Should I take the GMAT?

[jon868686]

Hi,

I bought a couple books (arco gmat prep book and the prep book with actual questions) a couple of months ago and have been studying off and on. I know this is not the way to study to get a good score so that's not what i'm unsure about. I'm unsure whether or not I should take the gmat now because I don't even know if I am going to use it in the future. I plan to take the CFA in the summer so I will need a lot of study time for that. That gives me a few more months to study for the gmat. Unfortunately I know I have a long way to go because out of the questions that I work on I probably get around 70% right for both sections, not very good. So the few months may not even be enough time.

What if I don't take the test and take it in the future, when I know I need it? How much harder have you found it, years down the road into your career?
Has anyone taken it anyway when they thought that they didn't have as much time as they needed? How have you done? Did you regret that decision?

Any advice is very much appreciated.

Thank you.

[jon868686]

Sorry if this post is jumbled, I posted this late.

Please if someone doesn't mind giving me their thoughts, please let me know what you think. I would really appreciate it.

Let me re-phrase my question:

Have any of you taken the gmat or known someone who has taken the gmat who ended up not using it or finding out that they didn't have enough time to study enough to reach their goals but took it anyway? How did they feel?

Thank you,

Jonathan

[StaceyKoprince]

I took the GMAT and ended up deciding not to go to business school. Though I guess you can say I do use my score - just in a different way. :)

Here are some data points to consider:
- the scores are good for 5 years
- most people spend about 3-4 months studying
- the longer it's been since you graduated from college, the lower the average score for that age group
- on the test itself, the vast majority of test takers get between 50% and 60% of the questions right, regardless of scoring level. So when you say you get 70% right, that could be a good thing. What matters is the difficulty level of the questions - so you need to get to the point where you can consistently answer about 60% of the questions right at the difficulty level that you want AND in the given amount of time.

So, start by taking a practice test. See what you get and spend an hour going and looking up what the people who get into the schools you like score. See how far away you are from that range to get a better sense of how long it might take you to get there. Then think about whether you're going to go in the next three years (I say three instead of five because, well, most people have no real idea what we're going to be doing in 5 years). If so, consider taking it now while your "school" skills are still relatively intact.

Good luck!