MSRED...how many months did you study for GRE/GMAT?
For those of you that applied to top programs such as Columbia, MIT, USC and Cornell etc. how long did you take to study for GRE and GMAT and were you working during studying?
Any advice, courses or material to study?
This was years ago, but I studied for the GMAT for around a month ~3 hours per day 5 days/week. I used Manhattan prep, which worked just fine. I also didn't end up going to business school.
thanks for the input ! What would be a solid GRE for Columbia MSRED?
I took GRE and started studying in July and took the test in October. I was still working full-time and was studying about 10-12 hours a week, mostly on the weekends. I made flash cards to make studying on the go a little easier in some cases. Over the course of those 3 months, I also moved places and took a two week vacation to Europe. So there were some weeks where I got maybe 5-6 hours only. I ended up scoring around 300, not a great score, but just below the overall GRE average, which I think was 310. Applied to Columbia and USC, got into both, that's also with a crappy undergrad GPA and 4 years work experience. I didn't apply to Cornell or MIT.
The scores aren't factored that much. I talked with admissions at all the schools I applied, none of them really gave any specific scores to hit. As long as you take it and don't do awful you should be fine.
I didn't end up enrolling though, mostly because of how 2020 rolled out for the obvious reasons. I might actually start studying for GMAT, I'm potentially switching plans and thinking about a MBA program instead.
GMAT takes a lot more time to study for than the GRE and I'm not sure how much more favorably it gets viewed. I studied a couple hours a week for a couple years with a big push a couple months before each exam. As noted above, the GMAT scores are honestly irrelevant except for MIT and Harvard, where the scores are a lot higher than the remainder of the graduate programs. The math for GMATs is funky while the GRE math is like SAT math, which is significantly easier IMO.
Do note that a lot of the programs are small, and so competitiveness varies year by year. COVID yields were probably much lower from an application perspective and a lot more people are probably applying this year compared to last, making all the scores jump compared to previous years.
I used Veritas Prep to study for the GMAT. I think I studied for 3 months, 1-2 hours/day on weekdays, more on weekends. As I got closer to the test date, I used my weekends for practice tests, and I started frequenting GMAT Club to find even more practice questions. I also signed up for a one-on-one tutoring session to go over sections that were particularly challenging.
I will echo another commenter here and say that GMAT math is just...weird. It will make you feel stupid, like you’ve never done math before lol. But I still use some of their tricks today. Same with their grammar and data sufficiency sections.
I used Kaplan Prep for the GMAT and found that it was generally geared towards low/mid level test takers and performers. I would not recommend using this course work. The books were very detailed, however. In hindsight, I would buy the materials and purely self-study.
I took a practice exam before starting prep, and scored 650. After the course (waste of time) and self study over approximately 3 months I increased my score to 740 on the day of the exam. The Quant is definitely tricky, but once you learn the games they play and the shortcuts the test expects you to know, it becomes significantly easier.
Where did that 740 get you into?
Got into NYU and Fordham (only two schools). Went to Fordham for cost effectiveness. Probably not the right decision.
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