Does Your GMAT Prep Include Only Learning Concepts and Strategies? Time to Change!

Sometimes GMAT test-takers experience score plateaus because they didn’t learn fundamentals. Well, basically the converse can also occur. People’s progress can stall because they don’t do much beyond learning concepts and strategies.

I hear this type of story from people all the time. They watched some GMAT prep videos or read some lessons and did some practice questions and experienced little to no score improvement. They’re wondering what’s going on because they know so much more than they did but haven’t seen results.

The issue is that, as we have discussed, the GMAT isn’t a test of knowledge. It’s a test of reasoning skill. So, merely studying concepts and strategies may not have much effect on your GMAT score. You have to learn to apply those concepts. In other words, you have to learn to execute and arrive at correct answers. You have to learn to play the GMAT game.

Here's the solution:

If you think it may be the case that your score isn’t increasing because you haven’t done much more than learn concepts and strategies, then the solution is to learn to apply concepts and strategies by doing topic-focused practice. For each topic, start by doing easy questions until you can get them correct consistently. Then, move on to medium-difficulty questions, and then hard questions involving the topic, and do the same thing.

As you practice a topic, keep a log of your errors. Review the log regularly to identify patterns to why you’re making errors. Then, address the issues you find to improve your performance.

You may have to do many dozens of practice questions to master a topic in one of your weak areas. If you do, don’t worry. Doing many questions to master a topic is a normal part of GMAT preparation.

Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep