Three Simple Ways Deliberate Practice Will Improve Your GMAT Score

There’s a common myth about standardized tests, that they’re supposed to gauge how smart you are. Why else would MBA programs require all students take a GMAT? Don’t they need some easy way to figure out who’s smartest without reading through all of those pesky applications?

Indeed, the GMAT does act as a kind of signifier of what type of student you’ll be, and yes it helps admissions offices separate the wheat from the chafe. But this test doesn’t show how smart you are, rather how good you are at taking this test.

A high score on the GMAT is often reflective of someone who adapted to the demands of the test and worked furiously to improve at it. If anything, the GMAT communicates to a school just how hard you’re willing to work at a long, boring test with obscure data sufficiency questions and a series of terrible sentence correction options.

But hard work doesn’t just mean taking every practice test available and hoping for the best. Instead, apply some principles of deliberate practice to your test prep regimen and you’ll guarantee that the work you’re putting into this exam is meaningful.

1. Focus Intensely on What You’re Missing

Your absolute first step of your GMAT prep journey should be taking a practice test and reviewing everything you got wrong. Lots of people simply take the practice test, look over the correct answer choices for whatever they missed, and then take another practice test.

One of the central tenets of deliberate practice is focus, and a great way to practice some focus here is to review every single question you missed thoroughly. Did you miss a lot of critical reasoning questions? Review not just how the correct answer is correct, but why the wrong answers don’t work.

With the Quantitative section, keep a running list of every single math concept that appeared in questions that you got wrong. You’ll not just want to review all of those concepts, but return to this test after that review to see how that content was applied.

Moving forward, you’ll want to put the same focus into homework. If you’re working out of a test prep book, spend at least as much time reading over and picking apart the provided answer explanations as you did actually working on the question that you’re reviewing.

2. Get Feedback

Practicing often, you might find yourself hitting a wall. Sure, you’re getting more geometry-based problem solving questions now that you’ve revealed all of the rules, but your accuracy on the data sufficiency questions just won’t budge.

Lots of obstacles you’ll encounter not just while prepping for the GMAT but also while in grad school boil down to an issue of perspective. When you can’t conceive of another way to solve a problem, you’re doomed to keep trying the inadequate method you have been using so far. This is where feedback can really help.

Solicit advice from a friend or colleague who you know has done well on this test before. Google for posts on various forums and even Reddit.

You might also want to consider working with a tutor. If you have specific problems that you’re trying to solve, tutoring will likely be more beneficial than taking a class. GMAT classes tend to be tailored to people who are starting from scratch.

Once you’ve gotten some feedback, practice with intense focus trying to apply it. While completing practice sets of practice tests, attempt completing those problems while applying the advice you’ve been given.

3. Understand

The really tricky part about the GMAT is that no matter how much you memorize strategy or math concepts, you still have to deal with a series of questions getting progressively more difficult as the clock ticks away.

What that means is that you’ll want a series of excellent instincts come test day. Those instincts are best developed by putting a lot of work into understanding the test better.

There are a few different types of understanding that can help you with this test.

You can understand how much text you typically need to reread to confidently answer a reading comprehension question. You can understand your exponent rules so well that you end up filtering out all of the extraneous information when trying to solve a complex algebra problem. You can develop an understanding of when a condition is or is not sufficient for a data sufficiency question.

The best work you can do to prepare for this test will help you build understanding. The focus, the feedback, and the practice are all steps towards accomplishing that one, big goal of achieving your target test score on the GMAT.

For more information on deliberate practice, view this YouTube video created by MyGuru's founder, Mark Skoskiewicz. Also, if you're interested in attending one of MyGuru's free GMAT skills webinars, click here for more information on what will be covered during the 30 minute session and how to sign up. 

About the Author

Mike S. is one of our most experienced test prep tutors. For more information on our GMAT prep packages, click here.