The GMAT Story -- Part II

In continuation of my earlier post...

Concentration : The average person's attention span is about 20-30 minutes. When it is truly interesting it can be a bit more ... an hour to 90 minutes at the most. If you can keep your mind focused beyond that, it is remarkable! And the catch is -- The GMAT is a 4 hour exam. You need to be able to concentrate on what you are doing till the end -- without giving in to the temptation to "just get it over with". Believe me, after 3 hours of working things out, the temptation is not a mild little thing in the back of your mind, it is a demon shouting in your inner ear, "Just select C on all of them and let's just get it over with and let's get out of here now now now NOW!" And that, my friends, is NOT fun!!

There are 2 "Optional" breaks within the GMAT exam. The truth is that this break is not optional at all. No matter how little you think you need it , take the break. You probably would not "really" need it for another 30 mins, but by taking a break then, you can probably avoid the fatigue that comes after that half hour. DO NOT spend it agonizing over whether the essays were clear or the answers in the quants were right. Go out, have a snack if you feel like it, drink some water, go to the rest room. If you have some time, do some deep breathing or take your iPod or mp3 player and listen to a few minutes of relaxing music. As far as possible, do not think about the next portion of the exam you are going to take and do NOT do any last minute reading. The best you can do for your exam is keep your mind fresh and focused and not clutter it with information that would not help much anyway.

Time Management: You have 30 minutes for each essay, 75 minutes for 37 quants questions, 75 minutes for 41 verbal questions. It is good to always know where you are with respect to time while doing the exam. It is too easy to get bogged down by a few difficult questions in the middle and lose track of the time. Try and be alert to how much time you have left and how many questions you are yet to attempt. That does not mean you have to have your eye on the clock all the time, but i would say, practice being conscious of it so that you can make that "guess or solve" decision if you need to. Honestly, for me , this is easier said than done, because I did MAKE that mistake. I am sure my score would have been at least 20 points higher if I had not made the mistake of sitting too long on one problem and missed out on attempting another properly.

For all of the strategy , practice, practice and more practice is the key. When doing your practice tests, try to mimic the exam environment as far as possible-- including even taking the optional breaks and relaxing in between. Do not take any unscheduled breaks, or have snacks in the middle. Use the same number of sheets that they usually give you for the exam. I used to take at least two practice tests a week and I would go to my office on the weekends at 8 am in the morning to get that exam atmosphere while doing the tests. Even where the tests offered a pause, I did not opt for that because I wanted to be familiar with the way I plan to be on the exam day. I really think that helped because I knew exactly what I had to do every minute of the exam. That is not to say I did not make any mistakes, but that the practice paid off in terms of increasing my comfort level during the exam.

Another important thing!! Don't get too bogged down by the practice test scores. That was another thing I learnt the hard way. I crossed 700 only on 5 of my practice tests and the ones on the weekend before by actual GMAT were DISMAL. I honestly considered rescheduling the exam-- but the actual test turned out to be not so bad after all ;-) .

Well that's it. I know it is a looooong lecture, but well... you can practice "Reading Comprehension" !! :-D

The GMAT story - Part I

And slowly my "Blogommunity" is beginning to build up. For those of you who are yet to write the GMAT, let me share my experience and what I learnt from it. Perhaps it might turn out helpful :-)!

GMAT is not a test of intelligence. Consequently, getting a good score does not require an IQ of 140 above. The whole story seems to hinge on speed, concentration, time management and accuracy.

Speed and Accuracy: These NEED to go hand in hand. You cannot compromise on accuracy for speed or vice versa. Knowing when to take a chance and when not to, makes all the difference between an average score and a good score. For example , if you have 5 minutes left and you decide to take a guess in a question that you are not sure of, getting it wrong will not reduce your score as much as if you do that in the first five minutes. Yes, this point is in every GMAT Prep guide on the market, but it really is important to understand that it makes a LOT of difference.

Try to come up with a strategy to make that "guess or solve" decision. An example for a working strategy would be : If in the first 13 questions in quants, you are unable to find the answer in 3 minutes, make a calculated guess and move on. In the next 13 questions, make that guess if you are unable to complete it within 2 minutes. In the last set, stick strictly to the one minute time, especially if you don't have a lot of time left. This is just an example of a strategy; you can go with whatever you are comfortable with. The point is that you need to think about when it is worthwhile to spend some extra time and when it is better to take a chance and keep moving and you need to have a rough guideline to follow.

Devote some real time to practice the average difficulty level questions as they are the ones that you would be facing till the last 15-20 minutes and they contribute most to your score. It's all very well to keep practicing the tougher questions, but the "return on investment" is less :-). Getting an answer correct in the first two sets count a lot more to your final score! That's not to say you can ignore the very difficult questions in your prep; you need to go through and work them out too. But increasing your speed and accuracy in the average difficulty bucket would also help by giving you additional time to work on the tougher problems during the exam. The trick is to plan your prep in a way as to improve your efficiency in cracking the exam , not the problem -- this is not a Math Olympiad or a Language certification. It is not an achievement to just solve the toughest problem in the GMAT exam! What you need to do is get the best possible score.

You know, that is probably why this is in a "Management Aptitude test". After all, this is an exercise in making quick decisions, solving problems, knowing when it is worth it to keep going, and when it is better to quit!

... To be continued!