As far as practice exams go, the CFA Institute gives you two resources:
1) One full-length, 240-question, six-hour mock exam written by the Institute itself, which is supposed to accurately represent the content of the real exam. This is provided as a PDF that you print out and answer with pencil-and-paper (like the real exam).

2) Two 2-hour, 60-question sample exams, which appear to be written by a third-party test prep provider, and are taken through a web browser. Annoyingly, these exams cost an extra $40 each.

This weekend I took the full-length mock exam. The result was a somewhat disappointing 58% correct. Although the CFA Institute doesn’t provide the actual percentage you need to pass the exam, the internet says that the passing score is about 70-75% correct. To be on the safe side, I am aiming to get 75% correct, which would be 180 out of the 240 questions. Based on my 58% correct result from the mock exam, I only answered 140 questions correct, so I need to improve by 40 more questions. I’m glad I took the exam this weekend since I have another three weeks to study and improve. I feel much better prepared after reviewing the answers from the mock exam.

After reviewing the answers, I came to this conclusion: many of the questions I had missed required memorizing very specific formulas or very specific facts. For example, they expect you to memorize how to calculate over 20 different financial ratios, or know the finer points of accounting differences between US GAAP and IFRS. I think this level of detail is what makes the exam so difficult – there’s just an enormous amount of material that needs to be memorized. In real life, I would just dump the calculations into Excel; but of course the exam would be easy in that case.

On the plus side, a good portion of the questions are qualitative  and can be answered correctly if you have a solid grasp of  finance fundamentals; I did reasonably well on these types of questions.

At this point I would estimate that I’ve studied for about 150 hours, and I’ve spent $1,255. I’m glad I took the practice exam this weekend; I’ve spent the past week reviewing it and I’ve now memorized another 50 formulas :-) I may wind up spending another $49 and purchasing a full-length mock exam from Schweiser for $49. There’s certainly no guarantee at this point that I will pass, but I’m going to put in the work over the next few weeks and do my best.

Author: Matt Kirisits.

1. I scanned through the Quant section and tried to estimate the number of new questions. For Problem Solving section I counted 66 new questions out of 230; for Data Sufficiency it was 44 new questions out of 174. Overall, that’s 110 new Quant questions, which is about 27% of the total. I didn’t look at the Verbal too closely, but I’d imagine the percentage of new questions is about the same. Keep in mind I estimated these numbers (Edit: I’ve read elsewhere that’s there a total of 156 new questions out of 907 for the whole book, so my numbers for Quant might be too high). 

2. The overall difficulty of the questions doesn’t appear to have changed. I didn’t see any new Combinatorics or Probability questions in the Quant section. Thus, the chief complaint with the Official Guide remains the same – it doesn’t provide enough practice with 700+ level questions.

3. For Integrated Reasoning, there’s a 10-page brief synopsis that introduces the 4 different question types, but no examples within the book itself. Instead, for practice IR questions, you have to visit the publisher’s website and register with a unique code that’s found in the back of the book. Once you register and create a login, you have access for 6 months. On the website, there are a total of 50 example questions; however, each question can have multiple sub-questions, as per the screenshot below:

4. Amazingly, the Integrated Reasoning sample questions allow you to use an on-screen calculator. This should help save some time on this section. I don’t think the calculator will be available in the regular math/ verbal section.

5. The Diagnostic Test at the beginning of the Official Guide hasn’t changed since the last edition

6. In the Analytical Writing section, the Analysis Of An Argument question is still in; the Analysis Of An Issue question has been removed.

That’s my first impression of the book; it’s available for order on Amazon here.

Author: Matt Kirisits.

The developers of the GMAT (the Graduate Management Admissions Council, or GMAC) have always emphasized that they’d like the exam to test the skills that are critical to succeed in MBA programs and the broader world of business, so this change was long overdue. The fact is that for many years, admissions committees haven’t cared very much about the Analytical Writing score. The essays are an annoying distraction that saps your mental energy at the beginning of the GMAT. Of course written communication is important, but the ability to write essays is not a critical skill in MBA programs or business in general. MBA programs are very diverse and have many international students for whom English is a second language, and nobody expects them to write grammatically perfect essays. One essay on the exam can be justified – admission officers might want to compare the writing quality to that of the student’s application essays. However, there’s no reason to have two.

The Integrated Reasoning section will involve questions that can be broadly classified as “data interpretation” – it will present graphs and spreadsheets, and ask you to draw conclusions and inferences from the data. Based on the Integrated Reasoning sample questions that the GMAC has published, I’d say this change moves the GMAT in the right direction. Interpreting data sets is a critical skill for business students and professionals. Some students are freaking out about the change, but I think that’s just because there’s “more math” on the exam. The new GMAT exam format is pictured below.

Here’s a summary of the new Integrated Reasoning section:

1. It will consist of a variety of questions that relate to data interpretation: using spreadsheets, graphs, and tables to extract relevant information. There are four questions types: Table Analysis, Graphics Interpretation, Multi-Source Reasoning, and Two-Part Analysis. Each set of data will have multiple questions – for instance, one table of data might have four true/ false questions that accompany it.

2. Integrated Reasoning will be 30 minutes long and will be graded separately from the regular quant/verbal score. The score scale hasn’t been published yet, but is supposed to be available on April 1st.

3. Admissions committees probably won’t consider it very important for the first year (the 2012-2013 admissions season), since they won’t have a solid basis for comparison. Jeff Sackmann had a good article about this.

4. The new GMAT Official Guide will apparently not have a section on Integrated Reasoning within the book itself, but there will a website that provides practice problems for the exam. I can confirm this once I receive the book in early April.

In a future post, I will provide solutions for the sample Integrated Reasoning questions that have been released already.

Author: Matt Kirisits.

The new OG. Get it, son.

It’s been three years since the publication of the GMAT Official Guide 12th Edition, which most of us know as the ‘red book’. At the beginning of April 2012, the GMAC will finally publish the new OG, the GMAT Official Guide 13th Edition. Apart from all the less important questions about this book, such as “How many of the questions will be new?” and “Will it have a section on Integrated Reasoning?”, we can finally answer the most important question: “What color will it be?” The answer is: Teal.

Those of us who first took the GMAT in the mid-2000s fondly remember the book at that time, the 11th edition. The 11th edition was bright orange, and it was heavy and thick. Seriously, they must have used an especially thick grade of paper, because this book was hard to fit in a messenger bag. As a result, it was difficult to surreptitiously carry around. Once the 12th edition came out, the publisher switched to thinner paper – it was more compact and easier to carry around. Thus, you could be more stealth in your GMAT prep.

The OG 11. Don't buy it.

The 12th Edition has been the standard comprehensive GMAT book for the past three years. As everyone knows, it has a red color – some might even call it ‘maroon’. There’s also the Quant Book and the Verbal Book, which are dark green and dark blue, respectively. Older editions of these books are light green and purple.

The current OG's.

Clearly, the most difficult problem the GMAC had when publishing the new OG was picking a new color – one that hadn’t been used before. They hunted around the color spectrum and found a new candidate: teal. It’s not quite blue and it’s not quite purple, so it stands out from the rest.

Looking into the future, what can we expect for the next version of the OG? Maybe a yellow one? Or perhaps a limited-edition, jet-black edition?

All Kidding Aside

Oh, and in case you were wondering, this new edition will have only 20% new questions – eighty percent of the questions will overlap with the 12th Edition. I hope the GMAC has added more probability and combinatorics questions, because those sections are severely lacking in the OG 12.

Also, from what I’ve read around the web, there will not be an Integrated Reasoning section within the new book itself –  instead, there will be a companion website about Integrated Reasoning. It’s not clear yet whether the website will be password-protected or not. In the meantime, I’ve preordered my copy of the OG13 and will post updates once I receive it in early April.

It’s interesting to be back in the position of studying for a standardized test. For the Level I exam, the CFA Institute recommends a total of 300 (!) hours of study time over the course of six months. That’s considerably more than a typical GMAT course of study, which runs around 100 hours. Once I received the CFA books, it made sense why they recommend so much prep time: there is a lot of material. There’s a total of six books and they’re 500-700 pages each.

I began studying in early February, so I’m actually aiming to pass the exam with an overall prep time of only four months. However, I figure I have a couple advantages. First of all, I already have an MBA, so I’ve learned some of the CFA material already at the graduate level. Secondly, a big part of the exam (20 to 50 percent) is related to financial statement analysis, and I have a decent understanding of this topic already. So I hope that I’ll be able get through the material on time.

That being said, there’s no doubt this is a very difficult exam, and there’s obviously no guarantee I will pass. Unlike the GMAT, the CFA exam is not scored – rather, it’s Pass/ No Pass. The pass rate as of June 2011 was only 38%.

Study Strategy For The CFA Level I

My general study strategy for Level I is as follows. For each chapter in the books, I begin by reading the “Learning Outcome Statement” in the beginning, which tells you what the testmakers expect you to know after reading the chapter. I then read the chapter one time and take very detailed notes. I try to make my notes detailed enough so I can re-learn the material by reviewing my notes instead of re-reading the books. I figure that I’m forced to follow this strategy because there’s simply too much material to keep re-reading the books. If I had to review the books themselves, I would never get through all the material.

The potential flaw in this strategy is that I am ‘flying in the dark’ – I don’t really know what is likely to appear on the exam and what is not. I have to use my judgment as to what to take notes on, and what to skip – it’s sort of like doing Reading Comprehension passages on the GMAT. :) However, each chapter in the CFA books does have the “Learning Outcome Statement” which provides guidance on what the testmakers consider important. The CFA Institute also published a general breakdown of the topic weighting on the exam.

Otherwise, I am trying to maximize the value of the official practice questions. Most of the chapters in the books have 20-40 review questions at the end, and I’m trying to treat these questions like the real exam. I’m only doing these problem sets when I feel like I understand the material and can fully focus on them. When I’m reviewing my results, I am keeping an error log and noting both the questions I missed, and the questions on which I guessed correctly. I’m also timing myself to get a general sense of how long the questions take.

Apart from the end-of-chapter problem sets, the CFA Institute provides two 2-hour “Sample Exams”, which unfortunately cost another $40 apiece. I am waiting on these until I get through all the material. There’s also a single full-length “Mock Exam” which is six hours long, just like the actual exam. I will probably take that in early May, a month before test day.

Realistic Study Planning

One thing I’ve found to be very helpful in my studying is to plan around my own lack of discipline. I have a full-time job, and I’ve discovered that I rarely have the energy or discipline to study after work. Instead, the best time for me to study (on weekdays) is in the morning, before I start work. On weekends, I try to put in a solid 2 hours in the morning, and then more time when I am free later in the day. Overall, this adds up to about 10 hours per week. Realistically, I think this about all I can handle while working my full-time job and tutoring the GMAT.

As of this writing, I’m midway through the second CFA book, Economics. I find this book to be completely uninteresting and Economics is supposedly just 10% of the exam, so I’m just trying to plow through it as fast as I can. I’m actually looking forward to the Financial Reporting and Valuation books that are coming up.

Author: Matthew Kirisits.

For the past year, I’ve seen the GMAT Pill mentioned on various online forums like Beat The GMAT and GMAT Club. The founder, Zeke Lee, has been active on the forums, and I’ve been impressed with the sample videos he has posted around the web. Recently I’ve had the opportunity to review the whole video series. Here’s my review in bullet point format.

- What Is the GMAT Pill? The GMAT Pill is essentially a complete online video course for the exam; it consists of five individual “pills”, one for each question type. The pills can be purchased individually, or the whole 27-hour package can be purchased at once. Since there’s currently a large discount for buying the whole thing, that’s the recommended option.

The videos are written and narrated by Zeke Lee, a Stanford grad who scored 760 on the exam. From the content of the videos, I can tell he clearly has an extensive background teaching the GMAT. He spends more time on important topics, and less time on unimportant topics.

The quality of the audio and visuals is fine. They’re not as polished as the videos from Kaplan or Manhattan GMAT, but this can be explained by the fact that GMATPill is a one-man show. Zeke appears to have created all the content himself, and I think there’s a benefit to this since he consistently refers to his core frameworks.

The whole GMAT Pill course is intended to be completed in about one month. When you purchase the course, you receive a syllabus that details exactly where you should be on days 1-30. That being said, you obviously don’t have to follow the syllabus to the letter; in fact, you get lifetime access to the videos once you purchase. Personally I feel you could watch the videos over the course of 2 months while working on Official Guide problems and you would be fine.

Surprisingly, the GMAT Pill actually has a 50-point score increase guarantee (conditions are described below). That’s pretty unique for a startup company – you usually only see score guarantees from the big players (Kaplan et al).

- How Good Is The Content? Over the past couple weeks I’ve spent a good deal of time watching the GMAT Pill videos, and my verdict is that the content is very good. It’s similar to the lessons you would get if you hired your own private GMAT tutor, and the overall cost is much less. The quant videos are comprehensive; as you work your way through the videos, all the various GMAT quant topics are introduced and discussed. The two quant sections (Problem Solving and Data Sufficiency) each have a series of “Core frameworks” videos, which are content lessons that describe how to approach particular question types. Additionally, each section has timed quizzes that you can do right within your web browser. The quiz questions tend to be challenging, and are actually labeled “600-level” or “700-level” questions. After completing a quiz, you see the results, and can watch an individual video explaining any questions you missed.

The verbal sections follow the same pattern, with one difference. For each verbal question, Zeke first answers it quickly through elimination. Then, he reviews the problem slowly and thoroughly, and explains the logic that helped him eliminate the wrong answer choices. This is the same method that I’d use if I was explaining a problem in-person to a student.

Zeke devotes more time to topics that appear frequently, and less time to topics that appear infrequently. For example, in the Sentence Correction pill, he spends 30 minutes discussing Subject-Verb Agreement, while he spends only 6 minutes discussing Active Voice vs. Passive Voice. That’s about the right balance – both topics appear on the exam, but you’re far more likely to be tested on Agreement.

- How Much Does It Cost? The price of the whole set is currently $337 if you purchase through this link.

- Who Should Buy The GMAT Pill? I recommend the GMAT Pill for:

1) Students who don’t have the time to physically travel to a GMAT class twice a week
2) Any new GMAT test-takers that want a full-length course that will walk you through the content of the whole exam
3) Students with a limited time frame of 1-2 months
4) Students who live in an area where there are no GMAT courses or GMAT tutors available

- Who Shouldn’t Buy The GMAT Pill? If you really like taking in-person classes, or you can only concentrate when you are physically in a classroom, then the GMAT pill is not for you. It’s a self-study course, so you will have to be disciplined about watching the videos while blocking out distractions like your phone, Facebook, etc.

One potential drawback when compared to the major test prep companies is that you don’t get access to their vast array of online resources. However, Zeke is clearly very active in responding to questions through email; in fact, in order to be eligible for the 50-point score increase guarantee, he requires that you contact him twice over a 30-day period.

50-Point Guaranteed Score Increase: The GMAT Pill actually has a 50-point score increase guarantee, which is unusual for a small company. It comes with certain conditions attached – but that’s true with any GMAT company guarantee. (For example, Kaplan has rather stringent requirements). The GMAT Pill’s requirements are in line with Zeke’s approach of ‘improve your score within one month’. To meet the guarantee you must:
1) Log in to the GMATPill site and watch the videos on 22 of the 30 days prior to your exam
2) Email Zeke with two questions at some point during the 30 days.

These seem like pretty reasonable conditions.

Does it have an Integrated Reasoning section: The GMAT Pill will have an Integrated Reasoning section which will be released in mid-May. If you preorder now, you’ll get full access to the new IR pill once it’s published.

Conclusion: I’d recommend the GMAT Pill as a viable alternative for students that want a complete self-study GMAT course. Like any product, the GMAT Pill has to be compared to the alternatives. On the expensive side, full-length courses from a major test prep companies like Kaplan or Manhattan GMAT cost $1200 and up. On the less expensive side, you can just buy the 3 Official Guides for about $50. The GMAT Pill is a viable middle option.

Zeke has posted a ton of free content around the forums and on his website, so if you’re interested in seeing some of his videos, you can visit the GMATPill website here.

Also, here’s my video review of the GMAT Pill – it’s a little long, but you can see the actual interface:

Author: Matthew Kirisits.

As a GMAT tutor, I’m always looking for new GMAT practice materials that will be helpful for my students. Over the past two years there has been an explosion of new books and online courses designed to help students improve on the exam. This includes startup companies like Knewton and Grockit, complete online video courses like the GMAT Pill, and new content delivery platforms like iPhone apps.

Of course, there are also standard textbooks available, and these materials can be just as effective. One example is Jeff Sackmann’s Total GMAT Math. I’ve been hearing about this book for a couple years on various forums, and I finally got a copy. Sackmann works as a GMAT tutor in New York City and runs the website GMAT Hacks. He’s been teaching the GMAT for over ten years; like many private instructors, he began with a major test prep company and then went off on his own. I’ve been reading his GMAThacks blog for a while now and I’ve been impressed with the level of quality content.

Total GMAT Math is available as a PDF for $49.95, or a paperback book for $59.95. I’ve been using the PDF and think this is a good option, as it encourages you to do your scratchwork separately (like the real exam).

GMAT Hacks Review

The first thing you notice about this book is that it’s huge – 430 pages in all. Sackmann includes literally every sub-topic of math for the GMAT. As a result, the book is extremely comprehensive. It was updated in 2010 and Sackmann has said that he periodically retakes the GMAT, so it’s likely that the material is up to date. Of the 430 pages, 260 are content and 170 are explanations. The explanations are one of the book’s main strengths – they are considerably more detailed than those in the Official Guide.

I was impressed by the organization of the book. Each sub-topic is divided into three parts: first, an overview of how to solve that question type; second, a question drill that reinforces the concept; third, a set of GMAT sample questions in the actual format of the exam (including answer choices A-E.) Here’s a screenshot of some GMAT Rate problems from the book:

GMAT Sample Questions

As mentioned, the book is quite comprehensive and covers every topic you are likely to see on the GMAT. Some readers may find the beginning of the book too basic – it starts with overviews of arithmetic and algebra. Yet even here, Sackmann adds value in his discussion of “Mental Math”, which are tricks that are designed to help prevent difficult handwritten calculations. I know from experience that many students struggle with decimal multiplication and division, so this section should be very helpful for saving time and preventing careless errors. Sackmann actually believes that you can never do any long division at all on the GMAT. I think that’s stretching it a bit, but you can definitely avoid many long calculations with his recommendations.

The questions themselves are very good, and they have the most important characteristic of GMAT sample questions: they closely model questions from the Official Guide. As everyone knows, the undisputed best GMAT book is the Official Guide for GMAT Review 12th Edition. The problem with the OG is that there are a limited number of questions and the explanations are often poor. Sackmann has based many of his problems on Official Guide questions, but his explanations are longer and much more comprehensible. Here’s the explanations to the earlier questions:

The GMAT books that I typically recommend are the excellent set of books from Manhattan GMAT, which I think are the best on the market. However, I always give students the caveat that some MGMAT question are too “far out” and unlikely to appear on the actual exam. Total GMAT Math doesn’t have this problem – everything in the book closely models official questions provided by the GMAC.

The book starts to get really good later on. I noticed that Sackmann devotes extra time and practice questions to topics that appear more frequently on the exam, such as GMAT Work problems and Number Properties problems. Every topic has at least 5-10 GMAT-like sample questions. However, for the more important topics, Sackmann adds an extra set of more difficult “challenge questions.” The fact that Sackmann organized the book like this demonstrates his extensive familiarity with the exam. These “challenge questions” provide an excellent extra set of example problems for those looking to score 700 on the GMAT.

GMAT Hacks Review Summary

In summary, Total GMAT Math is an excellent resource for students seeking extra questions and explanations that go beyond the Official Guide. The book only costs about $50, so I highly recommend it as part of a study program. To see the book on Sackmann’s website, head over there now. Click here to visit GMAT Hacks.

Before I discuss the schools and their respective rankings, I should mention that all ranking systems have inherent flaws and biases. Most rankings data is derived from polls of school officials (deans, MBA program directors, admissions officers) and depends heavily on reputation. Malcolm Gladwell recently wrote a New Yorker article trashing rankings systems in general and U.S. News in particular.

I also like this article from MBA admissions website Poets and Quant comparing MBA rankings systems. Clearly, the quality of an MBA program cannot be reduced to a simple rankings number. Even schools that are not nationally ranked may be especially strong in one particular area. For example, Loyola Marymount’s MBA program has a top-25 finance curriculum, while Pepperdine has a very strong social and environmental curriculum. So the best program for any individual depends on his or her particular interest.

Without further ado, here are the options for an MBA in Los Angeles. The list below only includes schools that are accredited by the AACSB, the accrediting body for MBA programs.

Jump To: UCLA – USC – Pepperdine – Loyola – CSUN – Others

UCLA Anderson School Of Management

The UCLA Anderson School is the top-ranked program in LA, and the only one ranked in the Top 20 nationally. Anderson is definitely the most selective on this list: to be admitted, you’ll want at least a 700 GMAT, a strong undergraduate GPA, solid work history, and excellent recommendations. You will also have to distinguish yourself in your application essays.

UCLA is known to be particularly strong in finance, real estate, and entrepreneurship. In the national rankings, it falls around 14th, so it’s not part of the ‘elite 8′ MBA programs. However, the real strength of this program is in the student body. For the aspiring MBA that wants to stay in Southern California, UCLA is the only top national program, so the students at Anderson are among the most driven, motivated people in the area. Many Anderson students get accepted into elite schools like Wharton or Chicago Booth, but choose to stay in LA for a variety of reasons such as the superior climate. :)

The field study part of UCLA’s MBA program is called AMR (Applied Management Research) and it takes place during the second year, over the course of six months. ULCA’s description is:

“This two-quarter challenge in the second year of the MBA program brings 80 teams of three to five students in contact with the organizational and competitive realities of business. Each team spends 20 academic weeks (October – March or January – June) for approximately 10 hours per week per person examining a specific company, industry, and strategic opportunity. Teams then develop a written and oral strategic implementation recommendation. Organizational partners range from mature companies to young companies. Partners might be close by in Southern California or as far away as Santiago or Prague.”

Essentially this means that each student team writes a business plan for a currently operating company. This is a very valuable experience with direct relevance to many post-MBA jobs. The list of companies that have participated includes 20th Century Fox, Capitol Records, the Los Angeles Opera, and Playboy Enterprises.

UCLA also has a part-time program called FEMBA (Fully-Employed MBA), which was recently ranked #1 in the nation by BusinessWeek. However, I would strongly recommend the full-time option. I am actually a graduate of the FEMBA program (2009) and in my experience, the recruiting was heavily biased towards the full-time students. FEMBAs are eligible to take part in the recruiting process which begins in the fall of the 2nd year; however, I found that employers preferred to hire full-time students for both jobs and internships.

UCLA MBA Class Profile:

Latest UCLA MBA Rankings:

• Poets&Quants: 17
• BusinessWeek: 17
• U.S. News & World Report: 15

Tuition & Fees: $81,966 (resident), $97,854 (non-resident)

Median GMAT: 710

GMAT Range (mid-80%): 680-750

Average GPA: 3.53

Acceptance Rate: 29%

Full-Time Enrollment: 729 (33% international)

USC Marshall School Of Business

The Marshall School at USC ranks only slightly below UCLA in the national MBA program rankings. In most rankings, USC is slightly outside the Top 20. The school is noted for being particularly strong in entrepreneurship and accounting, and US News ranks the program top-10 in each of those disciplines.

There are a few other areas where Marshall shines. The school is noted for having deep connections to the Asian business community. In fact, the field study part of the Marshall program is called PRIME, Pacific Rim International Management Education. This is part of the required first-year curriculum at Marshall. It includes courses in international business strategy and global economics. PRIME concludes with a 10-day overseas trip in which students “visit selected domestic and multinational companies and governmental institutions, to observe global operations and interview senior managers.”

Another area where USC is particularly strong is MBA-type jobs in the entertainment industry. Entertainment companies with local offices (such as Disney, Universal, and Fox Broadcasting) love to recruit from USC for jobs in finance, entertainment marketing, strategic planning, and business development. USC actually offers a formal Certificate program in the Business Of Entertainment which can be earned along with an MBA degree.

As an LA resident, I can throw in one caveat to attending USC. The school is not located in a great area of town. Housing is limited for grad students, so it’s more of a commuter school. Many students wind up living in Downtown, West Hollywood, or the Westside. Thus, the student body is very geographically spread out. This is contrast to UCLA, which is in a nice area with lots of nearby apartment options for grad students.

USC MBA Class Profile:

Latest USC MBA Rankings:

• Poets&Quants: 22
• BusinessWeek: 26
• Forbes: 32
• U.S. News & World Report: 20
• Financial Times: 57

Tuition & Fees: $97,800

Median GMAT: 690

GMAT Range (mid-80%): 640-740

Average GPA: 3.30

Acceptance Rate: 22%

Full-Time Enrollment: 518 (22% international)

Mean Age: 28

Pepperdine University Graziadio School of Business and Management

The Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine is the third-highest ranked MBA program in the LA area. It’s still somewhat selective: the median GMAT score at Pepperdine is 650. In the latest MBA program rankings, it came in around 78th in the nation. However, this number doesn’t include the whole picture. Pepperdine has a strong reputation in the Los Angeles area as well as a very large and diverse local network.

The school offers a wide variety of programs – there’s a one-year fulltime MBA, a two-year fulltime MBA, several part-time sections, and an executive program. Unlike UCLA, Pepperdine students pick an area of concentration from among five choices: dispute resolution, entrepreneurial management, finance, leadership and managing organizational change, or marketing.

Pepperdine’s field study program is called the E2B (education-to-business) Applied Learning Program. In this program students form a 5-person ‘consulting team’ and spend 15 weeks working with a local business. At the end of the program, students are asked to provide real-time strategic and operational recommendations to their companies. The range of companies that participate is very diverse – in the past, the program has included corporate giants like Coca-Cola and Cisco as well as local auto shop and software startups. E2B is similar to the field study programs at Anderson and Marshall, except its focus is more local than international.

“The student body at Pepperdine is very diverse. I’ve taken classes with surgeons, an oncologist, lawyers, and even a Navy jetfighter pilot. My classmates have included students that were alumni from Stanford, Caltech, Princeton, and other prestigious universities. On the other end of the spectrum, I know students from FIDM, Devry, and University of Phoenix that were accepted into the program and were actually really hardworking team players. Overall, the students at Pepperdine are really hardworking and really ambitious.”

Overall, Pepperdine is a strong program with a solid reputation on the West Coast. It’s an especially good choice for working students who are unable to hit the 700 mark on the GMAT.

Latest Pepperdine MBA Rankings:

• Poets&Quants: 78
• Forbes: 75
• U.S. News & World Report: 82

Tuition & Fees: $77,468

Median GMAT: 650

GMAT Range (mid-80%): 580-710

Average GPA: 3.23

Acceptance Rate: 79%

Full-Time Enrollment: 376 (24% international)

Mean Age: 27

Other Los Angeles MBA Programs

If you are unable to reach the GMAT score range of the schools above, there are a few others worth taking a look at.

Loyola Marymount University MBA:

Loyola Marymount really shines for its part-time MBA program, which is ranked thirteenth in the country by BusinessWeek. US News still puts the part-time program in the Top 50. This program even ranks ahead of USC – not surprisingly, 70% of the students are part-time. Interestingly, US News ranks Loyola’s finance program among the top 25 in the country. This is a major accomplishment when you consider the competition Loyola is up against. The finance curriculum is a major determinant of any MBA programs’ overall quality.

Latest Loyola Marymount MBA Rankings:

• Business Week: 13 (part-time program)

Tuition & Fees: $3324 per class

Average GMAT: 616

Total Enrollment (Part-Time): 102

CSUN MBA:

Cal State Northridge is an MBA program with a good reputation around the San Fernando Valley. The minimum required GMAT score is a 540, the median score. There’s no fulltime program – only an evening part-time program. If you live and work in the San Fernando Valley and intend to stay there after graduation, CSUN may be a good option. Especially if your company will provide tuition reimbursement.

Other CSU MBA Programs (Cal State LA MBA, Cal State Long Beach MBA, etc.)

The other Cal State LA are good options if you intend to stay local, or if your company will pay for graduate school. Although they may lack the reputation and network of the other program described above, they are still accredited and have a rigorous academic curriculum.

Anywhere Else (University Of Phoenix MBA)

Personally I would recommend against pursuing an MBA anywhere else in the LA area, unless your employer will give you full tuition reimbursement. The University Of Phoenix MBA program is not accredited by the AACSB, so unless you have very specific reasons why it will benefit your career, I’d pick a CSU school over Phoenix.

Author: Matthew Kirisits

For anyone who applied Round 3, it could still take several months to hear back from the adcom, as they are currently wrapping up the Round 2 applicants.

UCLA MBA Application Deadlines For 2011:

MBA Round 1

Application Deadline: October 20, 2010

Decisions Released: January 12, 2011

MBA Round 2

Application Deadline: Jaunary 5, 2011

Decisions Released: March 30, 2011

MBA Round 3

Application Deadline: April 12, 2011

Decisions Released: June 1, 2011

FEMBA Round 1

Application Deadline: November 3, 2010

Decisions Released: February 2, 2011

FEMBA Round 2

Application Deadline: February 9, 2011

Decisions Released: May 4, 2011

FEMBA Round 3

Application Deadline: April 27, 2011

Decisions Released: June 22, 2011

In September of last year, a student contacted me for GMAT help. She had already taken the GMAT and scored a 420. Her goal was to get into an MBA program at a local California State university. This school has a strong reputation around Los Angeles, where many professionals are alumni. The student’s scoring goal was 540, which was the average score for the school. Coincidentally, that’s also the current median GMAT score of all test-takers.

We began meeting once per week for two-hour sessions. Much of the time was spent reviewing targeted Official Guide problems in the student’s weak areas. We also reviewed several full-length GMAT practice exams. The practice exams were taken using the GMATprep software exams and Manhattan GMAT’s online CAT exams.

This student was smart, but somewhat inconsistent with her studying. She worked full-time and frequently travelled on the weekends, so the majority of her studying was in small increments during the week. She also took a couple of extended breaks from studying altogether.

After I tutored this student for about two months, she took the exam in late November. Her score was a 470 – an improvement of 50 points, but still disappointing. We had a long conversation to discuss the results. She told me that during the exam, she got into timing difficulty on the Quant session, and had to rush through the last five problems. She also got slammed by some difficult Reading Comprehension science passages about obscure topics. However, she decided to retake the exam once more.

I was glad to hear that the student was determined to give the GMAT one last shot. She scheduled her next exam for late December. During this month, we continued to meet once per week. She also applied to her target MBA program with the 470 score, and was rejected.

During the month of December, our third month working together, things began to click. (Side note: sometimes, it really does take that long to get used to the questions on the GMAT!) I could tell that she was becoming more skilled at solving problems on the Quant section. She became much more efficient, and she improved her timing as well. Previously, she was spending 3 minutes on difficult questions, yet still getting them incorrect. Now, following my recommendation, she would just make an educated guess after 90 seconds.

The net result was that she retook the GMAT on December 31st and scored a 510. We were both happy that she had improved, but disappointed that she wasn’t able to reach her target score. Nonetheless, she had now managed to improve 90 points from her original score. She submitted her new GMAT score to the school, even though it was still below their average score.

A few weeks later, the student called the admissions office of the school that had rejected her. On this call, she discovered that the school had an ‘appeals process’ in which you could ask for your application to be reconsidered. All she had to do was email the admissions office and request the appeal. She wrote the email, and heard back about a week later – she was accepted!

I can’t know the precise reason why she was accepted. When she originally applied, her GMAT score was a 470, and she submitted her new score of 510 a month later. I believe the admissions committee may have been impressed that she retook the GMAT and improved. This showed that she was serious about earning her MBA. Furthermore, the student took the initiative and called the admissions office to inquire whether her new score might help. This also showed her determination.

A third possibility is that the school was under-enrolled for the new class, and needed to fill more seats. However, even if this was true, she still demonstrated her commitment by improving her score and staying in touch with the school.

Everyone’s GMAT journey is different, and this student’s journey was especially difficult. She studied for over four months, and took the exam three times. However, in the end she was accepted to her school of choice! As of now, she has already begun taking classes and is officially an MBA student.

Remember that thousands of students are accepted into GMAT programs each year with a below-average score for their program. If you are persistent and show that you are serious, you may be one of them. If you live in L.A., write me to inquire about Los Angeles GMAT tutoring.

Key Takeaways:

1. When you begin to prepare for the GMAT, you should have between 2-3 months of relatively stress-free time ahead. You should not take any extended breaks (over 1 week) from studying. If you work full-time, leave your weekends open since you’ll be too tired to study for more than an hour on weekdays

2. During practice exams and on test day, make sure you use the correct timing strategies.

3. Even if you don’t reach your target GMAT score, BE PERSISTENT. Try to meet the members of the admissions committee at an information session, or get in touch with them through phone or email.

- Matt, www.thegmattutor.com