GMAT Math is Hard, But No One is “Bad at Math”

by Target Test Prep, Mar 8, 2022

Too often, students convince themselves that they are “just not math people.” As a result, these students often score significantly lower on the GMAT than they would have if they had revised their way of thinking about how math skills are gained. If such students instead believed in the power of hard work and perseverance in gaining math proficiency, as nearly all experts who study math education do, these students could set themselves up for higher GMAT scores, more impressive degrees, and higher-paying jobs.

The biggest secret about GMAT math is that anyone can master it, if that person is willing to put in the work. In this article, we’ll look at some research that busts the myth of being “bad at math” and give you 3 simple tips for excelling at GMAT math, so you can earn the GMAT score you’re truly capable of.

The Myth of Being “Bad at Math”

If you’ve convinced yourself that you’re simply “bad at math,” this perspective on your math ability probably formed long before you began studying for the GMAT or even considered sitting for the exam. Maybe you weren’t as interested in math as you were in other subjects in high school. Maybe you didn’t do so well on the SAT or ACT, or you’ve bombed a practice GMAT or two. So what? If past performance could perfectly predict future performance, how would anyone ever grow, change, or learn new skills?

The thought that someone is not a math person is just as ridiculous, harmful, and self-limiting as the thought that someone is not a piano person or a ping pong person. How does someone become skilled at playing piano? By working extremely hard. How does someone become good at ping pong? By practicing for hours and hours. So, how does a person excel at math? You guessed it: hard work, hours of practice.

In 2007, psychologists at Stanford and Columbia University put this damaging myth of being “bad at math” to the test. In a study of nearly 400 seventh-gradersover a two-year period, the researchers found that math grades increased for students who believed that intelligence could be developed, while math grades stayed flat for students who believed that intelligence was unchanging. So, while belief alone is surely not enough to increase your knowledge and improve your skills, the science shows that believing that there is a ceiling on your abilities could, in fact, put a ceiling on what you achieve.

We see similar findings in other research into learning and intelligence. For instance, a growing body of evidence shows that a person’s IQ — long thought to be a fixed quantity — can change pretty significantly over a person’s lifetime and is closely linked to factors such as number of years in school, training in new and complex tasks, and consistent practice. And those changes don’t necessarily take years to happen; research has found that they can occur in months or even weeks.

So, if your IQ can increase with studying and practice, why not your GMAT Quant score?

The Myth of Being a “Math Person”

The flipside of the myth that some people are simply bad at math is the myth that others are “math people.” It’s easy to assume that others are having an easy time with the GMAT, since you don’t see the many steps they’re taking on their paths. In other words, you don’t see their late nights of studying, their Saturdays spent taking practice tests, the dozens of hours they spend with private tutors. You don’t see that they took the GMAT three times before they finally earned a top score. You don’t get to see any of the effort and elbow grease that went into the final product.

Also, sometimes people try to make the process look easy. We’ve all read the stories online of people who took a few practice tests or brushed up on their math skills for a month and scored Q51 on the GMAT. But do you know those people’s histories? Do you know whether their parents emphasized math study throughout their childhoods, or whether they have jobs that require them to perform basic math on a daily basis?

Think about watching Tiger Woods play golf – he makes it look as if he never breaks a sweat. The truth is, Tiger started practicing his swing when he was 2 years old, and he has spent decades practicing in order to make his golf skills look like second nature. Does that mean that Tiger Woods has no innate talent whatsoever for golf? Of course not. Does it mean that everyone who picks up a golf club at age 2 will become as skilled at golf as Tiger? Maybe not. But could they still become skilled enough to win a golf championship? Probably.

The point is, you don’t have to be a prodigy or someone who has “always” been skilled at something to learn to be great at it. And, more importantly for our purposes, by no means do you have to be a math whiz in order to excel at GMAT math. Solving GMAT Quant problems requires advanced analytical reasoning skills, but the actual math concepts on which GMAT questions are based don’t rise to a level beyond high school math. Do you need innate talent to master high school math, or do you simply need to put in the work and have the confidence that you can succeed?

Maybe you had the experience in high school or college of not performing as well in math classes as some of your peers did. You might have assumed that their consistently higher grades in math or their perfect scores on tests were the result of “natural” math abilities. It’s very easy to make these assumptions because they do the double work of explaining the situation and providing you with a convenient excuse.

They’re simply better at math than you are! The problem is, if you believe that you’re not a math person, you’re very likely to not put in as much effort when studying or preparing for tests on that subject, because you feel that your situation is hopeless. If you don’t put in as much effort — even subconsciously — then your performance actually does suffer. As you continue to perform poorly in math, you see confirmation of your beliefs. The pattern repeats, and the story you’ve told yourself becomes reality.

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