Hello Readers, this is post number one of my experience in preparing for the GMAT exam. Just to give you some background, I took the GMAT exam for the first time 12 years ago during my last year of university but I opted to cancel my score which was a big, big mistake. A lot of time has passed since my first attempt but I recall that the questions that I was seeing at the end of the exam were easy, leading me to think that I had done very poorly. It was a bad decision to cancel the score and there are a lot of articles out there including this one from Manhattan Prep that argue why you should not. My second attempt was three years ago and this time I did not cancel my score just to receive my extremely underwhelming result of 470…….
So what went wrong? If you check out other posts on this blog page you, can see how I have been taking other arguably challenging exams so why did I perform so poorly on the GMAT exam? There are a lot of posts out there from test takers who got their desired scores and got accepted at their target business schools. This is not one of those posts but I am hoping that this gives you some insight as to the bad habits that you should avoid when preparing for this exam.

Why Am I Taking this Exam?

Before starting on the exam preparation, you might start by asking the ‘Why?’ question. What is driving me to prepare to take the GMAT exam? I have been looking to pursue a DBA at a local university in Tokyo and the GMAT is required by the school. I am not looking to apply for a fancy degree at an ivy league uni and the DBA also takes on part-time students; at the current stage of my career, I would not see any added value in pursuing a full-time degree, rather I have been looking for ways to do research in the field of business whilst working full time. I am sure that it might be easy for you to imagine how my motivation might not be as strong as a student in his/her mid/late twenties working hard towards being accepted by their dream university.

Bad Habit #1: Not Taking the Diagnostic Test

This was probably one of the biggest mistakes. Throughout my preparation, I never had a good grasp my level or my weak points, so I was just working on solving questions in an unsystematic manner without having a good idea of the areas that needed improvement. On test date I must have lost so many points on basic questions, mistakes which could have been avoided with a more structured preparation. In the following weeks, I am planning on taking a diagnostic test to understand what my level is.

Bad Habit #2: Not Giving Myself Enough Time to Prepare / Not Respecting the Exam

Online you will read so many miracle stories of people who managed to get a 700+ score just by spending a few weeks on their preparation. Then when they share a bit about their backgrounds you see how they might have already had a strong foundation on the verbal and quant topics that are tested on the exam. Unless you are very confident in your abilities, don’t make my mistake and give yourself a solid 3-6 months to prepare for the exam. I prepared for a month with a very disorganised schedule and ended up paying the price for my arrogance. Assess your skills and put in the required amount of time to work towards your desired score, there are no shortcuts. I did not respect the exam and rightly so I got punished for it.

Bad Habit #3: Not Sticking to a Study Routine

I chose to study for the exam during a period when my work was busy and I was unexpectedly required to do overtime. This made it difficult to put to regularly put in the required hours to prepare for the exam. I thought that I would just do questions when I had some spare time which proved to be a terrible approach. Be sure to spend some time looking at your schedule and planning your study sessions on days when you can reliably afford to study and stick to that schedule.

Bad Habit #4: Getting Discouraged by the Hard Questions

I hope that a lot of people can relate to this point. I argue that this is an inevitable consequence of having a disorganised study schedule; if like me you were just attempting random questions, you might encounter a lot of hard (700+) questions which you will get wrong, you then get demoralised and start doubting yourself and lose confidence. A very important piece of advice that I received recently is that it’s OK to get questions wrong on the GMAT exam, however it’s not OK to repeatedly get the easier questions wrong. Getting easy questions wrong means that on test day you will not even see the harder questions and your score will be very mediocre. In my study plan, I will make sure to look at the easier questions and understand the concepts thoroughly before moving to harder ones.

Conclusion

These were just some of my bad habits, I have no doubt that if you have been studying for the GMAT for a while these concepts might sound very obvious to you but I am hoping anyone who is just starting their preparation can avoid these bad habits. I am planning on taking the exam next March so in my future posts I will be sharing my progress. I am hoping that this time I get a more respectable score, if you have any study tips please feel free to share them in the comments section. Thank you for reading!