Don’t Half-Ass Your GMAT (or Executive Assessment) Practice

The GMAT and Executive Assessment reward sustained focus more than almost any other standardized test, and going through the motions in practice trains you to lose concentration exactly when it costs you the most. For the bigger picture on how to study well for these exams, start with How to Study for the GMAT.

I rarely mention this part of my life in our GMAT articles, but I used to be a junior member of a professional aerial modern dance company. Believe it or not, some of the lessons I learned during that period are bizarrely relevant to studying for the GMAT and Executive Assessment.

The Deranged World of Modern Dance

There were a grand total of six dancers in my company (technically seven if you count the director), and we did a lot of trapeze-based movement, usually mixed with some vaguely acrobatic modern dance.

Our two-hour performances were unbelievably exhausting. Since we had so few dancers, nearly all of us were on stage for most of each performance, jumping from flying bird cages perched 20 feet above the stage or swinging on giant metal sleds.

We did plenty of wild stuff on various midair apparatuses, but my favorite piece of choreography was this mess: I would throw myself into the air as forcefully as I could, another dancer would catch me in mid-leap, and then throw me right back up. I would fly across the stage and try to roll gracefully onto my back; meanwhile, the other dancer would chase me across the stage and fall over backward as soon as I rolled onto my back. Finally, I would hurl him right back into the air before he could land on top of me. Tons of fun!

Complicated sequences like this were masterminded by our director. She was a complete lunatic, but I learned a ton from her. The choreography was absolutely brutal, and the director used to scream at us at the top of her lungs: “Don’t half-ass the choreography in rehearsal! Dance with 100% energy every time you practice, or else you’ll get hurt during the performances!” 

The dancers got sick of hearing it, and we would whine about how crazy and annoying she was.

But the crazy director was right. During our first performance of a particularly intense piece of choreography, three of the seven dancers got hurt, badly. Two dancers collided on stage, and both cracked their ribs. The director proved her own point by popping a hernia on stage during the performance. I watched with horror as she pushed the hernia back in, on stage, and kept dancing. Since she usually watched the rehearsals instead of participating in them, she wasn’t quite ready for the performances, either.

Give 100% Energy During Your GMAT and EA Practice

It’s been a couple of decades since my golden days of hernia-popping athleticism, but much of what I took from that period remains relevant. I should thank my crazy director. Her screams (“Don’t half-ass the choreography in rehearsal!”) ring in my ears every time I prepare for an exam or see one of my GMAT or EA students “half-ass” a practice set. 

The GMAT and Executive Assessment, more than many standardized tests, require you to be 100% focused during every single second of the test. If you lose concentration for even a moment, you might misread a word or bungle some simple arithmetic, and then you’ll miss questions you should have answered correctly. On an adaptive test, those “unforced” errors can absolutely destroy your score, especially if they occur early in a section. As discussed in GMAT Timing Strategy and our video on time management, you’ll need to avoid those careless errors to have any shot at your best GMAT or EA score.

To make things worse for those of you taking the GMAT, the exam is more than two hours long. That’s one reason so many test-takers struggle toward the end of the exam. They’re exhausted, and their ability to concentrate begins to waver.

There’s only one thing you can do to prevent these meltdowns and “careless” errors: do every practice set as if your hair is on fire. If you’re going to do two hours of GMAT or EA practice every night after work, throw every ounce of your energy into those two hours. Convince yourself that each set really matters. If it helps, pretend that an unglued dance director is screaming at you at the top of her lungs.

Or pretend that your GMAT or EA tutor is screaming at you. Whichever you prefer.

Dealing with the Intensity of the GMAT and EA

Sometimes we forget that the GMAT and EA aren’t content-based tests. They’re primarily tests of reading and reasoning. The GMAT is also an outstanding test of your ability to stay sharp for a couple of hours. You can memorize all of the formulas you want, but if you aren’t accustomed to answering 64 questions at full intensity, your score will suffer enormously. 

In a way, the EA is even more intense. There are only 40 questions across the Verbal, Quant, and IR sections, and you have to concentrate for 90 minutes. Since there are fewer questions, you might feel more pressure to get each one right. On an exam like this, any small mistake can feel like it could affect your score in a big way.

That means those who don’t prepare correctly are bound to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of focus and effort demanded by either exam. Giving your practice material the respect it deserves will help ensure that you’re mentally ready to snap into action once you’re face-to-face with the real GMAT or EA.

So don’t just “go through the motions” when you do your practice sets. Do each question as if your MBA or EMBA aspirations hang in the balance, because in the long run, they do.