Prelude

By summer 2006, I had had two years of full-time work experience, which prompted me to start contemplating the MBA. I knew that a GMAT score is valid for five years, so I could start preparing for the GMAT and get it out of the way first. I ordered the official guide (orange book) and the verbal guide (purple book), and started doing the questions timed. With my background in math, I didn't think that I would need the quantitative guide (green book).

However, I started to procrastinate after a little while, because I did not want to start the daunting task of preparing for the GMAT essays. I downloaded the topics and tried a couple, and my best record was an hour for an essay. How was I supposed to accomplish it in half an hour, on the test, twice?

Then work got busy, so my GMAT books sat on the shelf collecting dust for the next year and half.

For the record, when I did the diagnostic test from the OG 2 years ago, I got "above average" for reading comprehension and sentence correction, and "excellent" for the other sections.

About This Blog (and myself)

January 11, 2009

Hello. I am attending the full-time MBA program that starts in May 2009 at the Queen's School of Business in Canada. During my application process, I have found several MBA blogs (listed on the right) that proved to be extremely helpful, and I thought I would start one as well to share my own thoughts and experience.

I especially highly recommend my favourite blog, as the author provides a very detailed account of his journey. Mine will be somewhat similar but will probably not repeat what has already been documented there (overlap of what we do in class, for example). I do realize that my application experience is probably not a typical one, but nonetheless I hope it still provides some insight and is of some help to other applicants.

I'm also going to backdate the entries so that the timeline will be more obvious. Some of the entries, in particular those concerning the GMAT, I have posted before on a separate forum.

A bit about myself:

I have a bachelor's degree in computer science from a few years back and have mainly worked as a technical consultant since graduation. I would like to use the MBA to switch from technical to management consulting. My undergraduate grades are likely amongst the worst that Queen's will ever accept, but I also have a 99th percentile GMAT score.