Have a Solid GMAT Plan in Place
It’s hard to feel confident about the outcome of any endeavor if you’re just “winging it.” Particularly when you’re tackling something as big and important as the GMAT, the benefits of having a solid plan in place are immense — not only for your confidence but also for your ability to properly prepare and perform well on test day.
Without a solid plan to get you from day 1 to test day, it will be difficult to weather the many ups and downs you’ll experience throughout your GMAT prep and during the exam itself. And if you often feel lost as to what to do next, your confidence will suffer.
So, what does having a solid plan entail? A few different things, actually:
creating a study schedule for yourself studying in a linear and methodical way having a test-day planLet’s delve a little deeper into each of these aspects of a solid GMAT plan.
Set Your Study ScheduleWhen you schedule something into your calendar, you don’t have to wonder anymore when you’ll find the time to do it or worry you won’t fit it into your day. There is no fretting over how much time you’ll have to devote to it on any particular day. There is no keeping a running tally in your head of how many days in the past week, or two weeks, or month you’ve done it.
Aside from not having to worry about when you’ll study, having set study times every day gives you something solid to fall back on no matter how your GMAT prep goes from one day to the next. Maybe you’re tired one day and you don’t have a great study session. Maybe you’ve been studying a GMAT topic that confuses you. Well, your schedule assures you that you’ll be able to pick things back up the next day and keep chipping away at the work, making incremental improvements day by day.
If you don’t have a set study schedule, a bad day feels like a more urgent problem. Will you even have time to study tomorrow? Maybe your bad day was the first day that week you even got a chance to study. Maybe your studying has been so sporadic that you’re only remembering the bad days and not the days when you made real progress. Moreover, it’s tough to feel that you’re ever making progress if you’re putting in only a few days a week. Instead, you may feel like you’re always playing catch-up.
Not knowing when you’re going to study next can be a confidence-killer. So, schedule daily study times into your calendar in advance.
Study in a Linear and Methodical WayWe just learned that creating a study schedule can give you the confidence of knowing that you’re putting in the necessary work each day. But what sort of work are you putting in? Are you studying random topics with no order or logic to your GMAT prep from one day to the next? In that case, all the time in the world may not get you very far. And when people “hit the books” day after day and don’t see much progress, their confidence takes a serious hit.
So, in addition to having a set study schedule, you need a set plan for what you’ll study each day. Random practice, jumbling a bunch of different topics together, etc., does not produce results on the GMAT. More often than not, these haphazard study methods produce frustration. You may feel that you’re “just not good at the test” or “just not smart enough.” Trust me — it’s not you! It’s your lack of a thought-out study plan.
The way to build confidence in your GMAT abilities and effectively learn the material is to study one topic at a time, starting with foundational concepts and progressing to more difficult ones. This method of study is exactly what students do with the TTP GMAT course, and it’s incredibly confidence-building. Why? Because with every topic, every lesson, every practice quiz, you’re able to check the box on something new you’ve learned. You see your progress continually, and it motivates you to keep going. Studying in a random way doesn’t provide that confidence-boosting sense of accomplishment.
Have a Plan for Test DayWe know that having a plan for your study time can help boost confidence before test day. But what about test day itself? We don’t want that day looming like a giant question mark over our heads. Again, we want to have a plan, so we can reduce our level of stress and worry about the GMAT.
For instance, have you set a score threshold for canceling your score? Do you plan to send your scores to schools on test day or wait? Do you know which schools you’ll send scores to?
Moreover, if you don’t hit your score goal on test day, do you have a backup plan in place? Have you left yourself time for a GMAT retake (or even two, if necessary)?
By answering these questions in advance and creating contingency plans, you position yourself to feel more secure about test day. After all, whatever the outcome, you’re prepared. If you don’t hit X score on your GMAT, that’s OK because you know you know you’ll cancel your score. If test day doesn’t go your way, you know you’ll have time to study more and take the test again.
It doesn’t take much time to devise a test-day plan for yourself. However, having one does take a lot of the pressure off. So, when you’re making your GMAT study plan, don’t forget to make a plan for test day as well.
Reach out to me with any questions.
Warmest regards,
Scott
