Entries Tagged 'GMAT' ↓

I’m all for tight security to minimize cheating on a test as important as the GMAT, but the new security measures GMAC is rolling this month are ridiculous.

“For decades, the world’s leading business schools have relied upon the GMAT exam as the best predictor of a candidate’s academic success. We have an ethical responsibility to business schools and students to preserve the integrity of the GMAT and the application process, so insuring the highest level of security is critical. Pearson VUE is an excellent partner in this capacity because it, too, places an emphasis on security and responsibility to our customers. PalmSecure helps us respond to the needs of our international marketplace. It is a more accurate, more efficient, and less invasive way to ensure that each test taker has a single GMAT record, thus preventing individuals from taking the test for others.”

GMAC rolls out the handprint scan program in India and Korea this month and will expand the program to the U.S. by the fall. Lovely.

NFL Average Wonderlic Scores by Position

Check this interesting graphical representation of the average NFL Wonderlic score by position. The Wonderlic test is basically the NFL’s version of the GMAT. A high Wonderlic score can improve a players draft stock and land them a large pay day just like a high GMAT score can help get you into the business school of your dreams. However, the GMAT isn’t the only factor an Adcom analyzes in your business school application and the Wonderlic isn’t the only factor an NFL team analyzes when making a draft pick. In fact, you could argue a lot of NFL teams ignore a player’s Wonderlic score. Vince Young reportedly scored a six (out of a possible fifty) on the Wonderlic in 2006 and was still drafted 3rd overall by the Tennessee Titans. The Titans obviously valued his experience and leadership ability over a simple score on a scantron. That was wise of them. Today, if the NFL held that draft again, Vince Young would be drafted first overall.

It’s interesting to note in the infographic that the faster position players, the wide receivers and defensive backs, have lower average Wonderlic scores than their teammates on the line. Perhaps brains and brawn are not mutually exclusive after all?

Source of Infographic: Ben Fry (via Richard Florida)

Now that I’m safely in business school I am happy that I will never have to take the GMAT again. Since this is an MBA Student blog I won’t talk much about the GMAT here, but I know you are probably wondering what my ‘GMAT Experience’ was like. I didn’t hate the experience as a whole, but I had to take the test twice to get into UF. That I hated.

For the most part, I liked studying useless and trivial topics that I hadn’t given a second thought to since high school. I felt the underutilized regions of my brain roar back to life and I was confident I would do well on the test. Unfortunately, I chose to study from The Princeton Review and Kaplan GMAT.

The Princeton Review and Kaplan GMAT books are average books that produce average results. I learned that the hard (and expensive) way. An average GMAT score will not get you into UF or any other respected business school. To do well on the GMAT you need to understand advanced material that Princeton and Kaplan don’t cover. The best books I found for studying advanced material were the ManhattanGMAT Strategy Guides.

I bought the whole damn set and cannot recommend them enough. They are especially useful if you have been out of school for a while and need to create a study program from ground zero.

I scored much higher on my second GMAT attempt after I spent a couple of months buried in the MGMAT books. I did better on Quant than Verbal, which was a surprise since I have a liberal arts background. I would have scored higher on Verbal if it weren’t for the sentence correction material. I worked several years in scripted television and the number one rule in the Writer’s Room is that you write ‘to the ear’ and eff being grammatically correct. Uh, that’s a great rule when you write and proof dialogue for television, but completely counterintuitive to sentence correction on the GMAT.

Despite sentence correction, I scored high enough the second time around to get into my first choice school. If you are still at the beginning stage of your MBA journey know that the GMAT can be a burden if you have to take it more than once. Skip the Princeton and Kaplan books for your prep and dive straight into the MGMAT books. You won’t regret it.