My 3 GMAT's

Dec 2005 – Part Un - In November the Kaplan course had, excuse the pun, run its course and I had booked my GMAT appointment at one of the testing centers in NY. Needless to say I was a bit stressed, and some strange developments had happened in my personal life. Long story short, I scored 630. Blargh.. blargh flargh blah! Mind you I was scoring in the mid 700 range on each and every Kaplan CAT I took, and the Ultimate Practice Test scored a 710, I thought I would at least get the same score on the real thing. Guess I was wrong. No applications were to be submitted at this time.

Feb 2006 – Part Deux – After returning from New Years in Poland, I was in another weird emotional state – the girl I was seeing was across an ocean and things were starting to get a bit stressful, additionally the titanium rod in my tibia was really bothering the living be-Jesus out of me. Long story short, Valentine’s day came, the girl flipped out, I was stressed out… Feb 18th GMAT – 580? What????? No way was I going to settle for this, plus I led myself to believe that the new format had thrown me off, which to a degree I believe it did. No applications were to be submitted at this time.

March 2006 – Part Trois - Need to wait 31 days… merd. I went to Paris at the beginning of the month where I was to see said beau. Well we broke up three days prior to my flight, instead I spent a wonderful weekend with friends who I hadn’t seen since college and I must say it was very good for my mental health, I unwound and came back to NY ready to tackle the exam. And then came March 10th, operation day… I got my rod out. Good news, no more pain attributed to the rod, bad news, plenty of pain attributed to the surgery, so on March 21st I took the GMAT for the 3rd time, exhausted, stressed out, and tired as I didn’t sleep the night before. Throughout the entire duration of the exam I thought my leg was going to fall off, wonderful 3/3 botched up due to something that I really had no control over. Oh, I scored a 600.

Screw it, I thought to myself, I’ll apply with the 630, I’ve got good essays, wonderful recommendations, let’s just see what happens. I submitted my apps as follows.

ESADE – March 26th
RSM – March 26th
IESE – April 8th
Imperial College of London: Tanaka – April 17th
Georgetown – April 18th

… and then something happened.