I have been recently thinking while about going back to college to get my Masters in Business Administrator (MBA). I decided to start looking into the process of what it would take, how long, how much, and what to expect out of it.

Graduate Management Admission Test

Taking the Graduate Management Admission Test - or GMAT as its more commonly referred - seems to be the first step towards an MBA. Just about every school requires it and your score seems to play a decent role in your admission. Just like the SATs you can overcome a low score with good undergrad grades, solid work experience, and impressive references but it makes it much easier if you score well on the GMAT.

You can score between 200 and 800 on the test. From what I’ve read 720+ is excellent, 630-719 is very good, 570-629 is good, 500-569 is average, and anything below that is poor. Most schools post their accepted students average GMAT scores so you can get an idea of that they are looking for (rankings according to Business Week):

• Harvard (top 5 school)- 705 average score
• U of Maryland (top 25 school) - 656 average score
• Ohio State (top 50 school) - 655 average score
• Syracuse (third tier school) - 629 average score
• SUNY Albany (not rated) - 570 average score

Preparing To Take The Test

I thought about taking it on the fly with no preparation just to see how I would do, but then saw that it costs $250 to take the test so though better of that. Also your last 3 scores on the test are sent to the schools and the most common policy is to average the scores, so if I did really poorly and then decided I needed to study I would have to get a high score for it to average out.

So rather than shell out $20-$30 for a review book, I decided to check out what my local library had. They had 2 recent books in stock, Barron’s GMAT and Princeton’s Cracking the GMAT. The Barron’s book did not receive very good reviews on Amazon so I decided to go with the Princeton book. I haven’t had the chance to delve into it yet, but hopefully it will give me some good prep for the test.

Coming up.. a look into different business schools.

This Series - Thinking About My M.B.A.

1.) Part I - GMAT
2.) Part II - School Choices
3.) Part II.5 - Distance Learning