hey everyone I'm Bhavin the CEO of Magoosh and i'm here with Tanner Abramoski who has
graciously offered his time to share his GMAT and business school experience with
with all of you so yeah thanks Tanner for sure anytime yeah so i really just want to
start with a little bit of background about you um can you share sort of what you did
prior to sort of deciding to apply to business school and taking the GMAT
sure uh so currently i'm a senior research analyst at McKinsey & Company i focus on the insurance
industry and prior to joining McKinsey i've been here for about three and a half years and prior
to that i went to Binghamton university it's a state school in upstate new york uh where i
studied actuarial science a lot of math classes a lot of probably risk probability and risk classes
things along those lines okay yeah and so what uh why'd you just decide to apply to business school
after you know three and a half years of work what was the prompt to move forward in that direction
sure so uh a few different things came to my mind one was um the type of role i was doing at
the at the time and still currently doing which is research analyst so uh being at a consulting
firm uh there's the consulting side the research side and um it came to mind that i would maybe try
to make the transition to the consulting side and one of the easiest ways to do that was to go to uh
get an mba and and go to grad school another is the industry that i currently work in so currently
i'm in insurance and although my background is insurance and it's all really done work wise um
i thought it's time for maybe a change up to get into some other type of industry something i have
maybe a little bit more passion in um a few things would be like um travel or sports or any type of
international development or things along those lines um and also just like kind of the age i was
at i felt like it was an appropriate age i started um to prep and transition and prepare for the for
the gmat and nba school right around like 25, 26 years old i thought that was a good time to do it
um you know i'm not getting any younger so this is like if i want to make a switch or some sort of uh
change in my career path this is the time to do it yeah yeah i have a number of friends who um
i'll say a range of folks i've met over the years who've done it at different ages but
uh common age is around that 25-26 mark where it's it's time to think about a career change um
and it sounds like you had a number of potential avenues you were considering so i how did you
approach you know even finding a business school and deciding which ones you wanted to apply to
sure uh so a few things i had in mind even before kind of looking to the schools i had sort of a
checklist of what i wanted personally for me i'm from the us i lived in the us for my whole life
but i've always wanted to live in europe or at least another country but europe was kind of
a key for me so uh i when i first started looking at schools i looked predominantly into european
schools um another thing in my i want to keep in mind was the reputation of the school so
i was looking to the more uh reputable schools so in europe this is LBS, INSEAD, ESA um and also
to to go along with this i've been teaching myself spanish for a few years and i've always
wanted to become fluent in another language and and spanish was always the one that um
was key to me i loved traveling around uh both to spain and to latin america so
any chance to increase my spanish ability it would be you know just a great benefit so that's how i
ended up choosing ESA in spain because not only do they have their your core mba classes which
are obviously taught in english but they have on the side um spanish classes that would help me
improve my spanish living in the country obviously speaking to the natives um i just everything kind
of like pointed in the direction of the essay so it was a great fit for me wow yeah it sounds like
a really structured sort of approach knowing that you wanted to go international knowing
that spanish was important and how many different schools did you apply to so round one i actually
only applied to yesterday and i was thinking like i mentioned that the european thing was a big
aspect for me but i did um consider US schools as well just as a as either a backup or as just
in case it didn't work out in europe um so in the in the us i was playing applied to both duke and
harvard second round but once i got into ESA i kind of you know thought about it and kind of
came to the conclusion that this is the school i want to go to there's really no point of
going further with the application process if i am ready like set on where i want to go oh it's great
you know when i was taking the gmat and applying to business schools years ago definitely did not
have that same level of conviction i was playing in a much later round but it's amazing that you
had such a structured process you kind of knew where you wanted to go that's awesome and it
certainly makes it i think easier than having to also do a whole bunch of applications and submit
them so let's move on to the gmat itself when did you decide to start studying for the gmat
and sort of talk about what that experience was like through sort of taking the test
sure so i started in 2019 actually um like in the fall of 2019 is when i kind of made the
decision that i want to look into mba schools and obviously the first step is taking the gmat
so i started studying right around that like i would say november december of um 2019 and this
is a good time for me one because the christmas break was coming up and and my with my work i get
a full week off um so i figured it'd be a good time to like really grind in that week and also
the winter months are a bit slower with work-wise so i knew it would be a good time that i could um
you know put in a couple hours after work um to study and also in the weekends there it was colder
there's not much going on so it was easier to kind of like you know dedicate a lot of my time over
the weekends to it um so i started right around november december and i took the exam february
first um and in that process all i really used was um a lot of like i mean there's a different
you know approaches to it i did a lot of the questions i would go kind of subject by subject um
and kind of like make sure i'd like somewhat master a subject and then move on to the next one
um and then just keep doing this process throughout
um obviously the test is not like that it's not you're gonna you're not gonna have subjects
you know laddered next to each other so obviously towards the end started taking the
practice exams where they kind of mix up the questions within each other um just to perfect uh
you know knowing all the basics and not just whatever the last subject i was studying was
yeah and um you know we obviously knew you'd used Magoosh i didn't know that that was all you mostly all you used
that's awesome obviously from our perspective that uh did you did you look at any of the official
material like the official books or did you do one of any of the official sort of mba.com tests
so i know there's two um i believe free test that comes with uh GMAC i believe it's through one yeah
that's correct yeah GMAC so i took those two um free practice exams but other than that it was
just Magoosh i have a buddy of mine from college recommended that he's taken to GMAT in the past
um i actually don't have too many friends i've taken the GMAT so it wasn't like
i was getting thrown out all these different ideas it was kind of one friend who i trusted
said Magoosh and i said okay sure let me give it a try and and that's what i ended up sticking with
yeah well um again thanks but uh the two we highly recommend using the two free practice exams i mean
um basically the GMAC are the makers of the test and they're the only ones who use
actual sort of test content all of us included web companies have to create our own content so you
know it's we we do our best but it's never going to be the exact same um uh let's talk about how
like uh those two practice tests when did you sprinkle them in were they towards the end or
did you actually like take one at the beginning to just see what your baseline was how did you
use those sure so once i went through all the material on Magoosh i took one um and then after
i went through all the material on Magoosh i started taking the Magoosh practice exams so it's
kind of like um you know get all the lessons out of the way take the GMAT practice exam then start
taking the Magoosh practice exams just to get more into like the flow of um the tests like timing and
the atmosphere and then towards the end of that is when i took the second one like towards the end of
my studying just to see get a good idea of what i could potentially get on the on the real exam
okay and then how did you do on the practice exams and then also in the real exam sure so if
my memory searched correct my best on the practice exam was 6.90 but um on the real exam i got 7 30.
so i i like from my background i've um like i said i studied actuarial science and i've taken
a few of the actuarial exams so like i kind of really knew i was a pretty good test taker um but
it definitely worked out well because i improved from you know for the point from my practice exam
best practice exam to the real exam so i guess i like to pressure a little bit yeah yeah it's
interesting i know for a lot of folks the pressure is almost uh can hurt them and and sometimes lower
this corn we sort of recommend like study and test like as much of a test like condition as you can
but yeah maybe you're thriving on the pressure there's something to that you're in the zone
and that sounds you said it was your best practice exam we got a 690. so some of the other practice
exams sounded like they were lower so you're you're able to score quite well on your actual
test for sure i think they were right around the 690 mark but i remember that number being like the
best that i've gotten on the practice ones yeah and do you remember the breakdown between your
uh math and verbal score yep it was a 48 uh for math and 42 for verbal okay and i'm guessing um
you know based on your background and how much math you did did you the math maybe came a
little bit easier than the verbal or no um you would think and like it definitely i would say
a lot of it is also kind of math questions that i took back in like high school not even college
um because they're just like basic or not basic but like geometry and and things that like i never
really had to take in college um so it definitely took me some time to get called to speed but once
i started going through the lessons i kind of remembered like oh this is how you do that i
forgot then i remembered um so definitely got caught up to speed the verbal part for some
reason like i just when i'm just like speaking and writing emails i just kind of like already have
these thoughts in my mind like oh that this part is a plural so this part should be plural so like
it kind of came a little bit more naturally as strange as it sounds because my background's math
um but just the way that like yeah the way that i usually try to um like present myself i always
try to kind of make sure everything matches together and that's a lot of what i mean there's
different parts of it but that's a major part to me at least about the the verbal uh section
okay so let's dig in a little bit to get specific for the people who are thinking okay i've heard
you know uh tanner used Magoosh he did these other practice tests he was able to score above 700 you
know which is awesome but like on a weekly or daily basis were you carving out time every day
how did you like make the time how many hours were you studying if you can sort of walk us
through a week i think that'd be really helpful sure so i would say a typical week after work i
would do about two hours a day maybe peppered in within work if i had some some free time i would
also like any type of free time i had i would make sure to open it up um also make sure i kind of had
a decent amount of free time because constantly opening and closing is probably not the best
strategy either but then the weekends like i said i started in the winter um and i'm from
new york and i was living in boston at the time there's really not that much to do in the winter
so i wasn't missing out on much so i would go like to the library or study in my house but
i would you know start at 10 or 11 in the morning and do for like five or six hours um
and then i still had time at night to do anything if anything was going on um but
really didn't feel like i was missing out much and and definitely was doable um to be able to do it
both while working and um studying at the same time okay so two hours a day after work and
then longer blocks on the weekend and about how many weeks or months did you study for
i would say let's see i would say all december all of january my test was february 1st so pretty much
that's two months right there and then maybe a little bit of november as well um but it was
it was kind of like a like i said most of the time was that schedule i set and then right around like
christmas break like from christmas through new year's um it was just pretty easy because i didn't
have work so i would study you know far like kind of like the weekend schedule five six hours a day
through that time um so that kind of like ramped it up a little bit before the test okay yeah and
it's nice to have that time where you don't have to work so you can have more time and yeah taking
the test uh in february so you're able to take it in person this was sort of pre-pandemic right or
more or less pre-pandemic yeah looking back um i mean obviously i didn't know at the time
but yeah i guess i got it in there within like a month month and change of when everything started
shutting down yeah and then um one thing i'll mention i looked at your luggage profile ahead of
this that i think you did 1600 practice questions so you really um uh it's impressive and i think i
want to highlight that for other folks to know that you know you can't just do 100 questions
and then assume you're gonna see gains but you're really sort of committed to going through a lot
of the practice questions and when you were review did you have a strategy for how you
reviewed material um like uh reviewing the things you missed or watching videos for certain kinds of
questions or was it more just kind of in the flow let's see uh i would say just like at a higher
level more in the flow i do remember um like after i like they have lessons where it's like you know
10 or 15 minutes i want to say but there's also like mini lessons after each question um if most
questions i say would have that um again this is like over a year ago or around a year ago but i
i have a good somewhat good memory of it um but yeah if i got a question wrong i would definitely
take a look at the video a lot of the questions kind of related to each other if you remember like
one or two formulas you were able to get through a few of them so um also kind of had like a notebook
of different like formulas especially for the math part um and then you know kind of just keyed up on
the specific formulas a little hard to remember um but yeah i mean like going through each kind
of different subject within math um definitely helped and um like i said Magoosh makes it pretty
easy to like nail something down if you're if you're having trouble with it for sure
yeah i i think the thing that you're referencing so yeah we have video lessons that cover like
you said maybe 10 minute video lessons given topics but then after each question there's a
like what we call a video explanation like one to two minutes to throw as a walk through so i think
right we we definitely recommend when you miss a question like it's a quick way to see someone
um sort of approach it um so switching gears a little bit now you took the test pre-pandemic but
now you're applying to business you already you already know where you're going and now um sort of
in a situation where like the pandemic is here and sort of unclear like what the future holds and so
um how how are you thinking about business school now are you still as excited as you
were have they communicated anything about sort of what the experience is going to be like
sure so uh ESA the specific school that i'm going to um they have been in a hybrid
kind of situation um since the pandemic started actually i believe they did it in the spring
as well but i know for sure for the fall this is what they've been doing um so that makes me
believe that one um it'll either be the same like a hybrid mode where i have half classes in person
have classes online or two depending on how things go from here until fall could be even better could
be almost totally full um and i'm also somewhat more of an optimistic about the situation um
so i hope uh with vaccines coming in and um socialist i think social distancing keeping out
that um by summer fall we'll be getting a return to somewhat of a normalcy um and yeah i mean this
is kind of a bit more um i guess like in depth but i know right around like the 2008 um economic
recession there was like somewhat of a it was kind of like a good idea to go to MBA school just to
um i don't know kind of like recharge i guess or or you know see what opportunities come
afterwards and this is kind of like somewhat of a similar situation um during the code so
we'll see how it goes yeah i i think i mean you're right during sort of when there are big sort of
economic sort of externalities it's a good time often to go to business school and sort of reset
um so yeah before we wrap up i'm curious if you have any tips for think for any a prospective
person who's thinking about going to business school uh anything that sort of helped you along
the way either from a business school standpoint and then also like if there's a specific GMAT tip
that comes to mind be curious about that as well sure so just kind of like the idea of getting into
business school for me like i said about the industry change career change but also just me
personally i'm i'm kind of a type of person that likes change it's hard for me to stay in this
particular like situation for for a long time um so i kind of took a look at my situation and i
was working McKinsey as a research analyst and you know while i could go down this path for the next
10 20 years and make a solid amount of money and have a good life but is that like really what
i want to do or is there something like more out there that i'm kind of striving for so that's why
one of the main reasons why um i thought business school was a good idea for me at this
particular time and then again for me personally this varies on the person but um the just
environmental change of going to living in another country for two years like that experience i'll
you know i'm looking forward to a lot and i can't imagine anything that would
equate to what i'm going to experience there um and then particularly to the to the GMAT um
obviously it's an important part of getting where you want to go depending on what type
of school you're looking to go to um definitely helped me a lot that i got a a score above 700
um and yeah like i said Magoosh was the only really material i used so it worked for me
i promise we're not paying Tanner for this uh yeah thanks um well i
appreciate you taking the time appreciate you sharing your story congrats on getting into school
you wanted to get into you know that's ultimately what matters the GMAT score is just a means to an
end and i'm hopeful that you'll be able to attend school in person and have the full experience but
if not i'm sure it'll still be quite good i hope so too all right thanks yup for sure