Please Don't Make These GMAT Mistakes
I talk to dozens of students a week, hundreds or thousands a year. Over time, I notice patterns after all, thats what we test prep geeks are so good at doing, right?
I notice that many students make certain overarching mistakes when preparing for a test such as the GMAT, and those mistakes cause students either to take much longer than they might otherwise to reach their goal score or to fail to reach their goal score entirely. What are those mistakes, so you can avoid making them yourself? Glad you asked!
Dont confuse doing with learning
When you start the timer and tackle a set of questions or a practice test, you are not learning! You are using everything you have already learned in order to test yourself to see whether you really learned what you thought you learned. Let's call this doing or testing yourself. Many, if not most, students begin their studies thinking that, if they only do enough problems, theyll learn what they need to learn to reach their goal score. In reality, that will take far longer than it should (and, for many, youll never get there this way).
The smart students (smart in a test-taking sense) know or discover that you learn by reviewing you need to analyze your work on the problems and analyze the problems themselves. What do I mean by analyze? Heres one article that talks about analyzing problems. Heres another that talks about analyzing practice tests. These two articles are not comprehensive, but they should give you a good idea of the difference between doing and analyzing. I have spent 5, 10, even 20 minutes analyzing a single problem and that was after I already figured out the answer.
Dont prioritize accuracy over efficiency
The vast majority of GMAT students believe, at the beginning of their studies, that accuracy is the most important thing the more questions I get right, the better my score will be, right? Wrong! This test does not work that way; in fact, if you try to get everything right while taking a CAT, you will almost certainly score lower (possibly much lower) than you are capable of scoring.
You already know that? Great, Im glad to hear it. Youre still probably underestimating the importance of timing trust me, I hear and see what everybodys saying and writing and I look at a lot of practice test data. Educate yourself about how the scoring works on this test. Read the Scoring section of ManhattanGMATs free e-book The GMAT Uncovered Guide. (If you have any kind of account with us, even a free one, then the e-book is already in your student center.)
Efficiency is just as important as accuracy. Did you know that people who score in the 99th percentile do get questions wrong? Quite a few, actually. We dont, however, mess up the timing badly enough that we have to guess randomly on more than 1 question at the end and usually we dont run out of time at all. If you mess up the timing badly enough to have to guess and have 2+ wrong answers in a row at the end, there goes your 99th percentile score, automatically. In that sense, you could almost say that timing is more important than accuracy!
Know how to tell that youre ready for the real test
Many students with whom I speak will pick their target test date months in advance. Once they have that test date in mind, they ask me What do I need to do to get <my goal score> by <the pre-determined test date>? Sometimes that works out, but really this is backwards! Ideally, you start working towards your goal score with only a general idea of when you might take the real test and, when your practice test scores start to get close, then you start to think about a specific test date. If you have a deadline, then you dont have as much flexibility, but you then may need to lower your goal score be prepared for that.
How do you know when youre ready? Heres the ideal chain of events. You take a practice test to learn your starting score level (lets say its 550) and you do some research to determine what kind of score youll likely need for the schools to which you want to apply (lets say its 700). Then you decide how youre going to study and you start trying to improve.
Know what to do during the last 2 weeks before you take that real test
After some period of time, you score 700 on a practice test (taken under official conditions of course). Yay! Now, you transition to solidifying that score. Note that this step is crucial do not keep trying to fix all of your weaknesses. You may still have several big weaknesses that you want to try to improve a little more, but youve gotten your goal score (in practice). Now you want to shift toward reviewing everything to make sure you can hit that same score / level on official test day.
The last 10 days to 2 weeks, youll be doing almost no work on improving (trying to get a lot better) that happens earlier in the process. Rather, youre making sure that your practice 700 wasnt a fluke: you really can do it again on test day. (Note: some people decide that they want their practice scores to be a bit higher than their goal before taking the real test; e.g., someone with a 700 goal might decide not to take the real test until s/he can hit 720 on practice tests.)
Wait you ask I cant afford not to improve during that final week or two, because my score isnt at my goal score level yet! You have a choice: postpone your test or lower your goal score. Do not try to push your score up a great deal during those last 10 days or so the most likely outcome is burnout and then your score will probably drop. I have seen this happen to students numerous times.
Ask for help when you need it
You probably think that Im going to tell you that you shouldnt try to do it alone, dont be shy about asking for help, and so on. Thats all true but you already know that, right? :)
My focus here is more on the second half of the statement: ask for help when you need it. Make sure you really cant do it yourself! Many times, a student will get something wrong and say, I dont get this. Can you show me how to do it? Thats better than not asking, but the best of all is to push yourself to do as much of the hard thinking / brainwork as possible, even when asking for help!
First, explain to the teacher / forum expert everything that you can about what you already know and where you got into trouble. The more you can articulate, the more the teacher can understand what the real problem is and the more a good teacher can ask you questions. Thats really important. Sure, I can just tell you the answer, but its far better if I can understand your problem. Then, I can ask you a very targeted question that helps you think something through and then you can figure it out yourself and tell me, Aha! This is what it is! I get it now! If you learn something that way, youre not likely to forget it.
To summarize:
(1) Most of your learning comes from review and analysis of problems youve already completed, not from doing practice problems or practice tests.
(2) Timing is just as important as getting things right theres a balance between getting enough questions right (but not all!) and managing your time appropriately so that you have a chance at every question, all the way to the end.
(3) Youre ready to take the real test when practice tests taken under 100% official conditions yield scores at or above your goal score level. For the last 10 days to 2 weeks, your focus shifts. Youre no longer trying to make your weaknesses a lot better; rather, youre trying to review and solidify your current level so that you can perform at your current level on the real test.
(4) Ask for help when you need it. The more you figure out / learn for yourself, the better you will remember and be able to recall that material. Make sure to articulate what you already do know and exactly where youre stuck (as well as you can), so that the teacher / expert can give you just a little bit of advice or ask you a question or two to get you over the sticking point and then you can continue to figure out the rest on your own.
Happy studying!