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General 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

4 Dos and 4 Don’ts in the Days Before, and on the Morning of, the SAT

So you’ve been studying for the SAT for what feels now like your whole life… You are now officially in the home stretch, and you’re ready for it to be over – and believe me, I’m ready for it to be over for you. But this also happens to be the week in which I get the most questions about strategy: what, exactly, should you be doing in those final days? The answers are in ways very similar – and in other ways very dissimilar – to what you’ve been doing so far. Below is my list of top dos and don’ts in those final hours. Read More »4 Dos and 4 Don’ts in the Days Before, and on the Morning of, the SAT

How Many Times Should I Take the SAT?

Just about every senior-year student I’ve worked with has had friends who have taken the SAT as if it were a monthly ritual to be resignedly endured, until he or she was finally able to crawl painstakingly to the mailbox for the very last time to check his or her scores, too exhausted to celebrate the outcome. Those same students most likely had friends who took the test the first time, left the test location and went directly to the public pool (the weather’s always gorgeous when there’s a test to be taken), and were never seen at a test administration site again. Most likely you’ve known students, too, at both ends of the SAT “numbers spectrum.” So where do you fit it? Read More »How Many Times Should I Take the SAT?

When To Take the SAT (and When to Begin Preparing!)

If you’ve opted to take the SAT over the ACT, now the question you’re most likely facing is when – and, if necessary, how often – should you take it? Naturally, these are questions best answered by taking each student’s individual situation into consideration, but there are some reasonable guidelines relevant to the majority of students.  Here are some suggestions, by grade: Read More »When To Take the SAT (and When to Begin Preparing!)