Best MBA Website

Thank you, I'll check these out.

Thanks guys.

General info website: poets and quants GMAT: buy any one of a million books. do a lot of practice. there are no secrets and its not that hard.

poetsandquants.com - general information, articles, rankings, comparing schools beatthegmat.com - great forums, gmat strategy, prep materials, specific questions

I like Gmat Club a lot. They have some good threads on recommended study materials, study timing/process, and they have some of their own tests as well. I bought some study materials but haven't taken the test yet. Will probably end up having to take the newer GMAT coming out this summer. When you thinking of taking it?

I think Poets and Quants is a good sight, but not a ton of info there if you are applying to a school outside of the top 15 or so.

GMAT Club is also good. Lots of numbers to check out. Most of the top schools have individual threads and you can sort of go through and see what type of person is apply to that program via their self-reported stats.

I will partly disagree with the "no secrets" comment. This test is very, very beatable. If you understand the mechanics of it, you can do really well. You don't have to have raw intellect to do well, you just need to know what to look for. Now, those aren't 'secrets' necessarily, but you either have to read enough to know what to look for or talk to someone who already knows that can pass on the knowledge.

Personally, I'm not a super diligent study bug...so I paid about $1,000 to take a GMAT class. It's a serious chunk of change that I wish I could have spent elsewhere, but at the end of the day, I think it was worth the money. I want to get into a good school and I don't want to have a 'what if' scenario...so I spent the money and took the class. You will never know how beneficial the class will be unless you take the test before and after, but most people have good results with the classes. The instructor in my course walks you through the different portions of the tests, explains what you can get wrong, what you can't, where you want to focus your time, where you don't, etc. So you do learn some tricks, but those can probably be found online somewhere for free.

One of the big things to remember is that the question makers are writing the questions to fool you if you aren't paying attention and don't know what they are looking for. Most math questions involve little more than basic math, but they work the questions in such a way that you might just being doing some long drawn out problem, which is entirely unnecessary. Again, that's where knowing what the question writer is looking for comes in handy.

Also, the price I paid for the class included a billion different books and guides and access to tests online, etc...which offsets some of the cost. Ironically, I didn't take the GMAT last year because I was really rushed for time and didn't want to submit crappy applications in the final round, possibly get rejected, then try to turn around a few months later and submit an application in the first round that hasn't changed much. Truthfully, the program I used allows you to retake the class for a few hundred bucks and I will probably do that in the next few months. Unfortunately I was swamped the first time around and missed a couple class do to deals I was working on, so I think it will be a relatively cheap refresher course and allow me to catch the things I missed the first time around.

I realize you might not be applying this year but I would suggest starting to study and taking the GMAT as soon as possible. I put it off last year because I thought I would have a ton of time at the end of the year but we ended up doing like 4 deals in the span of a few weeks right in the middle of my allocated study time. Additionally, nothing hurts more than staying in a job that you have (partially) checked out of mentally for an extra year and a half just because you procrastinated. And to be fair, I don't dislike my job, but my professional growth seems a bit limited over this additional year, so I don't even get the benefit of feeling like I am a noticeably better candidate. This may not be the same scenario for you, so keep that in mind.

Where do you think you will apply?

Regards

^ Wow, you're in exactly my situation, just a year ahead. My goal is to get a promotion and then apply, so probably next year. I also want to make sure I have all my ducks in a row before doing so (personal stuff too, not just work). Ugrad was a totally unmitigated disaster and MBA is just too big a deal to wing it again...I'm lucky to have made it this far and I'm not of the mind to push my luck again.

I'm not sure where I'm applying. Top 20/15 for sure, the current goal is IBD assoc...until I find something I like better. I was enthralled with Columbia for a while, then Yale, and lately I figure I should probably spend less time looking at ranking metrics and just figure out what I really want to do. The plan as it stands is MBA -> IBD for a couple years -> Big 4 M&A and settle down, maybe in a different country or state. If I can get research, I'd prefer that, but I have this weird feeling that a massive contraction in sell side ER is coming, so we'll see what things look like in a year or so.

A crazy part of me wants to do MBA -> trading, but I just don't know about risking it all and I have exactly zero experience in that area. As soon as I think about trading, my mind says "get the Rutgers 14 month accounting MBA, get the CPA, play it safe, and call it quits" and then I imagine shooting myself at a boring ass job. Accounting, bleh, nooooooo. So, I don't know, all I can do is get ready for the jump. Kind of boring, really.

What about you? What schools are you looking at and what do you want to do after?

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