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Boost Your Memory—and Your GMAT Score Pt. 1

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Once upon a time, before the printing press was invented, people memorized things. Like, really long things—the Iliad, for example. Today, few among us would bother committing a phone number to memory.

For better or worse, rote memorization may seem largely obsolete in the age of Google, but it remains an essential tool for quickly expanding your knowledge base before Test Day and reaching a higher GMAT score. In Part one of this two-part blog series, we’ll explore some of the tried-and-true GMAT study methods for training your brain and enhancing your memory.

Better memory, better GMAT score

You may have heard that the GMAT is really a test of critical thinking and logical reasoning. It’s true; you’ll be challenged in ways that differ significantly from what you encounter on your college final exams—but that’s not to say knowing content isn’t just as important. If your predicted GMAT score is on the low side, it could indicate you need to put serious effort into memorizing basic concepts.

Unfortunately, trying to take in new content, especially a lot of it at once, does not make for efficient studying—unless you have a systematic learning strategy in place that allows you to prep smarter, not harder. Moreover, much of what’s on the GMAT, such as geometry and statistics, will be information you’ve perhaps already learned in high school and college but have since forgotten.

How can you quickly and effectively expand your foundational GMAT knowledge? You may not need to learn anything quite so daunting as an epic poem, but you will need to know specific mathematical concepts and demonstrate verbal proficiency on GMAT Test Day. Mnemonic devices and structured learning techniques, such as spaced repetition, have aided human beings in memorizing large volumes of information since antiquity, and these methods can help you improve retention while studying for the GMAT, as well.

Mnemonic devices for quantitative rules

Perhaps the most ubiquitous of memorization techniques, mnemonic devices are likely already something you’ve encountered either as an undergraduate or high school student. You may know, for instance, that the order of metric conversions (abbreviated as KHDBDCM), can be rendered as any variation of phrases ranging from “King Henry Died By Drinking Chocolate Milk” to “Kittens Hate Dogs But Do Chase Mice.”

This is what’s known as an expression or word mnemonic—weaving together each particular piece of information with a catchy phrase, often in a specific order. One mnemonic phrase you’ll need to know for the quantitative section of the GMAT is “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally,” which stands in for the mathematical order of operations (parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction). If you can remember that simple phrase, you’ll know the order in which to process each mathematical operation in a complex problem.

Mnemonic words or phrases can be employed in studying almost any quantitative rule. Let’s say you’re studying the triangle inequality theorem and need to remember that the length of one side of a triangle must be bigger than the difference but smaller than the sum of the other two sides. You can remember the rule—Bigger than the Difference, Smaller than the Sum (BDSS)—as the phrase “Big Daddy Says So.”

As you review other quantitative and verbal content, you may find it helpful to make up your own mnemonic phrases that are easiest to remember.

Spaced repetition for long-term memory

Using a mnemonic device helps when there’s a relatively finite rule, sequence, or equation to memorize, but you’ll also need to commit that information to your long-term memory. That’s where spaced repetition comes in.

Spaced repetition is a mnemonic technique for assimilating large volumes of new information and is often used when learning another language. The basic idea is simple: By increasing the intervals of time between reviewing content as you go, you gradually condition your brain, relaying the knowledge from your short-term to your long-term memory. According to neuroscience research, the reason spaced repetition is so effective is that “repeated stimuli, with precisely timed gaps, are one of the most reliable ways to convince neurons that an event is memory-worthy.”

Conversely, research asserts what you may already know from experience: cramming just doesn’t work. Acquiring all the definitions and quantitative rules you need to know for the GMAT is in fact not that different from learning a foreign language, and just as you probably can’t pick up conversational Italian overnight, cramming before Test Day will not likely do much for your GMAT score.

The good news is that unfamiliar or difficult information can be learned by repeated and structured exposure. The most common way to incorporate spaced repetition into your GMAT study plan is to use flashcards. Outline a schedule for reviewing your flashcards that gradually spaces out sessions as you progress. So, your initial weekly schedule might look like this:

  • Day 1: Review flashcards
  • Day 2: Review flashcards
  • Day 3: Take a break
  • Day 4: Review flashcards
  • Day 5: Take a break
  • Day 6: Take a break
  • Day 7: Review flashcards

 

Then, as you advance in subsequent weeks, start spacing review sessions further apart. Eventually, you’ll have committed the information to your long-term memory and will be able to recall it with less need for review.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this blog series, in which we’ll explore some further techniques for boosting your memory by relying on associations and music.

Now that you know more about how enhancing your memory can help enhance your score, get started testing your knowledge. Take our Score Predictor quiz (about 10 minutes!) to help you find out how you might do on the GMAT.

The post Boost Your Memory—and Your GMAT Score Pt. 1 appeared first on Business School Insider.