Online MBA Forum

GMAT scores are key to your acceptance in your chosen business school. Many people take a long time working on their GMAT, and because you can take many tries at the test, you can work to improve your scores.

GMAT is essentially about good literacy and numeracy abilities, plus developing tools to study and research well. There are a number of different organisations that specialise in helping you to improve your ability in these areas, and some specificially aim to increase GMAT scores. You can spend a lot of money doing this, or you can simply work carefully over a period of time to improve your skills.

As GMAT is so central to gaining your place on an MBA program, you will be keen to do as well as possible in the tests.

Gaining a good score on GMAT is vital if you want to attend a specific business school to study your MBA. First line schools demand high GMAT scores, as these are predictors of how well students will do on their MBA - vital to a business school reputation as well as to the graduating student.

However, MBAs are recognised wherever they come from, so if you can't achieve the very highest scores, don't despare. You will find that you still have a choice of school - take a look on some of the GMAT and MBA websites, they will publish different school's GMAT requirements so that you have a good idea of what you are aiming for.

Of course, although GMAT scores are very important, you also have to pass an interview with your prospective business school. For many establishments personality is as important as GMAT scores, along with past experience, as many schools try to compose classes of people who can learn from one another as well as from tutors, lecturers and other materials.

Ok, so you've decided that you need to improve your qualifications, and you think that an MBA is for you. How do you go about finding an MBA program that will suit you?

Well, the first thing is to work out what you want to do, a general MBA or one of the specialist programs. Take a look at what is offered by looking at some of the business schools web-sites. You will also be able to tell who does online MBAs and who only offers MBAs in the traditional classroom fashion. It will take some time for you to work through all the information; make a top 10 issues list, and then score each institution on each issue. This will give you an idea of which programs are most fitted to your requirements.

Once you have narrowed the choices down, you need to talk to the individual institutions about their approaches to study, and concrete issues such as the GMAT scores that they will require.

I've just read failing economist's remarks about specialist MBAs. First, I decline to comment on his assertation that he is weird (although I'm sure if pushed I could find something to say).

Secondly, I understand what he says about an MBA being about an education to ensure a general view of management; however, you can only reach that if you understand the basis from which the student approaches it. The job of a specialist MBA should be to understand that basis.

Third, most senior management still have a specialist function that they are responsible for, and have a requirement to understand the way in which that function will support the overall strategy of the organisation. The Chief Information Officer will always be working within their specialist sphere of influence, but will construct an information strategy that supports the strategic plan of the company, and will be responisble for implementing that strategy in the operations plan for their area.