Don't Try to be Perfect on the GMAT
Everyone wants everything done perfectly and done yesterday. Great. Now that we have that fact on the table, let’s get real: Nothing is done perfectly, and things often take longer than anticipated. Most things in life that are valuable, such as earning an MBA from a top business school, finishing the Boston Marathon, or finding your soulmate, are not easy to achieve. They can require a significant investment of time and hard work.
Here we see another major difference in the thinking of students who experience test anxiety and those who don’t: The former have a need to be perfect. Along with this perfection comes a need to get things done as fast as humanly possible. This is a lose-lose scenario when preparing for the GMAT.
Students who strive for perfection see every question that they incorrectly answer as an affront to their vision of how they should perform and how events are “supposed to” unfold, rather than as an opportunity to improve. They see a question that they take longer than two minutes to answer as a sign that they are not “where they need to be,” instead of seeing those questions as a natural part of the learning and growth that comes with studying for the GMAT. When they take their first practice test and score, for example, 680, they view this score as “100 points below 780,” instead of realizing that 680 is a great starting score, that almost no students need to score 780 on the GMAT to secure a seat at a top business school, and that only a tiny handful of students will be able to earn such a score, even with serious study.
With each affront to the students’ perfectionist worldview, their anxiety grows, doing a disservice to their GMAT preparation and their performance on test day. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that you or anyone else taking the GMAT can and must achieve perfection.
Watch the short video tip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i__rLTgvmw
Everyone wants everything done perfectly and done yesterday. Great. Now that we have that fact on the table, let’s get real: Nothing is done perfectly, and things often take longer than anticipated. Most things in life that are valuable, such as earning an MBA from a top business school, finishing the Boston Marathon, or finding your soulmate, are not easy to achieve. They can require a significant investment of time and hard work.
Here we see another major difference in the thinking of students who experience test anxiety and those who don’t: The former have a need to be perfect. Along with this perfection comes a need to get things done as fast as humanly possible. This is a lose-lose scenario when preparing for the GMAT.
Students who strive for perfection see every question that they incorrectly answer as an affront to their vision of how they should perform and how events are “supposed to” unfold, rather than as an opportunity to improve. They see a question that they take longer than two minutes to answer as a sign that they are not “where they need to be,” instead of seeing those questions as a natural part of the learning and growth that comes with studying for the GMAT. When they take their first practice test and score, for example, 680, they view this score as “100 points below 780,” instead of realizing that 680 is a great starting score, that almost no students need to score 780 on the GMAT to secure a seat at a top business school, and that only a tiny handful of students will be able to earn such a score, even with serious study.
With each affront to the students’ perfectionist worldview, their anxiety grows, doing a disservice to their GMAT preparation and their performance on test day. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that you or anyone else taking the GMAT can and must achieve perfection.
Watch the short video tip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i__rLTgvmw
