I still have not decided yet if I want to obtain a MBA or a specialized master in finance (at the moment I tend to the finance master).
So my thoughts were that right now I could do my GMAT without having crazy time pressure regarding any deadlines and if I would need the test score in maybe 3 years I can already make a tick in the application box and can concentrate on other things
.But there also lies the problem! I started learning for the GMAT some time ago, studied for like 2-4 hours on some days, then stopped learning for a week, then started again, then stopped again due to great weather outside, or my second internship during which I did not do anything. So you see, as I do not really HAVE to take the test until a real existing deadline I became lazy. That needs to stop now and I need to get serious with the GMAT.
My plan is to take the test in around 3 months. So far, I studied with Princetons "Crack the GMAT" in order to learn some strategies for certain question types and with the official verbal and quant book for taking practice questions. Additionally I have the big official GMAT book.Until now, I made myself summaries of the concepts on how to tackle certain questions. I did this because that was how I always studied in university too (e.g. I never learned with flash cards..).
But now, YOU guys come into play. I need your help on how I should prepare for the test. I have some questions in my mind and would highly appreciate any answer or input from your side:
- HOW should I go on studying from where I am now?
- How would YOU structure your learning time until you take the test?
Maybe it helps if I give you some hints and goals I would like to achieve with my GMAT. First things is, right now, I do not have a big time pressure. That means, it does not matter if I take the test in say 2 months, or in 3 months. But as I already mentioned - not having pressure does not really help as well.
For my master degree I will target business schools mainly in Europe. I made buckets with schools I would apply to for certain GMAT levels. I have mainly 3 personal targets regarding the GMAT score:
1) the minimum score I need to get are 600. That is what I set as a minimum in order to target the least interesting schools
2) my personal target score, which is 650. With this score I would be happy and I think this score I actually pretty hard to achieve for me! Those schools would be really nice. And finally,
3) 700+, my idealistic score. Getting something like this would actually change some of my choices I made so far regarding schools and so on.
So folks, thanks for reading so much. I would absolutely appreciate if you could hold my hands and point to any direction regarding my questions above!
Very best regards,
mott
