lack of planning

MBA is a huge decision to make and what I'm going to talk about is not exactly new. Deciding to do an MBA is not something that can be done at the blink of an eye or even within a few hours. It takes a lot of thinking, research and the entire process involves bringing clarity in life. The biggest gap in my plan was lack of schools to apply if I don't get through my dream schools. Its funny that I was never overconfident that I'll get the best schools but I did think if I don't I'll know where next to apply. Let me explain in detail and with timelines. After years of thinking I thot this is THE time for me to apply for MBA's. This was in April-May. Started reworking on my GMAT in May with the only thought of getting above 670. I did look through forums for school search with complete focus on Europe but not really much on backups. June mid onwards I was only focused on GMAT which did me good by getting me a 700+.
After this with IMD deadline closer, I aimed to get it done in a month which was my biggest stupidity. I also had to finish my IIMA exec app within 15 days. By the time I finished these two, I had only a month and half to go for INSEAD and LBS. The biggest loss of time was after these apps. I lost two months not doing much. I lost entire October in official work and looking through forums on European programs only to find out that the other programs did not appeal so much to me. Next came disappointments and ISB App. Again time wasted in holiday and feeling sad over zero interview calls. And I was left with December to finish my US apps - Duke, Cornell and was thinking of a third one at that time, turned out to be Darden. I explored Darden only in the second week of Dec which gave me very less time for anything else. and now I am in the first week of Jan going crazy over my apps and deciding to drop Darden for now. Fuqua and Johnson are almost ready to go out.

For easy look at timeline -

April - decided to do an MBA
May mid - started working on GMAT
July mid - took GMAT
July end - IIMA deadline
August mid - took a week long holiday from everything
August end - IMD deadline
October first week - INSEAD and London deadline
October - wasted completely
November end - ISB deadline
January first week - Duke and Cornell Deadline

If I look at this, I see that I've spent roughly fifteen days on each application which in my opinion is not enough time considering I was nose deep in work and socializing all at the same time. This however does not mean less time to research any of the schools. All the schools I've applied to until now (with the exception of Cornell and Darden) were in my purview before I made my decisions in April. I had been looking through their site and reading blogs of their students for a long time.

I sugges to give yourself six months to only look through which schools to apply to, why and which rounds.