How to get a good GMAT score?

Always dreamt of studying in a top business school? Though tough, the dream can be a reality with a bit of planning, hard work and determination. A high GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) score can be the first step to get admission in a reputed B school. But the question is: How to secure high score in GMAT? This blog provides you with the right guidance. Apart from following the tips offered in this blog, you can consider seeking coaching for GMAT. 

Here are a few tips on how to secure good score in GMAT:

• Plan Ahead:

Proper planning can help improve your chances of success in GMAT. Without planning and significant preparation over a couple of months, no one can expect to pocket a score in the 99th percentile. No matter how good you are at mathematics and critical reasoning, you will not be able to score high without solid preparation. Do not forget to take practice tests on a regular basis. If you see your score going up every day, know that you are on the right track. Joining the best GMAT coaching centre can help improve your efficiency and offer excellent guidance.

• Learn Concepts, Use Them Quickly:

Since it is a timed exam and you need to answer 78 questions in just 150 minutes, you need to be prompt and answer as quickly as possible. You should understand the concepts thoroughly and be extremely quick in calculation. Regular practice for months can help enhance your efficiency in quick calculation. 

• Creating a Learning Diary May be Useful:

While you prepare for the exam, you need to jot down each unknown question and attempt to find its appropriate answers. If you practice this for long, you will soon find that your list of weaknesses has reduced. 

• Educated Guessing Can be of Great Help:

When you are not confident about an answer, you can resort to educated guessing method. Rank the 5 possible answers fast based on their suitability and strike out the wrong ones. Elimination or 2 to 3 wrong answers will make guessing easier. Appropriate evaluation is, no doubt, better but shortage of time often turns it difficult. 

• Work on Your Weaknesses:

You should identify the areas you are the weakest and start working on them immediately. Strengthening the weaknesses through practice does not mean that you should lose focus on your strengths. Make sure to fortify more your strong areas through regular practice. 

• Overshooting the Target Score Would be a Good Practice:

Even if 500 or 600 is good enough to get you into your dream B school, you should try to overshoot your target score while taking practice tests at home. You should try to score at least 50 more than you required for getting admission in a top business school. It is very common for the students to acquire 30 points more or less than they target, depending on the psychological and physical condition on the exam day.

Apart from following the aforementioned tips, you can consider getting coaching for GMAT. Search the internet thoroughly to shortlist a few top coaching centres offering GMAT guidance and out of them try to track the best GMAT coaching centre based on the number of successful students it has. These institutions will prepare a concrete plan and offer excellent guidance needed for bagging a high GMAT score.

The Essential Guide to Acing the GMAT

Your GMAT scores play a critical role in defining your prospects of getting accepted in the right school and program. With competition getting stiffer every year, you want to make sure that you optimize what you learn at the GMAT coaching classes and work hard to improve your scores.

Here are a few tips to consider that will help you push your scores up –

·         Planning Ahead

You cannot just decide to sit for the GMAT and come out of the exam hall with a score in the 99^th percentile. Regardless of how fine your mathematic, reasoning and language skills are, the GMAT exam is a challenging one to give. It is estimated that a student needs at least a 100 hours of solid study time to be able to do well in this competitive exam. While many students end up putting in these hours over three weeks before the exam date, it is recommended that you spread out these hours evenly and over a longer time frame to maintain your mental and emotional health and to eventually contribute to a great score. It is ideal to start preparing three months before your exam date.

·         Recognize your Strengths and Hone Them

Many students only focus on those sections where they get the most answers wrong. However, it is important to understand that just because you get the answers right in the others, does not mean that your approach towards them is the most efficient one. Considering that your GMAT exam is a race against time, you also need to focus on fine tuning your strengths to improve efficiency, leaving more time for you to spend on your week spots.

·         Focus at More than Just the Hard Questions

While studying for the hard stuff first may be the best approach in most written tests, in case of the GMAT you may have to alter this a little. Remember that this competitive exam is a computer-adaptive one. This means that the test tends to get increasingly difficult with every question that you have a correct answer to. The questions are typically ranked as per difficulty and often range between moderately difficult to diabolically challenging. The easier questions demand different testing strategies and hence require you to master your basics. Or else, chances are that you will never make it to the hard questions in your exam.

·         Mastering the English Section

For a majority of test takers, GMAT isn’t their native language. Especially if this holds true for you, you need to work harder in acquiring a good understanding of English to achieve a decent score. Not only because the test includes a verbal section, but because you don’t want language to be a barrier when solving questions from other sections. If you haven’t studied math in English, ask your best GMAT coaching professors to help you get familiar with math related vocabulary. Spend time reading news articles in technology, science, finance and other subjects in the English language.

·         Recognize your Weaknesses and Plan around them

While the goal may be to master every topic, and solve even the most challenging problems by the time it is exam day, GMAT as a test may not necessarily reward perseverance. Considering that you have less than 120 seconds to answer a question, spending a lot of time on a single question is not the ideal approach. If you are aware of your weakness towards a specific concept or topic, you may want to save time working out the answer.

It is believed that your score can often actually improve by guessing the answer for those questions and moving on. Focus your valuable time on questions you are able to answer.

Summary

Understand some key strategies involved in acing the GMAT exam.