Erika here with PrepScholar GMAT we're here today with Allen Cheng one of
the PrepScholar co-founders last year Allen and I took the GMAT with some of
the other folks here at PrepScholar and we both came out with the exact same 770
GMAT score so we thought we'd sit down today to talk about each of our
approaches to the GMAT our test day experiences and score breakdowns as well
as to give some advice to students aiming for a 770 or similar GMAT score
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content as always links are in the description Allen thank you so much for
joining us today thank you for having me so we'll jump right in one of your
claims to fame is your perfect SAT score how is the GMAT different from the SAT
or other tests that you've taken yeah the place I would start is probably
thinking about skills and content and I think in many ways the content on the
GMAT is pretty similar to that of the SAT so I think it doesn't have any
really advanced material like calculus or anything like that but I would say
the major difference between the GMAT and any other test is its adaptive
nature which I think adds a whole new kind of strategic layer and
psychological layer to it some of this we'll talk about in a bit well I would
say that's the the biggest difference between them yeah absolutely I would add
that in addition to just the kind of psychological layer of that adaptive
nature one of the things that I think is really cool about the GMAT is that it
really focuses on critical thinking and decision making I think pretty much
every standardized test says you know it's not really about the content it's
you know about how you think about it but I think that the GMAT actually does
it in a way that a lot of these other tests don't do as well so for example
sentence correction and data sufficiency you need to know math and you need to
know grammar but what it's actually testing is can you figure out what you
need to know to solve the problem how does that change the way that you prep
for the GMAT versus for other tests do you think that's a really great question
I think for other tests it's a lot easier to just kind of memorize things
and if you have the right things in your tool belt then you'll be okay on test
day and it makes it a lot easier to kind of cram them and do flashcards and stuff
like that for the GMAT you really need to know your strategy and you really
need to know your approaches and you need to be one with the test you know so
I think that to really get a good score on the GMAT you need to spend more time
just getting getting in that right mindset in mindframe um so great question
from Allen next question would be how did you prep for the GMAT yeah so like
Erika mentioned we took this as part of a company activity so I didn't spend as
much time preparing for it as I would have if I were an MBA student but I kind
of broke up my prep into a few major stages the first was since I was new to
the test just understanding the kind of structure of it the format how many
questions there were what the tests looked like even how you interacted with
the test and what all the different skill pieces were and just making sure I
covered anything that was novel or new to me
for instance the integrated reasoning section is pretty different from other
aspects like you mentioned some really delve more into comprehension and
general kind of critical reasoning and so I just did a few practice questions
there to make sure that kind of dipping my toe in the water of the pool
basically to make sure I was familiar with it all that was preparation for the
bulk of my prep which was taking the practice tests and just making sure that
that was as realistic an experience as possible and so that was probably the
bulk of my prep and just thinking through as I was taking the practice
tests what my strategy would be on test day how I was managing time and just kind
of constantly reflecting on how I was doing when I took the practice tests
then afterwards after getting my score breakdown
I reviewed the questions that I had missed and tried to see if there are any
patterns to things that I had missed like did I was I missing any particular
skill weakness that led me to make those mistakes or
did I have any mistake in my test strategy then I did some final kind of
last day prep just preparing things like for the essay portion making sure I had
pre-constructed arguments that I could use or a skeleton that I could use
brushing up on any skill weaknesses so that was the extent of my prep for the
test yeah that's awesome I really like that you talked about focusing in on the
problems that you missed on your practice test we actually just put out a
video about making error logs and how that's really beneficial to you know
capturing your own weaknesses and making sure you improve on those um I think
that that's one of the things that I did that I thought was was really helpful is
once I found out we were taking the test you know as I was working through
different problems which I do for my job um I you know took notes and you know
noted some strategies that would be beneficial to me specifically for
problems that I found challenging what I didn't really do was do that very
realistic practice test and I think that's probably the thing that I would
do differently is to spend a little bit more time in that very realistic time
environment but yeah I think that really focusing on our mistakes is the thing
that we kind of share in common there cool did you review the error log right
before the test like I did that's typically not something I recommend to
most students I say morning of just be awake again like do a bit of a walk eat
a good breakfast do some deep breaths and visualize but I was working on you
know really crunched timeline which again don't recommend so I did review morning
of but what I think was really helpful was I reviewed the night before um and
just kind of had that you know to solidify overnight so I think that was
helpful because I definitely the on test day went oh that's that one thing that I
messed up yesterday I need to get it right today cool um so I thought that
was really helpful okay we talked a bit about how you made the most of your one
practice test what was your experience like on test day and how did it compare
to that practice test you took so when I took the practice test I really tried to
mimic the test environment as much as possible mm-hmm and I think that's
really important just make sure that you time yourself accurately don't give
yourself any extra time and you really feel that timing pressure
and even try to get into the psychological the mindset that you will
be on test say if you tend to get nervous on test day like I do then just
pretend it's a real thing so those are some pieces that help me get the most
out of that practice test and so going into the test day I think there are
probably two aspects that are worth noting one is I'm pretty sensitive to my
test environment so exactly where you take the test how many people are around
to you what noise there is by and large I found the test center really
professional and check-in was super simple there wasn't a line I was able to
get and get out on time and the test center was really quiet everyone was
just kind of taking different tests there wasn't a lot of kind of
competitive pressure that I felt like you might in the SAT when you're sitting
with all the other kids who are taking the SAT so I found that really non-distracting
which was a pleasant surprise because something I personally worry about a lot
when taking standardized tests is how is the environment going to change my
performance so that was a pleasant surprise how that didn't happen I think
as far as the test goes the major difference from the practice test is I
felt a lot of timing pressure for the quant section and for the verbal section
I actually didn't have that much timing pressure I ended with about 20 minutes
of free time and I was really confident about my answers but for the quant
section I felt that I was probably taking more time that I should have on
each question and this is what I mentioned about the adaptive nature of
the test and how it adds a psychological layer where because you can never go
back and review your questions yeah I just felt a lot more pressure to make
sure I had the question correct and often I tended to over solve a question
and such as solving the same question in multiple ways to make sure that you have
the right answer and I probably over compensated a bit for that and that
contributed to some time pressure but I just really wanted to make sure that I
got the questions right since I knew it influenced my later questions gotcha
yeah I think we had really similar timing experience for me the verbal
section I think I went way too fast I ended up with yes similarly about like
20 to spare um on the quant though yeah I
also felt that pressure but I think I went the opposite direction because I
knew that I would probably run out of time so I think I went the direction of
guessing maybe a little too early um which you know I I didn't have too much
extra time at the end but I think that might have contributed my score dropped
about like ten points so I would say that that would be mm-hmm
the main thing that was different for me did you get the same score on your
practice test as you did on test day I think it was in the right ballpark I
didn't really take too much stock in my practice test score because I knew it
wasn't the full adaptive experience and I also knew the test might have been
outdated but I think it was in the same ballpark gotcha
cool um so we both got esrs or enhanced score reports for the tests that we took
so I compared the two and was really interested to see that even though we
got the same overall score we had really different kind of score breakdowns so
the two things that I kind of wanted to note were that we got the same quant
score but we actually got two different verbal scores about one point apart and
yet we still got the same overall score the other thing that I thought was
interesting was that even though we got that same quant score I actually missed
significantly more questions and we were at you know roughly the same
level but on one section I was actually at a slightly easier level but yet same
score um so what do you think we can take away from the fact that these very
different actual tests led to that same overall for for me I think the main
takeaway is that you really can't predict what your score is going to be
based on the experience of the test yeah I know something that a lot of new GMAT
studiers worry about is you know if you miss a question that's going to
punish you for the rest of the test and I think this can add a lot of
psychological stress when you're taking the test where you just worry if you got
some easy questions whether that means you're doomed and you're going to get a terrible score
and then you can really get in your own head and this just causes a vicious
cycle of stress that I think can really push your score down so I think something
that I noticed when I was taking a test for example was that I would get a
really difficult question followed by two or three really easy questions
and this would make me think well did I miss that
question like is the test just punishing me for missing that question
but based on the ESR it turns out that that wasn't the case right so I think
there's a lot of randomness to the algorithm in which questions it selects
in which order and you really shouldn't read much into that on test day you can
actually have very different test experiences from someone else even from
your practice tests and end up with a very similar story right yeah I think an
additional thing in addition to kind of like the the randomness of the algorithm
I think is also kind of our perception like maybe something that I think of as
like an easy question and go in my head oh no I missed the last one is something
that other test takers might find really challenging and maybe that's just
something that comes more naturally to me or maybe that's something that I
studied yesterday and so it's just fresh and the other thing I would say is be
skeptical about unofficial practice tests
don't you know take that score as gospel take it with a grain of salt the
algorithm is really complicated and hard to replicate so when you can use
official practice materials to judge your score um so if you were to take the
test again what would you do differently to get
those last 30 points and would you yeah I think for the purposes of MBA admissions
a 770 or any score in that range is good enough to get you into any
school that you would reasonably want to go to once you I think
meet their criteria for the score or roughly in the range they'll look at the
rest of your application and that's where that's going to have a lot more
weight so for the purpose of that I probably wouldn't take it again but if I
were to try to get a higher score I would probably spend more time on the
quant section and but the my verbal section from my esr showed that I was
probably doing fine there the quant I'd missed a few questions and I felt more
timing pressure so I would probably start off by taking more difficult
questions and just practicing those and seeing really the extreme ranges of what
I might see on testing and also practice the time and pressure a bit more so
maybe try to develop a general strategy for things like data sufficiency so that
when I took the test because I didn't prep very much it was more ad hoc every
question I approached a bit differently based on what
exactly was given to me but maybe something more methodical might help
release some of the time pressure absolutely um alright then final
question I think I would approach it very similarly what is your number one
recommendation for someone aiming for a 770 GMAT score I think to get a score in
the 99th percentile or in that ballpark really requires you to master a lot of
different things and really drill them to near perfection and so I think my
one recommendation would be to identify where your specific weaknesses
are and to keep drilling them until you are near perfection to them and largely
I would separate the two concerns into a general skill and content knowledge and
test strategy and if you have weaknesses in either one of those it can really
prevent you from getting that top score for instance you can master all the
content in the world but if you are just not used to timing pressures or you
don't solve problems efficiently then you're not going to get to top score and
vice-versa as well so I think it's important to just be introspective
reflect on your mistakes and you know do a lot of work but also reflect on what
you're learning and what you're having difficulty with and just make sure that
you have the right resources and the right approach to to to fix some of
those weaknesses absolutely to add to that I would say you know if you're
aiming for a 99th percentile score that kind of one-size-fits-all prep isn't
really going to help so approaching your weaknesses and specifically your
weaknesses is really important you can do this with self-study using techniques
like the error log but if you really are gunning for this score investing in some
options like personal tutoring or a customized program can really help with
mastering those sorts of weaknesses well that's about all we have time for today
thank you so much for joining us Allen thanks for having me if you have any
questions for either me or Allen or suggestions for future videos please
leave a comment below thank you so much for watching and happy GMAT studies