Starting the Road to a Possible MBA

This past May, Lauren completed her MBA program at Georgetown. She did amazing and also found a great job with Deloitte Consulting. We then spent the summer all over the place. We spend a month in India. Then 4th of July in Rochester for a wedding of a friend of Lauren's from high school. Next off to Atlantic City and Cliffside NJ to spend time with Lauren's grandparents. And then off to Miami for 3 weeks for me to work in my actual office for some time and to take care of some random work with others at the lab. ... so that is the summer in a paragraph, and Lauren starts work on the 8th....

Anyways... since for this visit to Miami we drove, we had lots of time to talk and think along the drive back. Plus along the way home we spend 2 nights, 3 days in Myrtle Beach, SC. So I had lots of time to think. I've been toying with the idea of following Lauren's footsteps and get my own MBA.  So with all this time, I came to the conclusion that an MBA would be useful no matter where my career takes me.

So step one... decide which schools to go to... pretty easy, since we are staying in the area for a few years since Lauren's job has us in the area. So basically my options are Georgetown, George Washington, American, Maryland and George Mason. As you can see Georgetown is crossed off the list... well, no, not because of Lauren's experience, but because I'm interested it tech, and Georgetown does not have a strong tech directed program. And based on the desire to do tech, really the two best programs in the area are Maryland (which happens to be one of the top ranked schools in the country and it specializes and promotes it technology program), and American which has lots of work in emerging markets and technology. Then there are GWU and GMU, both also happen to be part of the Federal CIO Certificate program which may be useful later along in my career.... On another note, they all have very good part-time programs.

So with step one basically out of the way, time to take the next step... the GMAT.... so a few weeks ago we walked into the local public library and Lauren noticed they had the new Princeton Review guide for the 2010 GMAT. I quickly skimmed the math and started on the verbal, but right away, I realized that I wasn't sure which sections I needed to study the most. Well logically I would  assume the verbal  section since that is the part I've struggled with the most on the SAT and ACT in high school, and also on the GRE after undergrad. But, that is not enough to go on since as everyone states, the GMAT is not a test like the others.

My solution to determine what to study.... take practice test. And that is what I did today. I expected to do better when I started, but when finished the math section I had a bad feeling.... And then the verbal.... well I knew  that was going to go bad. So when I finished... I was pleasantly surprised. It was not as good as I would have hoped... still below 600, but not by much, and like Lauren suspected, my math carried my score. What I assumed was a bad score on the the Math still put me in the 95 percentile against some of the average score listings I've seen  online and my verbal.... well we won't go there.

So next step... I need to review my wrong answers. From what I can tell, on the math I need to refresh my knowledge of some of the definitions and refresh my knowledge/tricks with powers and such. As for the verbal... well I need to study it all. I'm relatively okay with the basics, I just need to lots more practice and brush up my skills on the reading comprehension part.... not the comprehension part but the speed part... I remember there being tricks to use... I just need to look them up and again.... PRACTICE.

So as you can guess, that is what I'll be doing the next few weeks. My hope is to take the GMAT towards the end of September but no later than the first week in October... then based on score... I'll be starting the next step... filling out the applications.