Giving People Advice and Having them not take it...
Once I started MLT, I was basically my cohort’s go to GMAT tutor. I have spent many hours at the Harold Washington library in Chicago helping members of my cohort with the GMAT. The biggest thing I would try to impart to people that would take was to develop a systematic approach to each question type. I think this is probably the most important thing that anyone could do to help improve their score, and I was just surprised by how people just didn’t get that. The people I would help would put in a lot of time to study but would get frustrated that they weren’t seeing results. The main thing that you have to do is be intentional with your study. When you are studying math don’t just do a random set of problems. If you struggle with divisibility problems, make sure every math day you are doing at least 2 divisibility problems. You have to be intentional and you have to develop an approach. On test day, anxiety will play a role in your test day experience, this is why having an approach will be very helpful because anxiety won’t be able to steal your moment.
Another thing that people don’t do that I tell them to do is to have complete faith in themselves. The only way that you can achieve a top score is to have an unwavering faith that you are capable. Once you allow fear and doubt to take over your thoughts, your chances of a top score decrease dramatically. Confidence is huge. Even when I was only scoring 550s on my practice tests, I knew that I was going to get above a 700. You have to truly believe in yourself. Richard wrote a post about how introspective essays are, but in many ways, I think preparing for the GMAT is introspective as well. Everyone hits a wall in which they stop making progress or even regress some. It is at those times you have to make a choice not to doubt yourself and believe that you are capable of achieving your score. You have to believe that you belong at HBS, or that you belong at Wharton, or that you belong at Tepper.
Watching people deal with the pressure of the GMAT and application deadlines...
When I watch people struggle with the pressure of the GMAT and watch people freak out I think that they are playing things wrong. I think the people that are doing essays and studying at the same are doing themselves a disservice. I think the biggest thing that people don’t realize is that it is better to apply round 2 with your highest GMAT score, than to rush the GMAT to apply round 1 and leave 20-30 points on the table. From what I have observed, the biggest reason most people are rushing and stressing out is a result of them having too many schools that they are applying to. This is not undergrad. You should not be targeting 7 plus schools. There are probably not 7 schools that you would actually attend. I think if people had a more manageable list of schools they would have a better perspective that they can get the GMAT done by mid-November, and still have more than enough time to do a great job on their essays for round 2.
In Closing...
I want to add something that most readers will never have heard before that I think would be useful. Well here it is. After setting your time table for studying and taking the test, add two weeks. You want to add two weeks to focus on your STRENGTHS. The one thing I learned about the CAT is that what’s difficult for you may not be difficult for others and vice versa. What does this mean for you? A CAT can make a topic that is normally a strength for you a weakness. I remember on my second attempt, I got a a ratios problem. I always considered ratios a strength, and as a result, I didn’t focus too much on them in the last few weeks of my prep. I got a problem on the test that dealt with surface areas and areas and the ratios. It was so awkward that I know I got it wrong.
I think you should spend at least 2 weeks seeking out overly difficult problems in areas that you consider to be an area of strength for you. Getting you to miss problems that you are normally strong at is the strength of the GMAC and CATs in general. That is the one thing I wish I had done before my last attempt, because I feel that it would have gotten me into the 99th percentile. Seek out problems that will be difficult in areas that you think are strengths. This will help to ensure that you bank all of the points that you should bank on the exam.
When most people think about getting really difficult 700-800 level problems, they envision really difficult probability or combinatorics problems. The reality is that if those two areas are still weaknesses after you have studied for 3 months, odds are they will remain weaknesses. During my prep, I thought I was strong at rate problems. I could answer almost all of the rate problems I encountered. I got thrown off though, when I encountered a rate problem that incorporated geometry. It was a problem involving a circular track and that made the problem a lot more difficult than most other rate problems.
With a CAT you can't choose your 700-800 level problems, and there is a good chance that you will encounter problems that you previously considered to be strengths packaged in such a way that you will miss them. I truly believe that the reason for the 30 point standard deviation is that people miss problems that they thought were strengths because the GMAC gives them the problem in a package that they aren't used to seeing.
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