What would you do if you were me? (Take the GMAT or not?)
Hi! So a quick run down of my stats: 28 years old, 0.7 years work experience as financial analyst, worked as restaurant server then bartender then manager for 8 or so years until I graduated. Right out of high school went to a state school for computer science, got a 1.54 gpa. 5 years later went back to a smaller state school and got a 4.0 gpa, 27 straight A's, graduated with an Econ degree. GPA from both schools together is 2.79.
I make around $50k.
My goals are to become at least a finance manager in a Corp FP&A dept for something like $80 to $120K salary, beyond that maybe a VP or even CFO. If I go the MBA route it looks like I have two choices:
1.) Get a low ranked part time MBA. I could go to where I graduated for near free and wouldn't have to take the GMAT since I graduated with a 4.0. This option would allow me greater chance to get finance manage/senior financial analyst jobs that say "MBA preferred". Technically I could get these jobs without an MBA but it would be easier. I would continue working while in school so very low opp cost.
2.) Spend 180 hours and take the GMAT with the goal of getting into a T25 B school full time, preferably UNC. I would spend a lot of time on the application as well, making sure my story, EC, and essay are aligned and solid. Would need a 700+ gmat score. Goal here would be to take on $100k debt but make $110k right out school with a much faster career projection. I realize the likelihood of getting in is not great.
At this time I'm not considering a T30-T60 school, because I don't think it is a better option than option 1.
So would you spend the time to take the GMAT if you were me? I'm really struggling with this, I want to do option 1 but 180 hours is no joke if my chance is only 5%.
Thanks!!
DO you really need to study for 180 hours? Maybe you can study for the GMAT under a short amount of time? I bought a $29 Princeton prep book and study for two days before I took the test (decided to apply to bschool on a whim so I only had a week to take the GMAT before the deadline) and I went from 640 on the practice test to 770 on the real test. I totally thought I would need more time to study too. Just do a practice test to see which area is your weakness and focus on practicing that area and you should be fine. 180 hours sound really overkill to me. By that point you would be so sick of looking at the GMAT that you can't perform on the real test anymore!
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