GMAT Exam

I graduate with my undergraduate work in mechanical engineering next summer, and then it’s off to grad school! BYU has a graduate program in Product Development where, upon completion, you receive both a masters degree in mechanical engineering and also an MBA. The program usually takes 3-4 years to complete. Product development is the process of creating/inventing/designing a new product (that’s where the engineering comes in) and then building a company around the product to market it, sell it, and profit from it (that’s the business side). I love engineering and I love business, so this program has been very appealing to me.

To get accepted, you have to apply and get accepted independently to both the MBA program and the mechanical engineering masters program. This means I have to take both the GMAT and the GRE. As the business school is much more competitive to get into, I’ve been more worried about the GMAT. I’ve been studying for it over the course of the last month.

A week ago on Saturday, I went up to Draper to take the test. It was kind of interesting how tight the security was! I almost felt like I was going into a high-security prison, or something. You have to show them your ID, and they take your picture. They take your fingerprints, and they even have a little device you put your hand on that reads the vein patterns in your palm. I half-expected the DNA testing to come next... :) Then you have to pass through the security station. You have to store all your belongings in a locker. You have to (literally) turn your pockets inside out. If someone has a long-sleeve shirt, they make you roll up the sleeves to prove you aren’t hiding any notes. They check your arms and hands for writing. Then they escort you through the electronically-locked doors into the testing room.

The actual testing room is triangular-shaped. Two legs of the triangle are lined with about 7 computers each separated by divider walls. Each station has video and audio recording. The third side of the triangular room is a big glass wall. On the other side of that glass wall, a man sits and watches your back the entire time you take the test. For notepaper, they don’t use paper; instead, they give you a little spiral-bound notebook with about 8 laminated sheets of paper in it, and they give you an erasable marker (almost like an overhead projector pen). When you complete the test, they again check your ID, lookup your picture in their system, and take another palm vein pattern reading. Your fingerprints, photo, palm pattern, and the four hours of audio and video of you taking the test are all sent to back to GMAC with your exam answers.

The test itself has three sections: writing (essays), quantitative (math), and verbal. The quantitative and verbal sections are both graded on a scale from 1-60, and these two scores get combined into your composite score (out of 800). The writing score is reported separately. I was pleasantly surprised and very pleased with my scores!

Section	Score	Percentile
Quantitative	49	87
Verbal	44	97
Total	760	99
Writing	4.5	37

So, now we basically have a lot of decisions to make and options to consider. The middle 50% of applicants accepted for the MBA program at Harvard Business School scored between 700-760 for the class on 2012. I may still apply for the joint product development program at BYU for next fall, or I may work a few years after graduation and apply to Harvard or some other top business program.