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Here are a couple tips on why you should take the GMAT. The opportunity costs are much lower and yield higher gains in terms of school ranking and merit scholarships. This can, in turn help you to save or later make 10s of thousands more than if you went to a lower ranked school without scholarships. It’s your choice.

The GMAT is a 3 hour test that measures your abilities to do basic grade school tasks under pressure and with tricky word problems. If you went to a good undergraduate, know your grammar skills, remember how to do your trigonometry, or took some advanced maths classes in college, you are probably fine, and only need to brush up.

If, however you have been out of school for awhile, it makes sense to take at least 2-3 months to study for this test. Who knows how well you will eventually do– a higher score could get you into your dream school with that starting salary of 120K, or you could garnish a merit scholarship worth 50K or even a full ride.

Thus, for your 3 months, you can make back gains of +900%! If you made 40K before, and now you finish school with a 40K scholarship, you just made back your annual income while going to school! If you got into a better school and started with a 120K salary because the recruiters liked where you went to school, then you made 3x return on your initial annual income! So sit and study for a couple months! You will like where it takes you .

Sooner or later, you will realize going to b-school is a bit different than undergraduate or even other professional schools. This is because b-school is a microcosm of the real world, where one balances academic, social, and professional obligations.

1. Learn to systemize everything

In the corporate world, for better or worse, everything is categorized into processes. Yeah, it sounds boring, but this is the best way to get into the corporate mindset. This is necessary to learn to not shake the boat– don’t change processes because your superiors will get angry!!!!

2. Create a complex system design

In engineering an Integrated circuit is one component, fully capable of one routine, that is encased with many other components in one board. Overall, one product, such as a car will have 1000s of boards.

This logic is taken into designing business that works. This is different than merely labeling everything as a process. Systems engineering is a major concern to companies that create specialized products such as aerospace. The main thing is that system engineers need to work with project managers, who are managers by training and thus they cannot always relate with the actual workforce.

3. Personal downtime is critical

With running around so much, take time for yourself. Personal growth is the most important aspect of becoming an effective manager and then an effective CEO. Think of all the stress that caused a couple bad apples, like Bernoff Madoff. Don’t ruin your career by burning out later– start now. Take yoga, do a de-stress routine. Take care of yourself, and your company will take care of you, later.

Should I study an MBA for two years, or go to work for two years? Is the real world like the school environment of the MBA? This is a discussion that comes up time and time again. In fact, this is even challenging a paradigm for the young businessperson. Do you feel pressure to get that higher degree, or do you think your work in the real world will be recognized? Of course, once we get to school, we realize it is an artificial environment. So what works best? Does it depend, or can we generalize? I think that, even with all the simulations and case studies, it does have drawbacks to the real world. So,  does the versatile MBA beat the real world experience? Let’s analyze the basics of each.

The real world and small businesses

In the real world, you must struggle to do your job well, which means there is no experimentation– big brother is always looking out for you. I think this is a major hindrance to proper intellectual and business mindset growth. You don’t think it makes a difference? Guess again– the ability to plan, to manage, and to grow is something many small business owners get stuck on. Why is it that momma and papa pizza stores don’t grow? I would take a chain like Buca’s (TM) Italian, for example. They grew to an empire in less than 10 years– of course this was all laid out on purpose. It takes proper planning to achieve this.

The MBA bubble

When you are enrolled on campus, you will forget about your real world connections. Students tend to behave like students, so don’t be alarmed when you find yourself vivifying for popularity instead of nurturing connections to classmates. Of course, the most popular student will also reap friends and enemies. But I think there is a way to get past this bubble. For example, go on a study abroad. Or, have a set career goal. For example, if you want to be a McKinsey consultant, what do you need to do? Spend more time with Alumni– I think this is one of the primary benefits of a B-school.

That is my two cents for today. What are your thoughts?

Continuing from yesterday, where we posted 5 reasons to get an MBA, now these are the final top 5 reasons to get an MBA.

• 5. Learn to implement ideas into systems.

This is a skill that all successful businesspeople utilize. They are able to piece together a complex system by creating process after process, until a giant system is formed. This is necessary to have your business run without you.

• 4. The Prestige: look more sophisticated than your fellow co-workers.

An MBA is a meal ticket and it is also social status. Do you see an executives in Fortune 500 without it? How about wall street? It is good for main street, too.

• 3.  You can move to New York
• 2. You make enough to buy a house!
• 1. You have peace of mind once you graduate (at least for awhile).