Tag: preparing for mba

Is your GMAT score good enough?

The very first step in your MBA applications journey is taking the GMAT. There is enough content on the internet about the intricacies of the GMAT exam and how to ace it and I will not delve in to the matter and bore you. In this post, I’ll be focusing only on figuring out whether your GMAT score is good enough to get into a top MBA college in India.

If you do want to read more about the how to crack the GMAT, I suggest you visit the links at the end of this post.

I scored a 710 (Q47; V40; AWA 3.5; IR 3) on my GMAT and did not receive an interview shortlist from top MBA programs in India like ISB’s PGP, IIM-A’s PGPX and IIM-B’s EPGP. While a score of 710 doesn’t do much to make you stand out in the crowd of Indian Engineering applicants, it is above the average GMAT score of admitted applicants in all the three colleges mentioned above. (Average GMAT scores at ISB:709; IIM B EPGP: 700; IIM A PGPX: 700)

So why was a score of 710 insufficient?

Firstly, a lot of us tend to overlook the sectional scores in the GMAT. It’s a usual trend in India for an engineering or science student to score high on the quantitative section. Typically, they score in the range of 48 to 51 in this section. Hence, its important as an applicant to the Indian schools mentioned above to try and score a minimum of 48 in the quantitative section. This corresponds to a percentile of approximately 70%.

The verbal section is difficult to score which is evident from the high percentiles achieved with slightly lower scores compared with the quants section. For the Indian schools, target a verbal section score of atleast 36. Again, this corresponds to around 70% as well.

The most ignored and under-prepared section of the GMAT is the Analytical Writing Assessment AWA. Although it’s a fairly straightforward section and hardly ever a deal-breaker when it comes to interview shortlists, it is important to score the bare minimum. In my GMAT score of 710, I had an AWA of 3.5 which corresponded to 13%. This was astonishingly low. It stood out as a black mark in my otherwise exceptional application with the result that I did not get a shortlist from a single top tier MBA program in India. During my ding analysis, all my evaluators pointed out the same thing. Surprisingly, while applying, it had never crossed my mind to check whether the AWA score was good enough or not. None of the alumni that I networked with asked me about my AWA score. In fact, I came across an ISB alum who had an admit with an AWA score as less as 4.5. Since none of the schools specify a minimum AWA score as an admissions requirement, it is my suggestion to try achieve an AWA of atleast 4.5.

I re-appeared for the GMAT and scored a 720 (Q48; V39; AWA 5; IR 7) which wasn’t a huge upgrade from my previous score of 710, but was definitely a more holistic performance with high percentiles in all the sections. I went on to get interview shortlists for IIM-B’s EPGP and ISB’S PGP. You’d be interested to know that in the same year, I didn’t get shortlisted for the IIM-A PGPX. This re-enforced my belief that a low score in the different sections was what was mangling my application.

From my experience, I have the following tips that you might find useful:

  • Make sure you have a holistic GMAT score and not one with sectional skews.
  • While preparing for the GMAT, if you have to spend money on a single source of material, I encourage you to spend on the official GMAT coursework and mock examinations. The difficulty level of their questions and the examination scoring simulation is identical to the actual GMAT. Work intelligently. There is no point in practicing questions which are way more difficult than the questions you will actually encounter in the exam.
  • Give yourself enough time to prepare for the GMAT but don’t let it stretch for too long. For a first-time applicant who is familiar with mathematics, a preparation time of 1.5 months is more than adequate. You may take a little more time but anything beyond 2.5 months is going to drag things along and make it worse. For a re-applicant, don’t spend more than 20 days in preparing for the GMAT.
  • The GMAT isn’t as difficult as the CAT (Common Admission Test) in the quantitative section. Also, unlike the CAT, remember that you are not competing with others. If you perform well in the exam, your GMAT score is going to stand out no matter what the difficulty level of the questions was or how others performed. However, the GMAT does have its own challenges, especially the long duration of the exam, the difficult verbal section and of course the Computerized Adaptive Testing. Remember that the GMAT is not a test of your intelligence. Rather, it’s a test of your consistency and discipline.

Further recommended reading on the GMAT:

https://e-gmat.com/blogs/understanding-gmat-score-gmat-percentiles-good-gmat-score/

https://www.prepscholar.com/gmat/blog/720-gmat-score/

About Nilayan:

After being rejected by admissions teams, Nilayan worked on his profile and application to bounce back with admits from top B-schools in India. Eventually he went on to join the ISB class of 2020. He wishes to share the learning from his journey so that it may help other MBA applicants to successfully work towards joining their target Business Schools.

If you want to know more about how NIlayan dealt with a B-School rejection then go ahead and click here.

If you are interested to know Nilayan’s thoughts and tips for a re-applicant to the Indian School of Business then click here.

The Re-applicant’s guide to ISB

After being rejected by the Indian School of Business, I took some time off from B-school applications to introspect about pursuing MBA. The biggest obstacle as a re-applicant to a B-school is balancing between being confident about one’s self and taking care not to repeat mistakes. Feeling motivated and being as enthusiastic as you had been when you first applied is essential if you want to succeed as a re-applicant. No amount of learning from mistakes can make up for enthusiasm and passion.

If you want to know about how I dealt with my rejection from ISB before deciding to re-apply then you may visit this link.

The first step in the re-application procedure is obviously figuring out what went wrong the last time. The best way to go about this is to seek feedback from people who have a good idea about the admissions process. Since I was focused on ISB, I waited for feedback from them regarding how I could improve my candidature. Unlike earlier years, they did not come back to the students with any feedback. However, it’s a good idea to go the extra mile and get in touch with someone from the ISB admissions team. You can reach out on LinkedIn or ask any of your friends who got an admit to share the email ID of the concerned person. Wait till the workload of the Admissions team recedes. This is typically between May and July. ISB is a very applicant friendly school and everybody associated with ISB is eager to encourage deserving students to apply and help them get selected. Make the best use of this culture to try and figure out what went wrong.

The next thing you should do as a re-applicant is make sure that you have a clear understanding of the selection procedure of the B-school you are interested in. ISB follows a unique “buckets and pools” process of selecting candidates. Here is an article in which the process is described in detail by V.K Menon, who has previously been the senior director of careers, admissions and financial aids at ISB. I strongly recommend that you go through the article even if you have a good understanding of the application process at ISB.

After you are confident that you understand the screening process at ISB, you should start analyzing which aspects of your previous application did not meet the school’s requirement. Put yourself in the evaluator’s shoes and form as neutral an opinion you can. It’s important to understand that ISB is not a school that rejects your application easily if you have above average work experience and extra curriculars. During the course of my “ding analysis”, I felt that there are 3 possible reasons of rejection from ISB:

Insufficient GMAT score

While ISB does not mention a cut off for the GMAT/GRE score and stresses that there are other factors that carry more weightage in your application over the GMAT, its important to realize that the initial shortlisting process for ISB is a “checkbox process”. There is a checklist of criteria that your application needs to satisfy (the GMAT score being an essential one) and unless you tick all the boxes you will not pass the shortlisting process. Although it’s a hackneyed topic on the internet, I’ll put up an article shortly with my two cents on the subject of GMAT/GRE scores. As a reader, you’d be interested to know that the year I got rejected, I had a GMAT score of 710. During the course of my analysis, I was surprised to find that it wasn’t sufficient! More on this in a separate post.

Inadequate essays

There is enough content on the internet stressing the importance of essays in B-school applications. I will reiterate only a couple of points because I had realized their value only after I had been rejected.

Firstly, no matter what the essay topics are, you have to clearly convey what your short-term and long-term goals are and how ISB is going to help you achieve them. Hence, it is essential that you introspect and be steadfast in these goals during the course of writing essays and consequently during the interview.

Secondly, be clear that you are applying to a B-School program and they are interested in knowing your business and leadership skills only. Step out of your own shoes (and sometimes down from your high horse) and look at your work experience from an evaluator’s viewpoint who has no idea about your domain of work. Avoid technical jargon and pick out only the achievements that project the relevant business and leadership skills. For example, in your opinion your biggest achievement at the workplace might have been a complicated engineering calculation that you performed. However, there might be tasks that you do regularly that has a much higher business impact. It would be a better idea to highlight the latter in your essays.

I will definitely put up a post later on what you need to focus on to make your essays stand out.

At this moment I’d like to point out that if you were rejected without an interview call, you can be pretty sure that it was because either your essays weren’t good enough or your GMAT score was insufficient. However, I reiterate that ISB doesn’t reject candidates easily and are eager to interview them. So, unless you have written essays that are absolutely irrelevant or grammatically incorrect, if you didn’t receive a shortlist for the interview, it’s probably because your GMAT wasn’t good enough.

Dissatisfactory interview

I was rejected by the ISB without being called for an interview. However, I had a successful interview 2 years later. I have also spent time talking to candidates with stellar profiles who got rejected after their interviews.

From what I have gathered from other applicants, from my own experience and from discussions with an alum who has been part of the interview panel numerous times, the ISB interview is more of a conversation. Panelists are given guidelines by ISB which recommends that they do not stress the candidate. The focus of the discussion is on verifying whether what you have written in your application is true or not. The discussion is also focused on trying to understand how steadfast the candidate is about his/her goals and how much research he/she has done about the school. The panelists love candidates who have spent time to talk to alums and find out about the PGP and how it has helped them shape alumni’s careers.

It’s important to realize that ISB is not interested in testing your IQ in interviews. While its good to give clever answers to questions you do not know answers to, its not a necessity and will not result in a make-or-break situation for you. For example, if you have written in your hobbies that you play cricket, the interviewers aren’t going to ask you the weight in kilogram of a stump and expect you to give a smart answer in case you don’t know the real answer. They would however ask you how well do you think you play and ask you to tell them about an innings you are most proud of!

Things which you should definitely avoid in the interview and might lead to rejection are dishonesty, arrogance, being politically biased, being sexist and rudeness. Also, while it is important to feel comfortable and being conversational, remember that you are being evaluated every moment. Be specific and relevant. If the interviewer asks you what you want to do in life, don’t say something philosophical like “I want to be happy”. Be professional and try to answer questions to convince them that you can contribute in the class and be able to cope with the rigor of the PGP.

The last step in the re-application procedure is to work towards improving yourself to make your application more holistic and suitable to meet the requirements of the selection procedure. From re-taking the GMAT to taking up a different job role or completing professional certifications, it requires hard work and dedication and varies from person to person. Make sure everything that you do is in sync with your goals and not done just because it looks good on the resume. ISB doesn’t give brownie points for shiny certifications in your resume that do not serve your goals.

In conclusion, I would like to mention that while embarking on the re-application process by one’s self is very much a viable option, it is not a bad idea to consider hiring an applications consultant. After a lot of cost-benefit analysis and setting my ego aside, I had opted for a consultant the second time around. It’s important to find someone who gives you personal attention and treats you individually. I took the help of Mr. Autrri Chakravarti who is Director of TOP-GMAT. He was incredibly helpful and assisted me to prepare my application. Starting from the resume to the essays and preparing for the interview, he always guided me and spoke in terms which were easy to comprehend. I do not know what other consultants do, but Autrri didn’t write my essays or resume for me. Neither did he make me mug up answers to the interview. Besides offering his services at very reasonable rates, his approach was very constructive and having done everything myself eventually helped me in the interview where I was very confident and sure of everything that I had written on my application. Feel free to use my reference if you get in touch with him for applications assistance.