LSAT guru Steve Schwartz over at LSAT Blog drew my attention to some evidence that studying for the LSAT makes you smarter. Really!

Here's the technical language from the study:

[W]e examined the effects on cognitive performance and brain structure and function of 3 months of intensive preparation for the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT).... Behavioral and brain imaging data were collected at two time points, spaced 3 months apart, for all participants (N=51). After training, the LSAT group performed more accurately on our transitive inference task.... In contrast, controls’ accuracy did not change across the two time points. Surprisingly.... three months of reasoning training was sufficient to alter resting-state functional connectivity between left IPL and RLPFC.... Our preliminary LSAT study findings... suggest that reasoning training leads to improved reasoning ability through repeated co­-activation and subsequent strengthening of fronto-parietal connections. 

- from "Relational reasoning: Neural mechanisms, development, & plasticity" (PDF p7, 9)

In plain English, as translated by Steve: "The evidence comes from a recent study in which a group of students who studied for the LSAT for 3 months improved their reasoning abilities far more than those in a control group." Read Steve's full write-up here (cool brain images included).

Now, I'm not a scientist, so I can't attest to the study's validity or methodological soundness. I have no idea if it's been peer-reviewed, and I don't have the requisite training to poke holes in the findings. But the findings don't surprise me, because I've long believed that mastering LSAT skills requires you to train some big cognitive muscles (or be born with them), and I'm excited that there might be real and longer-term benefits to that training. (If, like me, its been eons since you took the LSAT, or you've never even seen one, try taking one under timed conditions, no fudging — here's a PDF of the June 2007 test — and see how you score. It's a good reminder of what LSAT takers are facing.)

I've also become convinced over the years that the LSAT measures skills that colleges should be teaching you, but often aren't. How many times have you been required to pull apart and analyze a difficult text, the words, the sentences, the meanings, the structure, the internal logic, the arguments, the correct or incorrect deductions, all at a fairly high level and with relative facility and speed? That's the foundation of the "critical reasoning" that you hear referred to so often in the context of a liberal arts education, and ideally you don't graduate from college without getting pretty good at it. But if your college hasn't made you do that over and over and over again, and do it well, then studying for the LSAT — when done right — should move the needle on those foundational reasoning and analytical skills. 

So good news: Studying for the LSAT is not a waste of time, and it's not just some hoop to jump through to get into grad school, or to get from Point A to Point B on your career trajectory. (I used to think the LSAT was just a hoop; over time, I've come around to this other view.) I know practicing for the LSAT is a hassle. It's time-consuming, it's repetitive, and sometimes steam comes out of your ears from all the mental gymnastics, but the end result is that you've picked up some important skills, and, if this study is correct, your brain has gotten better and stronger. How 'bout them apples?

Does everyone who studies for the LSAT end up with the cognitive equivalent of six-pack abs? Probably no more so than crunches give everyone six-pack abs. But if you do the crunches, your abs are almost certainly stronger than when you started. Maybe the same principle is at work here. So as much as it pains you, you can actually thank your evil genius overlords at LSAC for making you acquire these skills, and thank the good test prep programs for teaching them. (At much less expense than most colleges, to boot.) The LSAT as remedial training could and should be the subject of a book (to be written by someone smarter than I), so I'll just leave you with those thoughts for today. In the meantime, let this study serve as additional motivation for your LSAT prep.

I'm curious to hear what you think. Please comment!

Former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago Law School and a recovering lawyer, Anna Ivey founded Ivey Consulting to help college, law school, and MBA applicants navigate the admissions process. Read more admissions tips in The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, recently updated and available as an e-book. Follow Anna on Twitter (@annaivey), or come introduce yourself and join the conversation on Facebook.

The NYT published an exposé last year about conditional merit scholarships ("Law Students Lose the Grant Game as Schools Win").

In case you missed the article, it profiled the plight of law students who had accepted scholarships that would be renewed after their first year only if they maintained a certain minimum GPA. In other words, students who had accepted those scholarship offers risked losing — and many in fact do lose — those scholarships after the first year, and so they ended up having to pay full fare in years 2 and 3. They might even have turned down a higher ranked school in order to accept a scholarship that turned out to be worth only $ X (for one year) instead of $ 3X (for three years). The schools they accepted turned out not to be as big a bargain as these students had expected.

If you're in the process of weighing different offers, my advice is that no one should go to law school assuming he is going to be an academic superstar. No one. Not even people who were academic superstars in college.

Schools could offer all the disclosure in the world about their grading curves and what percentage of the class has an XYZ GPA at the end of the first year, but no amount of disclosure and fair warning will protect you if you assume in advance — despite elementary probability theory — that you are going to defy the odds and be a superstar in law school. You don't even have enough information at this point to know whether you're going to meet the average. (As Lake Wobegon reminds us, half the class will fall below average. Insert picky and accurate retort here about the difference between means and medians, but the point remains.)

This leads me to a couple of recommendations:

1. If a school offers you a conditional scholarship, ask hard questions about those conditions. What percentage of the 1L class clears that GPA at the end of the year? What about the end of the second year? What percentage of recipients lose those scholarships at the end of years 1 and 2? Even if you've already put down a deposit, it's not too late to ask. Slide a copy of that NYT article across the virtual table and see what they say, and then think long and hard about whether you should still move forward (see point #2, below). And if they don't give you that information, walk away, because it's too risky an investment, unless money is no object now or when you graduate. (If they're not straight up with you about this, they're probably not being straight up with you about lots of other important things either, like job placement.)

2. Don't accept a conditional merit scholarship UNLESS you are willing to pay for years 2 and 3 should you find that you don't meet the conditions. If the school isn't attractive or valuable enough for you to justify paying for two out of three years, don't go.

3. If you have just accepted a conditional scholarship and then have an epiphany that it doesn't make sense for you to risk paying for years 2 and 3, it's OK to change your mind. Really. There's a common cognitive trap called the fallacy of sunk costs, which basically leads people to think: "I invested all this money already, and I now regret that investment, but I have to follow through on it because I already spent all that money." That deposit money is spent whether you follow through or not, so the ONLY analysis that remains is whether that law school is a good investment for you *going forward*. If not, walk away. You're better off writing the deposit off as a bad investment now rather than changing your mind...

(a) ... after you've already started classes, because if you decide to back out after you've started classes, that will complicate your future law school applications if you decide to give it another go. Applying to law school as someone who has already attended law school in the past -- whether you attended for one day or one year -- creates its own separate application hurdles. If you back out before you officially register and show up for your first class, you've only lost your deposit, not "previously attended law school" (which is a disclosure you would have to make and explain on future applications).

(b) ... after your first year, when the sunk cost fallacy is going to mess with your thinking even more powerfully, and you'll fear having to explain to people why you "dropped out" of law school (vs. changing your mind during the summer before law school, which nobody considers "dropping out"). Even after your first year, you might still be better off leaving law school than throwing good money (and good years) after bad, but that's a situation you'd be better off avoiding now.

(c) ... after you've graduated from a law school that you already knew before you started was not a good investment. After you've graduated, your sunk costs are orders of magnitude larger, and there is no more future investment left to salvage. You are now stuck with an expensive turkey of a degree.

4. The same reasoning applies to aspiring transfers.  Here's another common trap:

"The best law school I can get into right now is School X. But I don't actually want to have to graduate from School X, because School X doesn't make sense for me in the long run. So I will settle for School X for my first year and make sure I have the grades to transfer to a better school afterwards."

Same logical fallacy, same overconfidence, same willful blindness about probability. If you wouldn't be willing to *graduate* from School X, do not accept an offer from School X. That's too risky an investment as well.

It sounds as if I'm discouraging you from going to law school. And in fact I am, *if* the law school you're saying yes to is not a good investment for you. For a number of reasons, you should have that coming-to-Jesus talk with yourself now rather than later. And that's advisable whether they offer you a scholarship for the first year or not.

Former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago Law School and a recovering lawyer, Anna Ivey founded Ivey Consulting to help college, law school, and MBA applicants navigate the admissions process. Read more admissions tips in The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, recently updated and available as an e-book. Follow Anna on Twitter (@annaivey), or come introduce yourself and join the conversation on Facebook.

I've received a few follow-up questions in response to my recent blog post on managing multiple waitlist offers: Is it really not OK to put down multiple deposits? Is there a rule about that? And how would anyone know, anyway?

Those aren't bad questions, not least because LSAC has danced around the subject for years, and tends to bury its official (and vague) position out of plain sight. They don't cover deposits of any kind in their current LSAC Rules Governing Misconduct and Irregularities in the Admission Process, for example. Or at least that I can tell.

They do cover it, indirectly, in their manual governing law school admissions offices, aka their Statement of Good Admission Practices, aka LSAC Statement of Good Admission and Financial Aid Practices. That manual is not actually directed at you, the applicants, but rather at the law schools. And they don't make it terribly easy to find. If you type "multiple deposits" into the search box on the LSAC site without quotation marks, the PDF shows up in the search results; if you type it in with quotation marks to search for that precise term, nothing at all comes up. You can also usually get there from the LSAC homepage if you click on the Resources tab, and then look under Publications. Here's the relevant bit from the 2011-12 PDF:

After April 1, except under binding early decision plans, every accepted applicant should be free to accept a new offer from a law school even though a scholarship has been accepted, a deposit has been paid, or a committment [sic] has been made to another school. To provide applicants with an uncoerced choice among various law schools, no excessive nonrefundable deposit should be required solely to maintain a place in the class.... A law school should clearly communicate its policies on multiple enrollment commitments upon admission.

Sticklers (and born-to-be-lawyer types) will note the phrase "... or a commitment has been made to another school." Are you not free to put down more than one deposit for existing offers (i.e. ones that aren't "new")? Is it implied that you'd have to withdraw the previous ones? Is a deposit a "commitment"? Not when you're free to back out of it, I would think, even if you risk losing your money. (Perhaps the closest analogy is to earnest money when you're buying a piece of real estate, but that's not a life experience too many law school applicants have had yet.) Argh, lots to puzzle through. And then, after all that, LSAC punts the issue to the individual law schools in that last sentence anyway. Is this another question on the LSAT? Sheesh.

It shouldn't be that hard to figure out what the official LSAC position is, but there you go. I'm not sure there is one, except perhaps that they discourage the practice, which is not the bright-line guidance one might hope for. The bottom line is that if LSAC wanted to ban multiple deposits, it could do so expressly (which it hasn't), and schools can do so individually if they like. So make sure you scrutinize the language of your offer letters. If there's no express ban on multiple offers, then you should be in the clear, at least where the official rules are concerned.

However... even if the practice is not prohibited outright, schools still frown on it, as I wrote last week. And by "frown," I mean that they really HATE the practice, because it messes up all their planning for the incoming class and stretches out the waitlist timeline, which in turn makes applicants miserable, too.

So here's the rule I would apply: Ideally, you wouldn't put down multiple deposits unless you have good reason to. Example: Your wife is waiting to hear back on her business school applications, and the two of you will be coordinating grad school locations. Or maybe you're still waiting to hear about a financial aid determination before accepting an offer. Those are good reasons in my book, because in both scenarios you still need an important piece of information to make the best decision for you.

What's not a good reason? Here's the most common: because you just can't decide. You've gotten into this school in New York, and that school in California, and this other school in Chicago, and boy is it hard to make up your mind, and gosh all three places might be interesting to live in.

But think back to when you submitted those applications in the first place. Did you really have no idea at all what your hierarchy of preferences was? Did you pick the schools out of a hat? Have you not given this decision any thought between now and then? You've had a lot of time to think about it, and it's time to pick a horse. Unless there is still a meaningful piece of information that you don't have yet, and that you need in order to make an informed decision, the choice isn't going to get any easier. It's time to make it, and to put down one deposit. If you want to pursue waitlists after you've put down your one deposit somewhere, that's standard practice, and perfectly fine (that's the "new offer" language in the LSAC rule above). But in the meantime, you should be able to figure out your first choice among the offers that you already have.

As to the question "How will they know, anyway," the answer is: Starting in less than a month (on May 15), LSAC starts sending law schools what are called "Overlap Reports," where admissions officers can see how many people who are (ostensibly) in their incoming class have made multiple deposits, and where they've made those deposits. Do you really want to get phone calls from those schools? You're likely going to end up at one of them, and that would not be getting off to a good start. Better to bite the bullet now, and be happy that you have these choices. The Germans have a great expression: Die Qual der Wahl, the agony of choice. Yes, it is agony, but isn't it a good kind of agony? Would you rather a school be assigned to you randomly? Didn't think so. Embrace the awesomeness of having done your best, gotten your results, and choosing a school. (Or choosing not to go to law school at all, if the results don't make law school worth it for you. That's OK too.)

What do you think? Am I being too harsh? And am I overlooking some other place where LSAC lays down the law for applicants with respect to multiple deposits? Do you have some more examples of good reasons? Please chime in.

Former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago Law School and a recovering lawyer, Anna Ivey founded Ivey Consulting to help college, law school, and MBA applicants navigate the admissions process. Read more admissions tips in The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, recently updated and available as an e-book. Follow Anna on Twitter (@annaivey), or come introduce yourself and join the conversation on Facebook.

To follow up on last month’s advice about GMAT preparation and timing, we wanted to offer some general comments about the role of academics in the admissions process.  Many candidates considering business school focus on the credentials they will hold and the network that they will join upon graduation, but it is important to keep in mind the academic experience at the heart of any MBA program.  Because a business school is, after all, a school, it makes sense to begin your consideration of your profile by thinking about your academic aptitude and track record to date.  Your performance in your educational endeavors up to this point will be treated as a predictor of your success in business school.

While this is all well and good for applicants whose undergraduate GPAs and GMAT scores are close to the average of students at their target schools (about 3.5 and 710 for the top programs), things become a bit trickier for candidates who fall below the pack in either or both of these categories.  Retaking the GMAT is always an option, but this can become counterproductive after the first two or three attempts, and there is obviously nothing to be done to alter one’s college marks.  If the other aspects of your candidacy are strong and you’re only lacking in one of these two academic areas, an effective strategy is often to use an optional essay to acknowledge that one of these numbers is below the school’s average and assure the adcom that the other is the more accurate indication of your academic ability.

Meanwhile, applicants who fall short in both of these measures – as well as anyone who simply wants to strengthen his or her academic profile or falls well below the average in GMAT or GPA – should consider putting together an alternative transcript that demonstrates a track record of As in quantitative coursework (e.g., in basic classes in accounting, statistics, calculus or economics).  These classes can be taken at any community college or even through an accredited online program.  This is a particularly sound strategy for candidates who focused on the social sciences or humanities in college and do not have a record of demonstrated success in quant-heavy disciplines.  Applicants can then point to this as a more recent – and therefore more accurate – reflection of their present abilities in a classroom setting.  While one or two classes can suffice, keep in mind that the more classes one takes, the more convincing this argument becomes (assuming strong performance in these supplemental classes, of course).

Of course, these are general guidelines about the ways that one might address a shortcoming in a single element of the admissions process.  For a more detailed evaluation of your entire candidacy and more comprehensive advice about your applications, send your resume to assessment@clearadmit.com for a free initial consultation.

About Clear Admit:

Ivey Consulting has partnered with Clear Admit to provide comprehensive admissions information and consulting services to business school applicants.  We’re excited to feature their regular guest postings here on the Ivey Files. Learn more about Clear Admit here.

What's the protocol and etiquette for turning down an offer from a school?

First check the language of that school's offer letter. Follow whatever instructions they give you. Do they want you to email them? Fill out a form and snail-mail it? Send your decision by Pony Express? Whatever they say, that's what you'll do. If they haven't specified a method, it's fine to email them at their admissions office email address. Here's a polite way to phrase your communication:

It's totally up to you if you want to tell them where you'll be accepting; they will be curious and might even follow up to ask.

Former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago Law School and a recovering lawyer, Anna Ivey founded Ivey Consulting to help college, law school, and MBA applicants navigate the admissions process. Read more admissions tips in The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, recently updated and available as an e-book. Follow Anna on Twitter (@annaivey), or come introduce yourself and join the conversation on Facebook.

I'm planning on putting a deposit down at School A in the next few weeks, but want to stay on the waitlists at some other schools.

From past applicants, I've heard that schools often instruct you to get back to them with a reply quickly (e.g., "tell us by Monday") if they accept you off of their waitlist. Let's say that I get admitted to School B off of its waitlist in May, and I like School B more than School A, so I say yes. Do I have to withdraw my applications from the other waitlist schools?

And if I then get admitted to School C, which I prefer to B, off of their waitlist in July, may I withdraw from School B, or am I now bound to School B?

Are you starting to sketch a diagram as if this were an LSAT question? Me too! Once you're finished sketching, the happy news: No, you are not bound to School B.

Here's the rule to apply: Unless you were accepted through a binding Early Decision program (in which case you would have had to withdraw everywhere else by now anyway), there's no obligation to withdraw from any waitlists after you have accepted any offer.

You do risk losing your deposit after you've put one down, but afterwards you are still always free to stay on waitlists elsewhere and accept an offer from a waitlist school. Nothing is binding just because you put down a deposit, whether your spot comes from the regular pool or from the waitlist pool. The deposit is basically the fee you pay to take your spot off the market and have it held for you; you're still allowed to wait for other decisions to come in. So as long as you weren't accepted to School A through an Early Decision option, you are free to stay on as many waitlists as you like and see what happens. And if all the stars align for you, that means you'll put down your deposit at School A, then receive and accept an offer from School B, and then receive and accept an offer from School C. Sweet!

Schools frown on the practice of holding more than one seat via multiple deposits, though, so if you accept an offer from School B, you'd be expected to withdraw from School A. And if you subsequently accept an offer from School C, you'd be expected to withdraw from School B. That frees up those seats at Schools A and B respectively to be awarded to other waitlisted applicants, who will also be having a very good day.

Fingers crossed that you get good news from Schools B and C, but in the meantime, congratulations on your hard-earned spot at School A.

(School names anonymized to protect the innocent.)

Read more waitlist tips here: Waitlists, and the Hell of Admissions Limbo

Former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago Law School and a recovering lawyer, Anna Ivey founded Ivey Consulting to help college, law school, and MBA applicants navigate the admissions process. Read more admissions tips in The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, recently updated and available as an e-book. Follow Anna on Twitter (@annaivey), or come introduce yourself and join the conversation on Facebook.

I recently passed my master's examination which is equivalent to defending a thesis.  Should I notify law schools of this?

Passing your master's exam is a big step towards completing your master's degree, so congratulations on that.  And yes, you should update your applications with that news. Any meaningful change in your educational credentials or profile constitutes a legitimate update.

In your update, explain what steps your master's degree requires, because not everyone will know that "passing a master's examination" is the same thing at your program as "defending a thesis" is elsewhere. That way, you can put your master's examination in context and give admissions officers a better sense of how close you are to the finish line. You probably won't be surprised to hear that a number of applicants start master's programs at some point but never get around to finishing them. The fact that you're on track to finish yours will be a good update for them to hear.

And if you haven't already done so, take this update opportunity to educate them about the nature of your master's program. In terms of caliber, there is such a wide variety of master's programs out there that it can be hard for admissions officers to know how rigorous they are unless you tell them. You won't need to take this step if you're in a well known master's program (e.g. MPP from the Kennedy School), but most master's degrees are not going to be all that familiar to law school admissions officers.

This is also a good time for me to remind applicants more generally that if they are still stuck in limbo — meaning, they haven't yet received a final decision on their application — they should not bombard admissions officers with gratuitous updates, because updates need to rise to a certain level of importance to merit an admissions officer's time. For example, it would not be a good use of her time to read updates about this 5-page paper or that 10-page paper that someone wrote for a class. As always, exercise some discretion about what information you send in to update your file.

Here's a test: if the subject of your update is something that would have merited a bullet point on your resume when you first submitted your application, then it counts as a meaningful update after you've submitted. If it wouldn't have merited space on your resume (or in your application more generally) back then, then it would not be an update you should send later in the application cycle either. In this case, passing your master's examination would be a good bullet to have on your resume, so that news is a legitimate update to your file. You can give schools that update via email.

More advice on updating your applications: Updating Your Submitted Law School Applications.

Former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago Law School and a recovering lawyer, Anna Ivey founded Ivey Consulting to help college, law school, and MBA applicants navigate the admissions process. Read more admissions tips in The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, recently updated and available as an e-book. Follow Anna on Twitter (@annaivey).

I've been reading your blog a lot as I have been going through the admissions process. I submitted my applications recently (I know, late in the season, but that's just how things ended up playing out for me) and I've been receiving "your file is complete" and/or "your file is under review" emails. Am I supposed to respond to these emails or will I just be adding to an already filled inbox brimming with annoying applicants?

Inboxes overflowing with non-essential emails are the bane of everyone's existence, especially during crunch times, and March is definitely crunch time for admissions offices. My guess is that the emails you're describing are just FYI emails, for a couple of reasons:

1. They are giving you FYI information: Now you know your file is complete, and that's information that you actually want to have. So far, the need for information is flowing one way.

2. There is no call to action: They aren't asking you to reply, or to send in some document they need, or to jump through any kind of hoop. If they had sent you an email saying your file wasn't complete, they probably would have added a call to action: please send us your missing recommendation, for example. But the way you describe the emails, they are not asking or information back from you, so the need for information is still flowing just one way.

3. Ask yourself why they are sending those emails: If you put yourself in their shoes, it's pretty clear that they sent you that flavor of email because they don't want applicants calling and emailing every two days to find out if their files have gone complete. The whole point of sending those emails to you in the first place is to cut down on the torrent of emails that they don't actually need, and that you don't actually need to send.

If you put (1) and (2) and (3) together, the result strongly suggests that the LAST thing they want you to do in response to their FYI emails is to generate FYI emails of your own ("FYI, I got your email that my file is complete, thanks!"). Would it help — and be to their own benefit — if admissions offices added "You don't need to reply to this email" to their FYI emails? No question. In the meantime, you'll need to do that analysis yourself.

The same rules apply to waitlisted applicants. When you receive an email letting you know that you have been waitlisted, ask yourself if it's an FYI email or a call-to-action email. The former tells you that you're on a waitlist, and they don't invite you to send or do anything else (except to take yourself off their waitlist if you're no longer interested). That means they just want you to sit tight. In contrast, the call-to-action waitlist emails will invite further activity from you in some way. They'll want you to fill out a form, or they'll invite you to send another essay, for example.

I'm glad you asked this question, because it actually involves an important life skill that will be important in your career. When you get out of school and into the working world (or maybe you're already coming from there), it will make your life easier, and your colleagues' lives easier, if you distinguish ruthlessly between FYI emails and call-to-action emails, and if you yourself use FYI emails (and the cc button, which functions as an FYI button) sparingly. I'm making a note to myself to do the same.

Former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago Law School and a recovering lawyer, Anna Ivey founded Ivey Consulting to help college, law school, and MBA applicants navigate the admissions process. Read more admissions tips in The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, recently updated and available as an e-book. Follow Anna on Twitter (@annaivey).

For all you “early birds” who are planning to apply to business school this fall, we wanted to offer a few tips on managing your time as it relates to the GMAT exam.  Because this is an important element for many applicants in determining at which schools they will be competitive, it’s best to prep intensively and get this out of the way early in the process.  Applicants should also keep in mind that the Next Generation GMAT exam, featuring an integrated reasoning section, will be coming out on June 5, 2012.

You should ideally be finished with the GMAT by mid-summer.  The reason for this is that you will want to reserve the months of August, September and October for essay writing, school visits, managing your recommenders and other miscellaneous application-related tasks.  The last thing you want to be doing in September is juggling the demands of GMAT prep alongside your MBA applications, your responsibilities at work, your extracurricular involvements, etc.

Of course, putting the GMAT to rest by mid-summer is much easier said than done.  Given the strength of the test-taking pool and the importance of earning a high score when targeting a top program, in order to be successful, you should ideally budget time for a GMAT prep course or 8 to 12 weeks of solid self-study.  You should then consider the fact that you may need to take the exam more than once.

Given these considerations, here is a rough schedule to follow:

April, May: Attend a GMAT prep class and spend as much as 2 hours each weekday doing problems; use the weekends to take full-length tests (under realistic, timed conditions).

June: Take the GMAT early in the month.  If you are unsatisfied with your score, work towards taking the exam again.  Ideally, you’ll take a short break of one to two weeks (to clear your mind) and then leave at least four weeks to prep for the second sitting of the exam.  Consider hiring a tutor to address your specific needs.

July: Take the GMAT again, hopefully achieving a score that is within the range of the MBA programs on your list.  If your score doesn’t improve, it may be time to reevaluate your target schools and expand your roster to ensure that your selection is realistic.

In some cases, it may make sense to mirror your work on the GMAT by simultaneously enrolling in a calculus or statistics class at your local university or community college.  While this is especially true for applicants who have a weak track record in quantitative subjects and need to build an alternative transcript, in general these classes can often help applicants get the most out of their GMAT preparation.

Good luck!  For more information about how the GMAT fits into the application process and on business schools in general, feel free to email assessment@clearadmit.com to learn about our early bird planning services or set up an initial consultation.  You can also download Clear Admit’s independent guide to the leading test preparation companies here.  This FREE guide includes coupons for discounts on test prep services at 10 different firms!

About Clear Admit:

Ivey Consulting has partnered with Clear Admit to provide comprehensive admissions information and consulting services to business school applicants.  We’re excited to feature their regular guest postings here on the Ivey Files. Learn more about Clear Admit here.