7 Most Common GMAT Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

Relying solely on the Official Guide for Preparation -  Popularly known as OGs, the Official Guides by GMAC contain a repository of retired questions that were originally featured on the GMAT.

Accuracy is all that matters on the GMAT - A general misconception that students have is –  the more accurate they are, the higher their score will be on a test. This is where most students go wrong. They treat GMAT like any other ordinary test. What they do not realize is that, unlike other tests where you can skip questions from a particular topic or focus on getting certain specific questions right, the GMAT is an adaptive test.

Learn shortcuts to save time - Since GMAT is a time-constrained test, students find it difficult to solve 700-level questions within 2 minutes. If given more time, say 3-4 minutes per question, most students agree that they can solve even the hard questions correctly. So, as a result, they begin to look for shortcuts to save time without realizing that it is not the time that is the issue here.

Practice makes a man perfect -  Practice does make you perfect, but not when you are practising using the wrong approach. Students believe that if they just go on practising more and more questions, their GMAT scores will improve. While that approach may have worked in your favour in school or in other tests, practising alone will not do you much good on GMAT.

Build the right approach first -  Every question on GMAT can be solved within 2 minutes if you know the right strategy to solve it. To learn the right approach for solving a question, you should refer to solutions that follow a consistent and logical method, like using meaning-based approach for SC questions.

Practice one question at a time, applying the right approach -  Once you have learned the right approach for a topic, your next step should be to learn to apply it. The best way of doing that is to solve at least 10 questions from that topic using that standard approach.

Focus on improving timing -  Once you have perfected the right approach, you can focus on improving timing. The key is not limit yourself when learning the right methodology and only focus on the time element when you have gained considerable accuracy using that approach. To improve timing, you can focus on taking quizzes of 10-15 questions each with gradually decreasing timing.

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