Skip to content

GMAT Test Taking

Want to boost your test scores? Try Meditation

Finding it hard to focus on studying? Is your mind wandering as you prepare for your big test? Meditation may be the answer to your troubles. Mindfulness meditation can help quiet your mind and focus your attention on the present. It’s commonly used to manage stress, depression, and pain, and studies show it can be used to improve test scores as well.

Practicing meditation can lessen people’s habits of mind wandering, which can undermine performance on tests, through disrupting working memory capacity and intelligence. The working memory, an individual’s ability to retain information, is key for better test performance. Read More »Want to boost your test scores? Try Meditation

How Long Should I Study for the GMAT? – Part 2

Continued from How Long Should I Study for the GMAT? – Part 1

  • Remember studying for the GMAT is a daily practice. If you have to miss a day, fine; but don’t miss two consecutive days. Also keep in mind that it’s not just the sitting-down-and-studying part that should be daily: you shouldn’t ignore a question type for too long either (don’t, for instance, work on math questions for a week and then verbal questions for a week: the exam won’t be like that, so why would your study time?) Try to fit in both in every sitting if you can (both problem solving and data sufficiency for the math, and all three (critical reasoning, reading comprehension, and sentence correction) for the verbal). Read More »How Long Should I Study for the GMAT? – Part 2

How Long Should I Study for the GMAT? – Part 1

The most honest (although admittedly, the most unsatisfying) answer to this question is, quite simply, “it depends.” Luckily, however, I can be a little more specific about what it depends upon, and that might help you – as a singular test-taker with needs that are different from every other test-taker – make some personal determinations. In the first place, it depends upon the difference between what you’ve scored on your GMAT diagnostic and what you hope to score on the real deal (let’s call this “the improvement factor”). In the second place, it depends on the degree to which you are capable of maximizing your study time (we’ll call this one “the efficiency factor”). Lastly (and looming over both of these) there is, of course, the ever-present “time factor.” Read More »How Long Should I Study for the GMAT? – Part 1

What is a Good Score on the GMAT?

The question I inevitably get asked regarding GMAT is: “What is a good GMAT score?” The short answer is that a good score is the best score that you, personally, are capable of achieving – something you’ll definitely have a better sense of once you’ve sat down with a few practice tests.

The longer and equally frustrating answer is that whether a score is “good” or “bad” is pretty indeterminate. Read More »What is a Good Score on the GMAT?

12 things to consider before retaking the GMAT

Broadly, there are a few questions you’ll have to ask yourself when your test scores come in: Am I satisfied with the time and energy I’ve put into preparing for this exam? Given the constraints of my life, did I prepare as well as I could have? Is there room for improvement here? Am I capable (again, do I have the time and energy) of working for that improvement? To make it easy on you, here are 12 things to consider: Read More »12 things to consider before retaking the GMAT