GMAT Tutors vs. Test Anxiety: Rescuing a Score Mid-Exam

Once every few years, I retake the GMAT chasing the white whale: a perfect score. On this particular attempt, I hit a wall so hard that I read the same RC passage four times and still couldn’t tell you what it was about. What makes this story different from a typical “GMAT tutor has a bad day” tale is what happened next: I used the exact anti-anxiety tools we teach our students, mid-exam, under real pressure, and clawed my score back from the brink.

A quick note on scores: this story took place on the classic GMAT, so the scores here use the old 200-800 scale, with Quant and Verbal subscores to match. On the current GMAT, introduced in November 2023, total scores run from 205 to 805, and an old-scale 760 converts to roughly a 715–735 under GMAC’s concordance. Anxiety, unfortunately, converts one-to-one.

While a perfect score probably doesn’t mean much for MBA admissions, there are some serious bragging rights at stake for GMAT tutors, and I happen to work with one of the few weirdos in the test-prep industry who managed to pull off this feat.

Naturally, I want to be one of those weirdos, too. After all, I’ve been tutoring the GRE® and GMAT for 15 years, long enough for GMAT minutia to cannibalize brain space that was once devoted to my children’s birthdays or my wife’s cell phone number. You know, things that are actually useful.

To achieve this mythical score and join the ranks of the overachieving GMAT weirdos, I registered to retake the exam. But things didn’t go exactly how I expected them to.

Chasing a Perfect Score Into an Anxiety Spiral

Even though I’ve been a GMAT tutor for 15 years, I experienced a surge of crippling anxiety the moment I submitted my registration. After all, if I failed to do well, wouldn’t that mean that I’m a fraud? I’ve effectively been studying for the GMAT for 15 years; surely, a perfect GMAT score should be doable by now.

I began having the kinds of nightmares I hadn’t had since I was in high school. Once, I dreamed that I showed up for the GMAT on the wrong day … while wearing a leotard. Instead of a pen, I gripped a Pudding Pop in my writing hand; it turned out to be earwax-flavored.

Despite my GMAT nightmares, my real-life GMAT exam started uneventfully enough. I’d elected to do verbal first, but after about a half-dozen questions, I committed a cardinal sin, one that I’m constantly warning my students against. I wasted time by re-reading an RC passage.

During the passage, I received a detail question. I was pretty sure I’d found the detail, but I was blinded by my maniacal obsession with a perfect GMAT score. I wanted to be 100% certain that I was correct.

So I read the RC passage again. And then a third time. And if you’re wondering if anyone could possibly be foolish enough to read a GMAT RC passage four times just to reconfirm a detail he’d basically already confirmed, then I can tell you that the answer is an unequivocal “yes.”

It is good to check your work on the GMAT. It is not good to obsess over it. I was obsessing.

Even worse: one form of GMAT anxiety just bred other forms of GMAT anxiety. I wanted to be absolutely certain that I had a correct answer, so I obsessed and wasted time. This time that I wasted then triggered a new bout of anxiety, which itself made me think about how badly I’d blown my GMAT exam and the fact that my weirdo GMAT tutor friend with the perfect score would be disappointed.

Worse still, after four iterations, the RC passage no longer made sense to me.

Reaching for the GMAT Anti-Anxiety Toolbox

It was one thing to intellectually understand that what I was doing was counterproductive. But it was quite another to pull myself out of that psychological death-spiral in the middle of a GMAT exam. Our nervous systems evolved to keep us from being mauled by jungle cats, so they’re pretty powerful, and it can be hard to talk yourself out of test anxiety once it grabs you, though it’s not impossible — more on that below.

Once I started freaking out, my pen might as well have been an earwax-flavored Pudding Pop.

Despite all of my years of grappling with the GMAT, I had to use every anti-anxiety tool we teach to our GMAT students. I physically pushed myself away from the computer, and I inhaled to the count of 4, held the breath to the count of 4, and exhaled to a count of 8.

After two sets of deep breaths, I began to invoke a mantra I often tell my students: your immediate goal is not to get a great GMAT score. “Getting a great score” is not actionable in the moment. Your goal is to use good technique on the GMAT question in front of you.

So, having blown my perfect score and wasted a sizable chunk of time, I shifted my priorities: the objective was no longer to get a perfect GMAT score. It wasn’t even to do well. It was to use good technique for the remainder of my GMAT exam: to make sure I understood the logical structure of every passage I read, to re-read question stems to make sure I wasn’t answering the wrong question, and to use the process of elimination in a good, systematic way. For the most part, I succeeded.

What a Mid-Exam Meltdown Taught Me

I’d love to tell you that I harpooned the perfect GMAT score after all. I didn’t. But I still managed to get a 760 (50Q, 44V) despite experiencing a mid-GMAT meltdown. That’s worse than my previous 770s, but it wasn’t totally awful considering how close I came to a real disaster.

More importantly, I learned a few things from the experience that would apply to any GMAT test-taker, not just GMAT tutors:

1. Let go of the pursuit of perfection. Yes, a perfect score, or whatever other ideal score you’re aiming for, would be nice. But one of the paradoxes of the GMAT is that desiring a goal with too much fervor can undermine the pursuit of that goal.
2. If you get into a GMAT anxiety death-spiral, do something physical to break out. Deep breathing, and maybe physically pushing yourself away from the computer for a few moments, can help take the edge off in the moment.
3. Make sure that your GMAT goals are bite-sized and actionable. The goal of “getting a good GMAT score” is not actionable when a complex quant figure is staring at you. The goal of using good technique, for example, sketching and labeling the figure, and double-checking your calculations, is. Adhering to solid, repeatable technique should always be your priority on the GMAT, and everything else is just noise.

Of course, you’re bound to at least be somewhat nervous on the day of your GMAT. But having these ideals in mind will help you keep your cool as much as possible, or at least avoid the mental disintegration I started to experience.