I often get this question from students in a tough spot. The scenario looks something like this:
“I’m at a 425 on my GMAT Focus mock. I need to score at least a 655 (around the 90th percentile), and I must take the test in 4 weeks. I can study 2 hours on weekdays and have free weekends. What should I do?”
My first response is always a question. And before you read any further, you must answer it honestly:
- Would you rather take the test on the target date, even if it means settling for a lower score?
- Or, would you rather go for a score closer to your target, even if it means moving your test date?
The ideal case: ‘I’d rather get my target score by my target date’ is not an option.
This question is important.
Because:
- A significant leap of close to 200 points is anyway a tall ask in 4 weeks. And not all 200 points are equal. Going from 205 to 405 would be different from going from 455 to 655. Going from 555 to 755 would be even harder.
- The approach you take in the next 4 weeks in the 2 cases I have asked above would be different.
Path A: Prioritizing the target date (taking the test in 4 weeks)
If you want to take the test within 4 weeks no matter what, my suggestions would be as follows:
- Do not even keep a target score in mind. The goal is not to reach 655. The goal is ‘to try to score as much higher than my current level as I can manage’.
- Focus on the low-hanging fruits. Topics that you feel fairly comfortable with but still make some careless mistakes here and there. Try to rectify that. How to identify your low-hanging fruits? These could be topics in which you are getting ~60%+ accuracy currently. Try to take that to 80%+.
- Ignore topics that are hard for you. You do not have enough time to develop a strong foundation. And I don’t know of any shortcut to get good at things you find hard without having a solid foundation in place.
- Work on critical test-taking skills. This is more important than learning new concepts right now. I have elaborated on some below.
Practice the skill of letting go
It will not come automatically. Practice sets of 10 mixed-bag questions. Give yourself 16 minutes. The goal is not to try to answer all 10 within this short time. The goal is to practice letting go. The first step while looking at any question (after reading it) is not ‘how do I solve it?’. The first step is ‘is it even worth my time?’.
And how do you decide whether a question is worth your time? Not on the basis of whether you’re finding a question impossible. That would be extremely rare. I’ll ask you to go to the other extreme. Only attempt a question if you feel 100% confident about how you are going to solve it. If your confidence level is even slightly less than 100%, skip it.
Now, I’m suggesting this process not because I want you to follow it exactly this way in the exam. I’m suggesting it as a training exercise because I find that it is typically very difficult for GMAT candidates to let go of questions. It is too common for me to hear of a student who took 5 minutes (or even 8-9 minutes) on an individual question.
What’s a good time to let go of a question? As soon as within the first 15 seconds, to any point beyond. There is no point where you should feel you are too invested to simply guess and move on. I have talked about the concept of ‘sunk cost’ before too.
“But what if I skip a question that could have been quite easy for me?”
Skipping (guessing) a question is a call you’ll take. It is a judgment call. All calls inherently have the risk of turning out to be wrong later. But,
- if you don’t take such calls, you run the risk of devoting time to hard questions while not doing justice to some potentially easier ones.
- Moreover, as long as you are making the right judgment calls more than half the time, you’re doing fine. Do not look at each individual question. Look at the overall pattern to evaluate whether taking calls is working out well for you.
Use the “bookmark and review” feature
Remember, you will have an option to bookmark and come back and change up to 3 answers. Use that to your advantage. In the first round, your goal is not to simply follow the sequence in which questions appear on the screen. Feel comfortable skipping 3 questions (or even more if you currently take more than 2 minutes on average to answer a question from that section). Anyway if time permits in the end, you can go back and work on some or all of those questions. If anyway you run out of time with the remaining questions, a good thing that you skipped a few seemingly hard ones, no?
Master your pacing
Get better at time management. You don’t have a lot of time to work on trying to get faster. Instead, focus on: How can I maximise my score given that I currently need 3 minutes (for example) on average to answer a question properly. If that’s the case, give yourself an average of 3 minutes per question on the exam too. For a 45-minute section that would mean you can only answer 14-15 questions comfortably. Is it ideal? No. But is it most aligned with your current skill level and gives you the best chance to score as high as your current skill level would allow? Yes. Make that the starting point. I only have time to answer 14-15 questions comfortably.
- Be ruthless about skipping. In a 21- or 23-question section, that would mean that you should be comfortable skipping 5-6 questions (or more) within the first 15-20 seconds each.
Use mocks for analysis, not just practice
- Practice a mock test once every week/ 10 days. Focus on analysing each test in depth (I’ll cover this in a near-future article).
- Do not go for a practice test every day/ every other day. You could take a practice test on a weekend day and then analyse it and create subsequent actionables over the next 1-2 days.
- To get better at practicing some of these test-taking skills, you can practice some sectional tests, and even half-length sectional tests here and there.
- Do not try to cram too much into this short period. Focus on a few things and try to get better at those. Trying to improve in everything will spread you too thin to significantly improve in anything.
A sample path A week
Here’s a sample way to structure your week:
- Weekdays (Mon-Thurs, 1.5-2 hours/day):
- First 30 mins: Practice the “letting go” skill with one 16-minute mixed-bag set.
- Remaining 60-90 mins: Focused, deep practice on one of your “low-hanging fruit” topics.
- Friday (1.5-2 hours):
- Use this day to review your errors and notes from the Mon-Thurs practice. Do not learn anything new.
- Consolidate what you’ve learned.
- Saturday (Full Day):
- Morning (3 hours): Take a full-length mock test under real exam conditions.
- Afternoon (3-4 hours): Begin your deep analysis. Start by creating an error log, identifying why you missed each question (concept, careless, time, etc.).
- Sunday (Full Day):
- Morning (3-4 hours): Finish your mock analysis. For every question you got wrong or guessed on, find the core concept. Re-solve it.
- Afternoon (3-4 hours): Based on your analysis, identify your next set of actionables for the coming week. Work only on those in the coming week.
Path B: Prioritizing the target score (taking longer if needed)
If you’d rather take longer if needed, and a high score takes precedence over how long you take, then I recommend a different approach.
- Give yourself the time you need to work on each topic and the various associated skills.
- Do not even focus on any timed-practice initially. Say your target score is around 655, get into timed practice only once you are getting close to 80% accuracy in each type of question across difficulties on average. And when I say untimed, I mean give yourself all the time you need. No upper limit at all.
- Next, do not suddenly expect that you’ll be able to answer questions well within 2 minutes on average. Focus on avoiding rework/ rereading. Try to get everything right the first time – even if that means taking longer in the first go. Overall, you’ll still save time.
- If you feel weak in a particular section/ topic, go and work on the foundations of that topic. Even if that means going back to school-level content. e.g. Khanacademy is a great resource to use to improve foundations for maths.
- Do not put targets of number of questions in a day. A day in which you go in-depth into a handful of questions could still be a very fruitful day. On the flip side, if you go through 50-60 questions but do not truly learn from them, that would be a waste of time.
- Do not put targets in terms of number of days for a topic. E.g. Do not make plans like: I will finish assumptions this week. Sure, work on assumptions this week. But do you truly understand enough within the week to feel comfortable to move on to the next topic is subjective. It is hard to know beforehand how long you’d need. Do not plan that way.
Choose your battles
The next four weeks (or few months) will be challenging, but they don’t have to be chaotic. The key is to pick your battles.
Are you fighting the clock (Path A), or are you fighting for the score (Path B)? Remember: the ideal case is clear: You get your target score within your target timeline. But, unfortunately it doesn’t make sense to put constraints on both simultaneously.
Be deliberate, be strategic, and be kind to yourself.
Whichever path you choose, the most important step is the choice itself. It’s what moves you from “I’m panicking” to “I have a plan.”
Once you make that honest choice, you’ve already won half the battle. You can turn panic into a plan.
Now, go execute.
All the best,
Anish