{"id":22997,"date":"2014-02-21T08:00:49","date_gmt":"2014-02-21T15:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/gmat-study-tip-slow-down-to-improve\/"},"modified":"2014-02-21T08:00:49","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T15:00:49","slug":"gmat-study-tip-slow-down-to-improve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/gmat-study-tip-slow-down-to-improve\/","title":{"rendered":"GMAT Study Tip: Slow Down to Improve"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\"GMAT<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

A great GMAT study tip is what I call The Slow Down Paradox: going slower on the GMAT can make you faster.<\/p>\n

Recently, one of my GMAT tutoring students, an engineering undergrad at Penn, hit the test prep wall.\u00a0 After a couple of months of study he was consistently scoring 670\/680 on weekly practice tests, but he needed to do significantly better to qualify for Wharton's sub matriculation program.\u00a0 This student was a bright guy and a typical engineer, accustomed to attacking challenges and blowing through them.\u00a0\u00a0 His problem was quant \u2013 all kinds of quant.\u00a0 This was surprising since, in our sessions together and his homework, he demonstrated mastery of high-level content and methods. But something was falling apart under test conditions. Together, we analyzed his situation and soon saw a pattern.\u00a0 Specifically, he was making preventable errors, misreading the problems and falling into traps.\u00a0 Meanwhile, he was regularly finishing the section 15 minutes early!<\/p>\n

Every time you make a preventable error on the GMAT, you're falling into a trap designed to test your critical thinking skills and your attention to detail.\u00a0 The test-maker frequently presents information in deliberately confusing order, separates data that need to be considered together, or uses terms with very specific implications.\u00a0<\/strong> Test takers need to be alert to these pitfalls while at the same time identifying the relevant content information and choosing the most efficient method to solve the particular problem.<\/p>\n

Since he had plenty of extra time in the section, I challenged my student to slow down his reading of each question<\/strong>.\u00a0 More specifically, his assignment was to\u00a0read each question exactly once<\/strong>.\u00a0 To read only once, he had to visualize the relationships and goal in each question.\u00a0\u00a0 I dared him to take the test-maker's question and make it his own before proceeding \u2013 much as test-takers learn to paraphrase a critical reasoning stimulus or summarize each paragraph in a reading comprehension passage.<\/p>\n

On his next practice test, the student put this new discipline to work.\u00a0 He slowed down his reading and increased his understanding of each quant question\u00a0before\u00a0going to his noteboard to calculate.\u00a0 It worked: his score shot up 30 points. His meticulous approach enabled him sidestep the snares that previously had been tripping him up.\u00a0 And as he mastered the technique, his performance continued to improve.<\/p>\n

Now, this may sound all well and good if you've got an additional 15 minutes to play with. A little more patience, a little more attention will obviously pay off if only you had the time.\u00a0 Well, just maybe you do.\u00a0 You see, in addition improving his score, the student also found that, by reading each question once and not having to go back again and again, he actually finished the section even earlier. Try it.<\/p>\n

The post GMAT Study Tip: Slow Down to Improve<\/a> appeared first on Kaplan GMAT Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A great GMAT study tip is what I call The Slow Down Paradox: going slower on the GMAT can make you faster. Recently, one of my GMAT tutoring students, an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,558,243,940],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat","category-kaplan-blog","category-blog","category-gmat-prep-gmat","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}