Understand that Psychology Can Affect Your Accuracy on the GMAT

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Understand that Psychology Can Affect Your Accuracy on the GMAT

Psychological factors can affect your performance on the GMAT in various ways. One key psychological factor to consider is your level of self-confidence. Can someone’s level of self-confidence contribute to making careless errors? You bet it can. Here’s how.

Getting a correct answer to a GMAT question requires paying attention, organizing your work, and generally putting care into what you do, and if a person is not confident that he can hit his GMAT score goal, on some level that person may not feel like putting in the energy necessary for getting correct answers. So, perhaps without being aware that he is doing so, a person in that state of mind may not give his GMAT-related work his full, best effort, and as a result, may consistently make little mistakes.

If that description fits you in any way, understand that you can achieve anything you want to achieve and that skills you don’t currently have are skills that you can develop. It can also help to realize that people who seem to effortlessly score high on a test like the GMAT have in all likelihood worked diligently to develop their skills.

If necessary, deploy a “fake it ‘til you make it strategy.” That is, even if you are not confident about your abilities at the moment, begin telling yourself that you’re going to earn an awesome GMAT score, that you’re going to master the material that appears on the GMAT. Tell yourself that you are the queen (or king) and that you can’t lose; you have the GMAT’s number and you’re going to get medieval come test day. Getting excited about scoring well has been shown to be an effective self-fulfilling prophecy. Positive self-talk has been shown to help people perform better in all arenas of life. Imagine what you could do–would do–if you truly believed that you could not lose? Start feeling that way.

Happy studying!

Warmest regards,
Scott