How football world cup helped me beat GMAT (740)

Hi All,

I gave my GMAT exam on 14-August-2014 and scored 740 (49 Q 41 V) in the first attempt.

I am not going to discuss how to prepare for gmat or which is the best test series or which book to refer, there are lot of success stories you can read for that stuff. I am going to tell you how a game which I am not a huge fan of helped me cross that 700 barrier and touch my dream score.

First let's go back to when I decided to prepare for GMAT:

6-April-2014, 9 PM, India : I was waiting for my final result of one of the India's top B school, XLRI, Jamshedpur, those from India can relate well how excited I was for the result. By 9:30 PM the results were out on internet and I wasn't selected for both the program. I was totally heartbroken and my MBA dream shattered,
I slept early that day, I skipped the office next day and stayed in my bed for the whole time.

10-April-2014, 6 PM, India : I took a refreshing bath, cleared my mind and goggled 'how to crack GMAT'.

Lesson 1: You don't need any plan,book or mentor to start preparing; just start the journey and you can learn about other things later.

Now let's skip to football world cup, if you don't like football think of your favorite game world cup.

By this time I have done most of my hard work, I have read Kaplan, Official guide, 1000 series <check these out if you are starting> and other important stuff but I still couldn't score more that 700.
The problem was not that I couldn't solve the questions but that I couldn't keep up with the clock, I used to get very nervous at the end of sections and in the last 5-10 minutes of each section I couldn't just focus on questions, specially at the end of the verbal section all I could think in the last 2 minutes was final score.

It happens with us all, basically in a timed environment, we get very nervous and clock generally rules us and that not good at all!

So back to football, I was watching this game between Mexico and Netherlands, Everybody expected a victory for Netherlands but in the first few minutes Mexico got lucky and scored!
Think of it as a test taker who started well and attempted first 20 questions correctly.

But then Mexicans stopped attacking basically they reached their mental limit that's +1 lead on a big team such as Netherlands. Think of this as test taker reached what he think is his gmat limit,say 700, he basically never scored more that that.

But once Mexicans stopped attacking, Dutch players became very aggressive they kept on attacking the goal post again and again. Somehow they didn't get lucky till the 89th minute of the game but then the magic happened they scored the equalizer! and in the 91st minute of the game another goal!.

So that how Mexico couldn't reach beyond the Quarter finals or test taker couldn't reach beyond 700 because once they reach their limit they couldn't keep up their nerves!

Then in Semi- Finals Germany faced 5 time world cup winners, Brazil.
Odds were slightly more in favor of Brazil but in the first few minutes Germans scored a goal!
Naturally Brazilian's got little aggressive but here is the team who has no such mental boundaries and the Germans kept their attack on and looked for gaps in the Brazilian attack formation.
Finally they ended up humiliating Brazil by 7-1, think of it as the test taker scored 750!

One think which truly changed my perception was when the Mexico and Germany both were in their 88th minutes, Mexico ahead by 1 goal and Germany by 6 goals, Mexicans just want the game to end basically they were just waiting for the bell on the other hand Germans looks so energetic that they could play another game of 90 minutes and beat Brazil by 14-2. Basically Germans were not dictated by the clock, they didn't care about the clock, all they wanted was to score the goal till the moment the bell rang.

That's how you beat the gmat, don't think about the clock till the very last moment.
Don't think about just ending it, be that energetic that you could take another 41 questions down if asked for!

Other important thing that the commentator kept of yelling during every German goal was 'Clinical Goal'.
Clinical literally mean - very efficient and without feeling; coldly detached.
I liked the word so much that I kept on saying this word after every question during the last 15 minutes of the examination. It helped me remind that each questions is just a question neither a hard question or a easy question.
Think of it as you are taking a penalty shot, the keeper will try to distract you, but if you get emotional about it you are screwed, you have to be clinical about it.

That's how I overcome my mental limit and started to score more that 700 and replicated the same in the real thing.

One final tip, if the clock still bother you, just remove it!
I literally kept my thumb on the clock for the whole verbal section and ended up completing the sections 5 minutes before the time.

I hope my experience help someone who is having difficulty keeping up with the clock!!
You can reach out to me for any more insights @ [email protected], I will be glad to help!

This topic has expert replies