Introduction to the Streaks Method

Many people ask me what they can do to increase their accuracy and their GMAT scores. Often, they have been achieving reasonably high accuracy in practice, but they still aren't reliably hitting their score goals when they take practice GMATs or the real thing.

What I often recommend is the streaks method, which I first recommended years ago to a student who then used it to quickly go from 610 to 710, and which was refined by another person with whom I worked, who used it as one of his key final steps in getting to his 700+ score goal and gaining admission to his dream school. People working with me have been using it with great success ever since.

So, here's the deal.

The Issue

Let's say you're practicing Weaken questions and getting about 70 percent correct. That accuracy seems decent, but are you really confident in Weaken at that point?

Notice that, to get to 70 percent, you could have been confident in answering 40 percent of the questions and guessed 50:50 between the last two choices for the other 60 percent and gotten to 70 percent.

Also, it's possible to get 70 percent correct while getting only 2 or 3 in a row correct. Are you really under control in Weaken if you typically get only 2 or 3 in a row correct? Not necessarily.

So, you can see why someone who typically gets 70 percent of practice questions correct may not feel particularly confident while taking the GMAT.

The Solution

So, here's a cool alternative way to gauge your skill level and learn to do exactly what you need to in order to ace the GMAT. Go beyond shooting for accuracy levels to shooting for streaks of correct answers.

Here's how it works.

For any category of question you want to choose, and the important categories can vary for each test taker, keep working on that category until you get at least 15 questions correct in a row.

So, for Weaken, for instance, you would practice Weaken questions until you get 15 Weaken questions correct in a row.

You can see the difference between 15 correct in a row and 70 percent correct. 70 percent correct is decent, admittedly. At the same time, 15 correct in a row means you are under control.

Also, the GMAT rewards streaks of correct answers by presenting you with harder questions that are worth more. So, when you shoot for streaks of correct answers, you are not only developing your skills, you are training to do exactly what the GMAT rewards.

For more detail on the streaks method and how to use it to master the GMAT, see the following post.

How to Ace the GMAT Using the Streaks Method

Also, here's an example of a Marty Murray GMAT coaching student who got great results using the streaks method.

Scored 735 Using the Streaks Method

Happy studying!