Having taught the GMAT for nearly 20 years, I’ve noticed that the students who went on to earn the highest GMAT Quant scores were the ones who wouldn’t let themselves give up on problems during practice.

Conversely, the students who gave in to their discomfort and gave up on questions after 60 seconds or 1:30, or some other brief time frame, were the ones who, all else equal, saw the least improvement in their GMAT Quant scores.

You must learn to push through GMAT Quant questions even when your brain begins to hurt, and you feel frustrated, and you’re tired, and you’d rather be doing anything other than studying for the GMAT.

Perseverance is key!

Learning perseverance is another reason to work on practice questions untimed until your skills improve. There is a psychological component to getting the right answer to a GMAT Quant question.

You may look at a question and not know how to answer it at first. You may start wondering whether you have what it takes to get the answer. Generally, if you keep at it and go through the fire — questioning yourself, feeling fear, anger, boredom, or whatever else — you’ll arrive at the answer. However, when you are practicing, that process may take more than two or three minutes.

So guess what? If you give yourself only two or three minutes, you let yourself off the hook. You don’t learn to go through the fire and come out the other side with the answer. You just go to the explanation and get the answer, but you have not learned one of the most important things, which is how to persist and hack and do whatever you have to do to get the answers to questions that you find challenging.

Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep