Military to MBA

The learnings from GMAT preparation to securing an Admit from multiple B-Schools – Military Applicant

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I am Maj Manish Kumar Pandey (Retd.). I took release from the armed forces after serving as an officer in the Indian Army for 10 years and as an Airmen with the Indian Air Force for 6 years. I wished to take up new challenges after 16 years in the armed forces and wanted to place my foot in the corporate world in a confident manner and for that, I needed good business education aka MBA from a reputed institute. I have been fortunate enough to have admit from IIM Ahmedabad, Calcutta, and Schulich School of Business, Canada and have been placed on Waiting List by the Indian School of Business. I would be joining the IIM A for its one-year MBA program (PGPX) in April 21 and would love to be of any help to those who are looking forward to this path. Here I share some of my learnings that I have learned the harder way, I hope it would be a good read for all of you.

My Background:      I am an Arts Graduate (68%) from IGNOU and a Post-Graduate in Business Administration (HR) (74%) from Symbiosis University, Pune. As you can see my education is all from Distance Learning and I am purely from a non-technical background. What I mean to say here is not allow anyone to say to you that it cannot be done – If there is a will there will be a way.

MBA from where – India or Abroad:        

Cardinal Rule – You should do your MBA from that country where you want to settle down.

Doing an MBA can be financially challenging and hence to ensure that you receive the Return on your investment (Finances and Time), it is important that you do your MBA from a country where you want to settle down. The duration of an MBA for people with experience can be from 2 years to 1 year. Most of the MBA program in European and Asian geography is for 1 year and in American and Canadian geography the duration ranges between 16 months to 24 months.

Doing an MBA from abroad can cost you to the tune of INR 1.5 Cr to INR 1.8 Cr. Don’t worry – no one pays it straight from their pocket – unless you own few oil wells in Saudi. Jokes apart, you will get your placements in companies in these geographies and you would get paid enough to meet your EMI commitments and clear the loan obligations in about 4 to 5 years. The rider is, you have to work in the same geography from where you peruse your education. If you do your MBA from abroad and then plan to come back to India for work, then the RoI will not work in your favor.

One year MBA is Executive MBA – Right?          Biggest Myth. One year MBA – the full-time residential program is treated as a full-time MBA everywhere. Executive MBA is offered in a mixture – some part is on campus and the majority part is through distance learning. The value earned is different in each case.

How should I decide which MBA program is best for me:         These pointers can help you decide

1.              Where do you want to settle down? – India or Abroad.

2.              What is the educational qualification required? – Some US Schools may not recognize the 3-year degree program as is being offered in India.

3.              What is the average class profile? – All B-schools prefer diversity in their classroom, see do you have anyone on campus from the military, use LinkedIn also to search for people who have been there and done that- speak to them to find out the attitude of the school towards military applicants.

4.              What are the fee requirements? – Scholarships/ Loan (* For Scholarships, plan to apply in Round 1/ Early Round of the Institute)

5.              What is the reputation of the School/ Institute in that part of the geography and what is the present ranking? – *Use only Financial Times MBA Ranking.

6.              What is the placement record for the institute?

7.              How does placement work? – In colleges outside India, colleges don’t offer placement services, students use the opportunity provided during various networking events and plan for their own placements. In India, ISB supports placement by having a dedicated team on it, in IIMs (A, B, C) the placement is student-driven with support provided by the institute to guide the overall process.

GMAT – How should I prepare and which resources should I use.

1.               Some cardinal rules:

a.    Preparing for GMAT is time-consuming – so have patience and let the learning take its time. Generally, it takes about 3 to 3.5 months to finish the Verbal Preparation and 1.5 to 2 months for finishing the Quant Preparation.

b.    Focus should be on developing ability and not running after reducing the time taken to solve the problem. If you have the ability you can solve the question at any given time correctly, but if you don’t have the ability then the probability of solving the given question correctly will reduce drastically.

c.     Choose your resources for preparation wisely and once you have decided then stick your full faith in it.

2.               Resources:

a.     Verbal (Trouble).            Believe it or not, we are pretty bad at it, and we are not alone. I will give you a stat for this at the end of this part (#). There are many resources available online and for people like us who have work commitments, this works best for us. Promise yourself that you will study every day and then take any online learning platform that you like. (Do good research and read reviews before paying)

Don’t use GMAT Official Guides during this phase of preparation. 

b.     Quant (Blame Asians).                        Yes, we are good at it and it is because of us that the quant standards have been set so high on GMAT. But that does not mean we can lower our guard. GMAT Quant is very notorious and if you are someone whose basics are not that great, well then the GMAT Quant will take you down and you will actually be a minority even among the Indians. So take your math skills seriously. There are multiple courses available on the net, choose wisely, read reviews, try courses, and then decide to invest.

* It may be possible that there are different platforms that you can use to prepare for Quant and Verbal.

(#) If you score Q51 (Highest marks of GMAT for Quant) then also you will be 97th percentile. I.e. if there are 100 test-takers then at least 3 would score 51 on the GMAT (They most probably would be Indian/ Chinese) but if you score V41 (Score in verbal out of max possible of V51), then also you would be at 94th percentile. – You can now see how much headroom is there when we are dealing with GMAT Verbal.

- So should I start with Verbal first or Quant or should I take both the things at the same time? Again, have patience – so start with either one of them. I would recommend starting with the part which is difficult for you and then move to the easy part.

- So should I take the diagnostic test at the start of the preparation or should I take it afterward? You would find people say it all over the internet – take the diagnostic to have a base idea and then move up from there. My recommendation is a bit different – Complete your GMAT Preparation first and then take the mock test. And then take that score as the base and improve on it.

- When you start your preparation always ensure that when you arrive at the second part of your preparation, you should not forget the first part. So if I would start my preparation with the Verbal part and when I reach my Quant preparation stage, I would generally solve at least 5 Sentence correction, 5 Critical reasoning, and 1 or 2 Reading Comprehension Passages daily – this ensures that the old concepts stay with you while you are learning new concepts.

- GMAT seems very hard to me – how did that person score so much? GMAT is a test of reasoning and not a test of your quant or verbal abilities – that said you should have a sound foundation about the basics of quant and English grammar to be able to apply logic during the exam. People find it difficult when they focus too much on a foundation and keep their thinking/ logical thinking cap in the cupboard. Always try to understand what is the actual intent of the question, which concept is it asking in the camo of something else which might be very obvious.

- If you are involved in too many calculations to solve a GMAT Quant question, the probability is that you are quite far down the wrong path.

How to take a Mock Test and which mock tests to use.

-       Always take the actual mock tests from the GMAC website. They give you a reliable score and a good measure of your abilities. Nothing in the market gets close to that. Two mocks are free and four more are available on payment. Recommendation – don’t purchase all at once. First, use two free mocks then purchase the other two and if required the other two.

-       Take the mock test in the same conditions as you would get on the test day. Simulate everything if possible.

-       Do a good review of the test answers as to how you did in the test. I would generally go like this:

·      Questions that I was confident answering and I solved correctly in a reasonable amount of time– Least important to me.

·      Questions that I had no clue about – Main area for improvement.

·      Questions that I got correct but had no idea why that answer was correct – Most Important.

·      Questions that I solved correctly but I took more amount of time – I would look for process-related gaps and how to improve on them.

o  I would then focus for one weak on these week areas and again take the mock to test myself.

o  Don’t take the mock test at least 5 days before your actual GMAT.

Online GMAT or GMAT at a Test Centre.

-       I personally feel that it takes me time to switch from one section to another section. That 8 minutes of the gap on the GMAT was a boon for me.

-       Plus you get your results immediately after the test if you take it at a center but if you take the GMAT Online then you will have to wait for 5 days before you get your results.

-       GMAT Online is a bit cheaper but trust me not all cheap things are good.

GMAT is just an exam, don’t let it mount on you and it is much better to get this monkey off your back as soon as possible for you to be able to focus on your applications. Even scoring an 800 on the GMAT would not guarantee you that seat in your desired B-School, so your aim should be to keep your score as close to 700 mark as possible and then focus on improving your application.

An interview invitation would come your way if you have a combination of a good GMAT Score and good essays in your application.

Application Advice.

B-School applications are very important. Almost on an equal footing with the GMAT. So you have to really know how to use that word limit given for the essays to make a mark on the admission committee.

What are MBA Application Essays all about?

-       Each B-School wants to know as to why you want to do an MBA. Have a solid reason for it. Without a good reason, the chances are that you will not be shortlisted for an interview also.

-       They ask you about your mid-term goals and long-term goals. These should be as realistic as possible. Lookup for profiles on LinkedIn to find that matches your profile and then see what career trajectories their professional lives have taken post an MBA.

-       They ask you for situations where you have displayed leadership skills or resolved a conflict or gone against your call of duty. You have to come up with stories from your work and narrate them in your essays in a manner so that the people from the outside world can understand the context.

-       Take help on your essays by getting them reviewed by someone who has gone through the process. – Yes, you can send it to me also – happy to help.

-       Be yourself while you write your story. Have faith in your ability that you only can tell your stories in a manner in which it is supposed to be told and the effect that it will have on the reader.

-       MBA Resume – Quantify your achievements. Make it in 1 page for the experience of 15 years and you may go with a 2-page resume if you have experience of 20 years.

In short, a lot of introspection and thinking goes in to complete your B-school applications and yes there is a fee for each application you submit, ranging from as low as INR 2,000 to as high as INR 18,000.

Each school has a marketing team, and their job is to get that admission fee from you. So when you submit your resume on a school website to seek advice on your candidature, invariably the girl/guy talking to you will make you believe that your profile is perfect for their school. But the catch is that the admission team will only have a look at your resume or your application only once you submit your application fee. So don’t fall for this marketing stunt.

Interview Advice.     Congratulations you have made it so far. You have improved your chances from a ratio of about 1:10 to about 1:3. Tips for Interview:

-       Wear your confidence along with your suit and most importantly smile.

-       There are many kinds of interview techniques, but you do not have to worry even 1% about it.

-       Prepare an elevator pitch for the interview which should be of about 90 to 120 seconds, and when they ask you to tell something about you, just deliver your elevator pitch. – You can reach out to me as to how to prepare it. It basically is a brief about you, your work, where you are in your career and where you want to take your career to, and how an MBA from that institute would help you reach your short term and long term goals.

-       Every school interview is different and you should surf the GMAT Club for interview debriefs to prepare for a particular school.

-       Try to get a few mock interviews done with your friends or someone you know (Again you can bank on me for this – happy to help).

Hope this document helps to clear many of your doubts and queries and if you still have any I am available on 9419262793 (Calling and WhatsApp), mail ID [email protected], and of course LinkedIn.