How Exercise Can Boost Your Test Score

Co-authored with Kyle Krancher.

Unsurprisingly, exercise has a ton of benefits. In addition to increasing the length of your life, reducing your risk of developing many chronic diseases, and just making you a happier person in general, regular exercise, including exercise before an exam, can lead to improvements in your scores on tests like the GMAT, LSAT, GRE, and Executive Assessment.

See below for an explanation of how exercise can help you achieve your standardized test score goals, as well as some ways to get started with a fitness program.

What Benefits Does Exercise Have for Test-Takers?

Adding exercise into your daily routine can:

• Improve cognitive function. One study found that people with a higher fitness level scored 10% higher than their less fit counterparts in a series of tests to measure the participants’ ability to learn, reason, and problem solve, skills that are pretty important for conquering exams like the GMAT, GRE, or EA. Exercise improves the flow of oxygen to the brain, increases gray matter in a couple of key parts of the brain, and enhances connections between separate brain regions.
• Help reduce “anxiety sensitivity“. By exposing yourself regularly to the physiological symptoms of anxiety (which overlap a great deal with the symptoms of a good workout), you become less sensitive to the “fight or flight” signals that might spell disaster for your test. Instead of creating a feedback loop of increasing anxiety, you can regain your composure and focus on solving the problem in front of you.
• Relieve anxiety by providing a “time out” from stressful daily activities. This one is pretty intuitive: if you are constantly anxious about your upcoming test, it will be a relief to focus on something else for a while. Studies have shown that exercise is as effective at distracting you from anxious thoughts as other cognition-based techniques, but the anxiety-quelling effects of exercise actually last longer.
• Increase feelings of self-efficacy or self-mastery. People who challenge themselves to achieve a higher level of fitness generally feel that they can better manage threatening situations. This confidence lowers the level of anxiety that they feel upon entering into a difficult environment, such as a sterile test center scented by the despair of past test-takers.

If there were a magic pill that could provide all of the cognitive benefits of exercise, every single student studying for a standardized exam would take it by the fistful. So while you might be tempted to spend every last minute working through GMAT, GRE, or EA questions, consider building time to exercise into your daily routine instead.

How to Start Exercising to Increase Your Test Scores

Whether you’re taking the GMAT, GRE, EA, or any other test, the best exercise program for you is the one you will actually do. You want to make exercise a sustainable part of your routine, and what that looks like will depend on your unique situation.

That said, the benefits listed above are mostly attributed to aerobic or anaerobic exercise. In other words, you need to get your heart rate up pretty high for a moderate amount of time, or REALLY high for a short period of time.

If you’re not sure how to begin, no worries. There are plenty of ways to reap the test-related benefits of exercise, even if you have little experience.

Here Are a Few Options to Get You Started:

• For people who are short on time: The 7 minute workout. As the name suggests, it takes 7 minutes. Hopefully you can find 7 minutes in your day.
• For people who have not worked out for a while: Couch 2 5k provides a gentle progression to begin running.
• For people who need to be distracted from standardized test worries: Take a daily run, brisk walk, or bike ride outside. Bonus points if you bring your dog.
• For people who struggle to maintain exercise as a habit: Work with a personal trainer to provide accountability (check out our resident fitness coach Kyle Krancher, and his thoughts on fitness and test prep!). Alternatively, join a local running club, a gym that has group classes, or some other venue that has a social element. In this case, peer pressure can actually help you stay motivated and on track.

Overall, the goal is to get your heart pumping nearly every day. There are an endless number of ways to achieve this, so choose a routine that will work for you personally.

For additional motivation, check out the stories of GMAT Club users pnishant, abhimanha, positive soul, and NoHalfMeasures, all of whom found exercise helpful in their journeys to GMAT success.