Thinking of studying abroad? Know what to take — GRE or GMAT ?

Students who aim to pursue MBA from abroad often consider cracking a great GMAT score. For students coming from nations that do not have English as their primary language, getting an exceptional GMAT score becomes a challenge. Applicants usually take multiple hits to improve their score. But, with a confusing VA section mistakes usually spiral towards a low score. I have seen multiple students struggling at getting a good score at verbal.

An important fact that applicants usually miss in the application process is that getting a GRE score is comparatively easier than a GMAT score, especially for students with technical background. MBA applicants usually wave off the fact that MBA colleges take GRE scores and hence stick to GMAT. The fact remains that most of the universities and courses in the USA consider GRE scores in their admission process. There would be a handful of colleges that are strict and only accept GMAT scores.

The most efficient way would be to list the target colleges and individually check the application details for all of them before deciding to take GRE or GMAT. If your dream college accepts only GMAT score there is no rescue, but if the list is primarily of colleges that accept both GRE and GMAT, take a one month ahead date for GRE and start preparing.

Preparation primarily consists brushing your under tenth mathematics — basic chapters like profit and loss, geometry, percentage, ratio, roots and exponentials, inequalities, data analysis etc. There is a lot of scope of score improvement in Maths with practice, spend 30 mins practicing everyday for a month and you can crack a 96 + percentile in Quant section.

For Verbal, its more about assimilating full sentences and paragraphs. Knowing the right meaning to the words helps get a good score in this section. It helps in eliminating wrong options from the answers and eventually narrowing down to the right one. Do not get paranoid at the lengthy word lists available in the guides. When you open them, you will realize that you are either aware or you have come across a lot of those words. When you start segregating them, the list becomes smaller and easier.

Practice is the key to cracking a good score, hence take as many tests as you can before the test day. Small section tests are less time consuming and you can take them frequently. But, GRE as an exam tests your patience and endurance, hence practice to take at least two tests in exam like environment before taking the actual test.

For more details on the exam and how to crack a good score, you can write to pranidhi@thebigpie.co.in