With a GMAT score that put her in the top eight per cent of all test takers in the previous three years, Marina Martin, a marketing consultant in Vancouver, figures she can get into the MBA program of any of the Ivy League schools.
“The GMAT in itself is not the most difficult exam,” says Ms. Martin, who took the Graduate Management Admission Test last September. “But as you get older, you lose certain concepts that you learned in school, and that can make the exam somewhat challenging.”
Administered by the Graduate Management Admission Council in Reston, Va., the GMAT is a four-hour exam that assesses reading comprehension and logical reasoning, analytical, writing and mathematical skills. GMAT results, which are good for five years, help MBA schools choose which students to accept into their programs.
While schools base their admission decisions on a body of material that includes undergraduate records, application essays, work experience and letters of recommendation, they do assign significant weight to GMAT scores. In a survey of 288 U.S. MBA schools taken last July and August by Kaplan Test Prep – part of Kaplan Inc., a New York private education provider – 48 per cent of admissions officers said a low GMAT score is the biggest application killer.
“You really can’t get away without any kind of preparation,” says Brent Hanneson, who runs Leap Education, a Vancouver company that offers private tutoring for MBA candidates. “I see a lot of really smart people who struggle with the test, even engineers who struggle with the math part because they don’t know the appropriate test strategies.”
In the past, reviewing books that published sample questions was a good enough way to prepare for the GMAT, says Mr. Hanneson, who also works as a program advisor for the University of British Columbia, which offers GMAT preparation studies through its continuing education department.
But as test takers over the years have grown increasingly savvy about GMAT-acing strategies, getting a top score has become more difficult.
“Your mark is essentially a ranking amongst other people, so the bar keeps rising because everybody is learning these strategies,” says Mr. Hanneson. “You’re at a strong disadvantage if you don’t get help preparing for these tests.”
What, then, is the best way to get GMAT-ready?
Dr. Ian Rakita, associate professor and director of the Goodman Institute of Investment Management at Concordia University in Montreal, says a GMAT preparatory course is always a good option since it commits test candidates to studying for a designated period of time.
“It can provide a structured setting for GMAT prep and lead to a support network, wherein potential students can build on one another's strengths as they receive guidance and tips from qualified instructors,” he says.
However, a prep course can be quite costly and is not the only option that will lead to successful results, says Dr. Rakita.
“If a candidate is committed, organized and disciplined in their approach to studying, they are just as able to attain a great result,” he says.
Indeed GMAT prep courses can range from $545 for 30 hours of in-class instruction with Oxford Seminars in Toronto and Vancouver, to $1,600 for 42 hours in-class with Veritas Prep, the Malibu company with Canadian classrooms in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
Online courses don’t necessarily come at bargain prices. Kaplan’s “on demand” video courses cost about $450, while New York-based Manhattan GMAT’s “live” online courses – where students join a live class via the Internet three hours a week for three months – cost $1,090.
There are also private tutorials with GMAT experts such as Mr. Hanneson, who charges $150 an hour for a one-on-one session conducted by Web conference.
GMAT prep courses typically cover two areas: content – for example, grammar and the more esoteric aspects of math, like factoring and algebra equation solving – and test-taking strategies.
The latter is particularly important, since the GMAT is timed and many of the problem-solving strategies taught in school can add minutes to the time it takes to answer certain questions.
One time-saving strategy, for example, calls for estimating an answer to a math question, instead of doing a precise calculation.
