I took my GMAT for the first time and got a 680 (Q 47 V 36). I am not very happy and I am confident that I can do better, but I don't if it's worth the time and effort or if I should focus on my applications instead.

This is my profile:

- Hispanic (Currently living in Colombia) but I was born in the USA even though my parents are both Colombian.
- Went to school at the University of Alberta in Canada (3.3 GPA)
- I lived for a year in Australia while in high school

Professional background:

- I worked at HSBC while I went to University
- Also an ACCTG 311 TA while in University
- Work at a fund of funds as an analyst
- Worked at Coca Cola as a financial planner
- 2 years and a half ago I retired from Coca Cola and set up my own investment bank boutique firm. Things are going quite well, we have very important clients and we represent very big international PE firms in Colombia.

Even though I have my own company, an MBA is something I've always wanted to do and I am confident that is going to help me take my company to the next level.

The schools I want to apply are:

- Duke
- Harvard
- Insead
- Cornell
- MIT
- Babson
- Stanford

Should I retake?

Thanks for the help!

Hi there,

Thanks for writing in. If you are confident that you score at least 20 more points than I think your profile would benefit from the bump, especially with your HBS/Stanford applications. You should be competitive at Babson/Cornell/Duke without the retake, and it would help a bit at MIT/INSEAD. At this point you are likely looking at Round 2 applications, so if you focus now you should be able to have time for a retake and to get most of these schools in.

Best of luck,

Daniel Richards
http://www.mbamission.com

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