Many graduate and business school applicants underestimate the timeline for preparing for the GMAT or GRE and, more generally, don’t understand how that timeline relates to application deadlines. Every October, November, and December we tend to get inundated with requests from people who are in a panicked rush to get good test scores in advance of round 2 deadlines (in early January). We do our best, but truthfully it is sometimes too late and not all of these people make it to round 2 with the scores they want or need. Folks, it doesn’t need to be like this!!! One just needs to understand the proper timeline and then plan ahead.
The Graduate/Business School Timeline
Ok, so let’s start with the basics. First of all, the deadlines for business schools are different from those for other types of graduate programs (Masters or PhD programs in other fields). Let’s start with business school…
The picture is a little complicated because different business schools have different deadlines, so what follows is just the general picture. While some schools have rolling admissions, most schools have 3 rounds of admissions: round 1 is usually in September/October, round 2 in early January, and round 3 in March/April. That said, one very common misunderstanding is in believing that all 3 rounds are fairly equal or that there is a steady decline in one’s chances across the 3 rounds. This is not the case. Round 1 gives an applicant the best chance, so it’s ideal to be ready to apply in September. One’s chances decline a bit for round 2, but not by that much, and many people apply and are accepted in the January round of applications. But! There is a pretty steep drop off in the move to round 3: most business school admissions consultants tend to advise applicants to wait until the following year if they are not ready by round 2 deadlines.
One caveat to the above is that it relates only to regular admissions. There are also deferred admissions programs, like Harvard’s 2+2 program, that allow college seniors to apply to business school and then enroll a couple of years after graduating from college. Deadlines for these programs tend to be in April. And there are even “J-term” admissions as well, which allow applicants to start in January instead of the Fall, and the deadlines for these programs are different as well.
Finally, one quick mention here about other types of graduate programs. Most Masters and PhD programs have application deadlines around November or December. GRE scores tend to be less important for these types of programs than for business school admissions, but what follows about GMAT and GRE prep still largely applies since, in order to be competitive, you want to show up with a strong score. Anecdotally, in my graduate school journey, I received a special fellowship when I entered my PhD program (the fellowship essentially amounted to an award for a substantial amount of money), and I was told that the fellowship was awarded partly on the relative strength of my GRE scores. So GRE scores ARE important for MA and PhD programs and the below timeline is reasonable even for people applying to non-MBA graduate programs.
Leave Ample Time for GMAT or GRE Prep
This is definitely the part of the journey that people most misunderstand or underestimate. Let’s cut right to it: for someone who has a full-time job and cannot devote their every waking moment to GMAT or GRE prep, the process usually takes about 6 months. And that is just the typical case. For some people the process is longer and in the occasional case it is a lot longer! Yes, there are some people who can study for 2 weeks and get a 99th percentile score on the GMAT, but that is NOT the norm and you should NOT expect that. And don’t believe what your coworkers tell you – just because they say that they studied for a week and then got a ridiculously high score doesn’t make it true. People have a special ability to lie when it comes to standardized tests – I have even seen best friends lie to each other about their scores (I was tutoring both of them and knew what one was telling the other!).
How can this be so, you might ask? How can it take so long to prepare for the GMAT or GRE? The answer is pretty simple. It is a competitive and difficult test: because business school is so competitive, most applicants tend to work very hard and study a lot for the GMAT or GRE, and the bottom line is that you need to outperform most of those people! If most people studied 10 hours total for the test, then maybe you could study for 20 hours and outperform them. But the truth is that most people study for 100 to 200 hours, so very likely that is what you will need to do as well! We deal with many, many VERY smart people – just in the past year we have had 7 students who were graduates of Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, and ALL of them needed a significant amount of prep over many, many months to get the scores they wanted.
The other thing that people don’t anticipate and prepare for is the likelihood of retakes! Very few people take the GMAT or GRE only 1 time – average in our world is probably 3. So even if it will take you 3 or 4 months to get to a FIRST test date, it’s very likely that your prep will continue for another month or two. Both the GMAT and GRE have restrictions on how often you can sit for the exam. Test-takers must wait 16 days between GMAT attempts and 21 days between GRE attempts. The truth is that even without these restrictions, it usually doesn’t make sense to jump right into a retake anyway. Both the GMAT and GRE offer diagnostic reports after the exam, so it’s usually worthwhile to analyze where things went awry and spend some time trying to address those issues before retaking, and all of that extends the timeline.
The Applications Themselves
Finally, you need to leave time for the applications themselves! Every December we have students who are preparing for the GMAT or GRE and working on applications at the same time, and it’s not an ideal scenario. You’ll need to write essays, get letters of recommendation, etc., and all of that can be time consuming and stressful. Imagine if, on top of all the application stuff, you don’t even know if you’ll have the requisite score for the schools to which you are planning to apply. It really threatens to ruin the whole process – it’s much harder to perform well on the tests when that is the pressure you have put yourself under.
Final Thoughts
Ideally you want to finish testing a couple of months in advance of your application deadlines – this way you’ll have plenty of time to finish your applications without the pressure of the GMAT or GRE looming over you. Therefore, if you want to apply for round 1, starting in January is an ideal time. If all goes well, you’ll have your testing out of the way by the Summer. And even if unforeseen things happen that get in the way of GMAT or GRE prep or even if the prep itself just takes longer than expected, you should still be ready by round 2. Plus, let’s face it, committing in January to study for the GMAT or GRE is a nice resolution to have for the new year!
Of course, you could begin in the Spring or early Summer and aim to apply round 2 (at that point making it to round 1 becomes difficult, though certainly not impossible). And if you need assistance with the GMAT or GRE, we’ll do our best to help you reach your score goals no matter when you begin – the truth is that most people don’t plan ahead, so much of what we do IS help people in those last frantic months before the deadlines. But by starting in the Summer, you are not leaving yourself much buffer and if anything happens that impedes your progress, you will be under a lot of pressure to achieve the score you need while simultaneously working on applications, all as the clock is winding down to round 2 deadlines!
So do yourself a favor and plan ahead! Aim to begin your prep in January or February, if possible. And if not, at least be realistic and understand that your journey might exceed 6 months, especially if you factor in life contingencies, the likelihood of retakes, and all the work that you’ll need to do on the applications!