GMAT Basic Training Part One - Overview

At my previous organisation, a place a consistent reader will probably hear about repetitively because I learned so many lessons there, one is introduced to the organisation through a week-long focused training session that has come to be affectionately called "Boot-camp". It is based on an intense agenda of sessions and workshops designed to empower the participant with the tools needed to succeed in the high-paced atmosphere and culture of the organisation.

My efforts to study for the GMAT could do with me going through such a boot-camp session. Unfortunately I don't have a dedicated week to spare solely to GMAT studies. I balance my MBA efforts along with my normal daily job, my efforts to reboot a small business venture as well as my commitments to several local non-profit organisations. Thus I came up with the idea of GMAT Basic Training. It would in the end, contain all the items of an agenda for a GMAT BootCamp, but stretched over a period of time rather than compressed into a week.

For my period of time I chose two months. My target date to write the GMAT would be at earliest May 17th, with June 7th being my final deadline. These dates may seem odd until one realises they are actually Saturdays. I have to write the exam on a Saturday, as the location of the exam centre is in San Fernando, a city in south Trinidad, while my full time job is in Port-of-Spain in north Trinidad, several hours away even with the best of traffic on my side. Time off from my full-time day job is not an option.
I was also conflicted on whether I should discipline my efforts to a specific date, but I had to bear in mind that the dynamics of my full time job could leave me in a crunch period and in office on a particular weekend. Realistically, the flexibility had to exist somewhere for something to change if needed, and since GMAT is a flexible date exam, it is the obvious de facto candidate.

I broke my GMAT Basic Training into the following two tracks which I worked on (and continue to work on) in parallel, namely, preparing for the actual GMAT examination and selecting which schools would receive my results on the day I wrote the examinations. There was a bit of meat in each track, so I'll go into details on each in its own future posting.