How do you maximize your score on the GMAT? Sure, you have to learn to answer harder questions correctly “ but that’s not actually enough.

Let’s stipulate a couple of things. First, whenever I say easier or harder in this post, I’m referring to easier or harder for you, the reader; everything here is relative to your current scoring level and your desire to lift that level to whatever your goal score is. In other words, this works at every level and for every goal. 🙂

Second, as a general rule, you take (on average) more time to answer harder questions than you take to answer easier ones.

Okay, what does that mean? Most people don’t spend much time studying the things that they generally already know how to do; they don’t analyze questions that they answered correctly unless there was some other issue (such as spending too much time).

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Here are the free GMAT events we’re holding this week. All times are local unless otherwise specified.

3/25/13– Houston, TX – Free Trial Class – 6:30PM- 9:30PM

3/26/13– West Hollywood, CA- Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

3/26/13– Online- Free Trial Class- 8:00PM-11:00PM (EST)

3/28/13– London- Choosing the Right B-School presented by mbaMission [London Center]– 7:00PM- 8:30PM

3/29/13– Online- Choosing the Right B-School presented by mbaMission– 8:30PM-10:00PM (EST)

3/30/13– Boston, MA – Free Trial Class – 2:00PM- 5:00PM

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listings Page.

Wait, is that a typo? Maybe I meant Confucius, the Chinese teacher and philosopher?

I actually do mean confusion. ? Journalist Annie Murphy Paul recently contributed a post to KQED’s Mind/Shift blog: Why Confusion Can Be a Good Thing.

Go ahead and read it “ I’ll wait. It won’t take you more than 5-10 minutes. Take particular note of item 2 on her 3-item list.

Why Is Confusion Good?

Ms. Murphy Paul supports her thesis with an important point: When we don’t know the right way to do something, we open up our minds to many potential paths “ and sometimes an alternate potential path is better than the official path.

We’ve all had the experience of reading an official solution and thinking, “Seriously? That’s how you have to do this?” only to find a better way on an online forum or via discussion with a teacher or fellow students.

Further, as far as a test like the GMAT is concerned, the discomfort inherent in figuring out that best path allows us to determine why a certain approach is preferable. That knowledge, in turn, helps us to know when we can re-use a certain line of thinking or solution process on a different (but similar) question in future.

How Can I Use Confusion To Help My Prep?

Murphy-Paul offers three suggestions (quotes below are from the article; the rest is just me):

(1) Expose yourself to confusing material
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Many a true word is said in jest.—I don’t know, but I heard it from my mother.

It’s a funny thing—folks get good at doing OG problems at their desks.  Then they take a practice CAT, with the clock on the monitor running down, like sands in the hourglass.  Suddenly they are seized by amphetamine psychosis.  Like NFL rookies, the big adjustment is to the speed of the game.  When you’re taking the test, if you can’t do it* in two to three minutes, you can’t do it.*  However, timing problems are an effect, not a cause.  People have timing problems because their math foundation sucks.  People have timing problems because they don’t get a good rephrasing.  People have timing problems because they don’t compare SC choices vertically.  People have timing problems because they don’t have the discipline to guess.  And so on.  All of these problems are fixable.  Like most GMAT issues, timing problems are the result of either a poor foundation or bad behavior.

Take foundation work. . .please—that’s a joke from your grandparents’ day.  When I say 7 times 13, you say 91.  Think of it as a rap.  When you see .625, you say 5/8.  Woot.  All seriousness aside, people waste 30 seconds a question in the quant because they don’t know their times tables or squares or the fractional decimal percentage equivalencies.  Or their algebra isn’t smooth and silky.  Think about how much time that uses up during the section.  How do you fix that?  How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice, practice, practice.  That’s a New York joke—LA classes hate it.  You have to want it enough to do the work that you need to do.  That amount varies, person to person.

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Lately, I’ve been speaking with a few different students who are aiming for a 750+ score—in other words, stratospheric! I’ve tried (and hope I’ve succeeded!) to impress upon these folks that getting such a score involves a lot more than studying the hardest questions.

What’s another crucial component? Finding faster/easier ways to answer questions that you can already answer now.

Why? The questions that you can do right now in the 650 or 700 range will need to turn into very easy-for-you questions in order to hit 750+. It isn’t enough that you can do them now in relatively normal time. You’ll actually need to turn these into I can answer this very quickly without making a mistake so that you can knock these out and have a little bit more time and mental energy to spend on the even-harder questions you’ll need to answer to hit 750+.

Try this GMATPrep question: Read more

Catch up on some business school news and tips with a few of this week’s top stories:

GMAC ˜Jazzed’ By Early IR Section Results (Poets & Quants)

Nine months after rolling out the newest section of the GMAT, representatives from GMAC talk about how test-takers are handling Integrated Reasoning.

Spring into a New Habit (Grad Hacker)

Struggling to keep a daily routine this semester? Grad Hacker shares five great tips to help you establish good habits over spring break.

The Rise of Social Entrepreneurship in Three Charts (Harvard Business Review)

HBR shares some interesting data about the rise of social entrepreneurship at some of the nation’s top business schools.
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Students ask this all the time “ they’ve heard that the scoring penalizes us for getting a lot of questions wrong in a row.

That’s true, to some extent “ there is something of a penalty built in if we get 4+ questions wrong in a row. The test writers don’t want us to spend, for example, 65 minutes doing the first 2/3 of the questions really carefully (in hopes of boosting our score very high) and then blowing the remaining questions. They prioritize steady performance over the length of the entire test, so they’ve built safeguards into the algorithm to ensure that we can’t game the test, essentially.

So how do I avoid getting a bunch of questions wrong in a row?

Here’s the thing. You can’t avoid that “ not in the way that you mean.

The only real way to avoid getting a bunch of questions wrong in a row is to make sure you don’t mess up your timing so badly that you get other questions wrong just because you’re rushing.

But that’s not what people mean when they ask me about this. Instead, they mean something like, I’m pretty sure I got the last two wrong “ I just outright guessed on the last one. Now, how do I make sure I get the next one right?

You can’t. You can never make sure that you get any particular question right. If you could well, then you wouldn’t need any help, right? : ) Nobody on the planet, not even the best test takers, can guarantee that they’re going to answer any particular question correctly.

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If you asked me where I learned my countries in Africa, I’d tell you that it was from watching Where In the World is Carmen Sandiego? My knowledge of state capitals? Animaniacs. My ability to find prime numbers while being hunted by cartoon monsters in a 6×5 grid? Number Munchers.

And while these and so many other skills that I learned in school also came largely from my grade school teachers, I think that there’s an underappreciated value to using videos and games to help supplement learning. Staring at a GMAT book for an hour isn’t helpful if you aren’t learning anything because your mind is checked out. But tricking your brain into getting faster at finding numbers that multiply to 24 might be, especially if you can make time to do so on your ride to work or while waiting for your dentist appointment. And for many of us, myself included, there’s no better place in the world to find 5-minute distraction than at the App Store. So if you have an iPhone or iPad (and many of these apps are also found on Android too) check out some of these apps below. And if you have any other apps that you use, type them up in the comments below!

Note: Listing here is not an endorsement by Manhattan GMAT.

Basic Computation Apps

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ACCESS MBA events provide a unique chance for you to meet Admissions Directors of prestigious MBA programs from around the world on an individual, 1-to-1 basis. Event services can include personalized MBA consulting sessions, a Panel Discussion featuring school representatives, Manhattan GMAT workshops, and more. Plus, every participant will receive a 120-page Access MBA guide. Places are limited for the One-to-One meetings and early registration is recommended, so visit accessmba.com to register and learn more!

Here are some details on three Access MBA events coming up soon. We hope to see you there!

LONDON

Saturday, February 2, 2012
9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
GMAT WORKSHOP WITH MANHATTAN GMAT at 12:30 p.m.

Attending schools include:

Ashridge Business School
Cass Business School
Durham University Business School
Esade Business School
Henley
Hult International Business School
IE Business School
IESE Executive MBA
IESE Full-Time MBA
IMD
Kellogg – WHU
Manchester Business School
Manchester Business School Worldwide
MIP Politecnico di Milano
Nottingham University
University of Cambridge, Judge Business School
University of Chicago Booth School of Business
University of Edinburgh Business School
Vlerick Business School

TORONTO

Wednesday, February 13
4:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Attending schools include:

Cass Business School
Copenhagen Business School
Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University
Durham University Business School
HEC Montreal
Hult International Business School
IESE Executive MBA
Manchester Business School
Manchester Business School Worldwide
Rotman School of Management , University of Toronto
Simon Fraser University – Beedie School of Business
University of Massachusetts Amherst – Isenberg School of Business
University of Victoria – Peter B. Gustavson School of Business
Vlerick Business School
Western University – Richard Ivey School of Business
York University – Schulich School of Business

MONTREAL

Saturday, February 16
9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Attending schools include:

Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University
Durham University Business School
EDHEC Business School
ESCP Europe
HEC Montreal
Hult International Business School
IESE Executive MBA
IESE Full-Time MBA
Manchester Business School
Queens School of Business
Rotman School of Management , University of Toronto
Simon Fraser University – Beedie School of Business
University of Victoria – Peter B. Gustavson School of Business
Vlerick Business School
Western University – Richard Ivey School of Business
York University – Schulich School of Business

When was the last time you thought that? For me, it was sometime within the past week. I knew that this problem was not beyond my reach! Meanwhile, the clock was ticking away and all I could focus on was the fact that I couldn’t remember something that I should have been able to remember.

That horrible, sinking feeling is universal: we’ve all felt it before and—unfortunately—we’re all going to feel it again. How can we deal with this? Read more