Rotman To The Core: How My GMAT Prepared Me For My MBA

I have a confession: My study habits are terrible. I just never needed to study growing up. In high school, I could get perfect scores on exams from reading the material once. Sometimes, I didn’t even need to read anything.

That changed when I did my undergrad at The University of Texas at Austin. During my first two years, I was reeling from discovering I could no longer rely on just attending class to get decent grades. It was a revelation that left me reeling until I found my feet in my last two years. No longer did I try cramming an entire semester’s worth of learning the night before a test. Instead, I kept up with readings, reviewed materials as we learned them, and practiced more problems than what the professor provided. These were the missing blocks of my study habits that helped me get A’s. This also helped me when I did my graduate diploma at The Auckland University of Technology.

Then I joined the workforce. In 13 years; the most studying I did was for our yearly compliance courses at my work. Basically, all I had to do was watch videos and answer questions. No studying required.

In other words, I forgot how to study once again.

This was a bad sign, considering I was planning on doing an MBA. Here, I would be studying subjects that were unfamiliar and did not come easily to me. I couldn’t spend two years finding my groove.

My solution? I trained myself how to study by studying for the GMAT.

To start, I signed up for a class online. Because I was pregnant and I had a toddler and a full-time job, I knew that my time would be limited. I needed structure and help from the course to get me on the right track.

“If you sign up for it, you have to finish it,” my husband Chris warned me.

“I will,” I said.

I meant it.

The price tag for the course ($1,399 USD) helped solidify that commitment, because I was not going to have that money go to waste. The course also promised a 100-point increase in my GMAT score or my money back. It seemed pretty low-risk.

That did not mean that I had an easy time with it.

My baseline practice test was a disaster. I had COVID-19 when I took it due to the course’s deadline, and I ended up with a 520. My target schools (including the Rotman School of Management, which was my first choice) had average GMAT scores of around 670.

I had a lot of work ahead of me and strategize a plan in order to succeed. Unwittingly, these strategies are what I’ve taken with me to Rotman to help me study for tests.

STRATEGIES FOR STUDYING FOR THE GMAT THAT ALSO WORK FOR AN MBA

The strategies that I outline below may seem simple. If it’s been a while since you cracked open textbooks, these may be good reminders on what goes into good grades.

1. Do more practice problems than just the bare minimum. This strategy was most effective for subjects that I was less familiar with. In my case, being a poet not a quant, I had to work extra hard on my Quantitative practice problems for the GMAT. As such, I did more problems than what was required for the class. This ended up being a boon as I brushed up on my mathematic skills, which are necessary for finance and accounting – two classes that have played a prominent role in my first year of my MBA

2. Keep up with the homework. It may sound simple to “just do the homework,” but there is a tendency to let things like readings slide and pile up. As a parent, I had to balance story time with my own readings for my GMAT class. I had to lose the mentality that I could have the night off and I’d catch up over the weekend. Spoiler alert, I couldn’t catch up once I fell behind. This was a great reminder that I still utilize today during my MBA courses.

3. Don’t wait until the last minute to do practice tests. Doing practice tests for the GMAT was especially important as we had to benchmark ourselves against that first test. I quickly learned that the stress of doing these practice tests last minute caused my scores to suffer, and I’d be scrambling to see where I went wrong. It’s the exact same thing for the MBA. With every midterm or final, my professors have posted practice tests and questions. Every single time, if I tackled those earlier, I learned where I had holes in my memory and was able to course correct in time for the final test.

4. Utilize office hours and any additional help. Here’s another confession from me: I’m terrible at asking for help. I hated doing it in my undergrad and I’ve hated doing it ever since because I am incredibly shy in person. However, my GMAT course broke me of this; I was constantly asking the lecturer for help or clarification to make sure that I understood the concept and could fully apply it. This helped me overcome my shyness. I now visit my professors and tutors whenever I do have a question or need help. This step is invaluable for an MBA, because you will need to be comfortable asking for help from your professor, your tutor, your academic director, your peers – everyone. And you’ll find that they are all happy to help.

PRACTICE (OR STUDYING) MAKES PERFECT

So did these strategies help me ace the GMAT? Truth to tell, I had bad luck when it came to taking the GMAT.  Due to circumstances and application deadlines, I ended up taking it two weeks after having a c-section when my daughter was born. (I wouldn’t recommend doing it that way.)

Despite this, I hit my GMAT goal.

While it’s not the highest GMAT score (let’s just say it wasn’t a 740… or a 700 for that matter), I earned that score and I’m extremely proud of it. Because not only did I achieve my goal, I also learned how to study again. And now that I’m in the middle of my MBA, I’m extremely grateful for the effort that I put into studying for the GMAT.

If you’re thinking about pursuing an MBA, but you haven’t studied in a while, I highly suggest using the GMAT as motivation to teach you how to pick up a textbook and practice with a goal in mind.

Putting blood, sweat, and tears into the GMAT sets you up for MBA success.

Erin Gulyas has been fascinated with stories ever since her Barbie dated her Swamp Thing action figure when she was three years old. Since then, she has turned this passion into telling stories for brands and companies to better connect with consumers. She comes to the Rotman School of Management at The University of Toronto with 13 years of experience in advertising and marketing. After graduating with a Bachelor Degree of Science from the University of Texas at Austin in 2009, Erin completed a Graduate Diploma in Advertising Creativity from the Auckland University of Technology.

She has worked as a copywriter at lead advertising agencies and companies in both New Zealand and America. She last worked for Blue Shield of California as the Senior Manager of Content and Communications, where she oversaw six writers and three digital media specialists to create 4000+ member-facing communications per year. In her spare time (what little there is), she’s a New York Times bestselling author when she’s not wrangling her two young children.

You can find her on LinkedIn, and if you like Star Wars, we’re already best friends.

DON’T MISS: ROTMAN TO THE CORE: WHY I DECIDED TO GET MY MBA (AT AGE 36 & IN A DIFFERENT COUNTRY)