by Rich Cohen, \u00a0Rich.C@empowergmat.com \u00a0www.EMPOWERgmat.com<\/p>\n
Over the years, the EMPOWERgmat Team has worked with tens of thousands of Test Takers, helping each to score at a higher level on the GMAT. I\u2019ve dealt with almost every situation that you could possibly imagine \u2013 from the obvious to the subtle. I\u2019ve seen certifiable geniuses get \u2018stuck\u2019 and absolutely \u2018average\u2019 students score at remarkably high levels on the GMAT. Of all of the situations that I\u2019ve faced, one of the most frequent actually has nothing to do with the intelligence or test-taking ability of the individual at all; it has to do with the personality of the Client. The Test Takers who have the most problems improving their GMAT scores are the ones who let their PRIDE get in the way of performing at a higher level.<\/p>\n
Pride can be a subtle and powerful character trait. Unfortunately, when it comes to training to take a Standardized Test, pride is almost always a hindrance. The best Test Takers I\u2019ve ever worked with were flexible thinkers \u2013 they could accept new ways of approaching the Test and be comfortable with processing information, and working through questions, in a way that was initially foreign to their traditional way of thinking.<\/p>\n
If you find yourself thinking ANY of the following during your studies, then your pride is probably getting in the way of your improvement:<\/p>\n
1 - \u201cI don\u2019t have to take notes\u201d\/ \u201dI can do it all in my head\u201d<\/strong> - the GMAT is a consistent, predictable Test, and the type of \u2018work\u2019 that is necessary to correctly answer most prompts is relatively simple. As such, you have to ask WHY you would choose to risk making a little mistake by doing work \u2018in your head.\u2019 Isn\u2019t your future worth a little bit of standardized note-taking? If you don\u2019t think that it is, then that\u2019s probably your pride getting in the way.<\/p>\n 2 \u2013 \u201cI don\u2019t have time to take notes\u201d<\/strong> \u2013 in real simple terms\u2026 YES you do. 75 minutes is actually the perfect amount of time to handle each of the Quant and Verbal sections. A little less time than that and the Test becomes unfair; a little more time than that and the Test becomes too easy. The time that you\u2019re allotted allows you to properly read the prompt, take notes, and do the necessary work on each of the questions that you face. However, if you don\u2019t take notes, then questions actually tend to take LONGER to solve than they should AND you run the risk of making little mistakes.<\/p>\n 3 \u2013 \u201cMy way will get me to the correct answer (but I have to rush to finish the section and I end up guessing on a bunch of questions at the end)\u201d<\/strong> - This argument hinges on the idea that you have an unlimited amount of time to answer all of the questions, which is NOT realistic. Most GMAT questions can be solved in more than one way. If you have to rush to finish the section, then it\u2019s likely that \u201cyour way\u201d is the \u201clong way\u201d to get to the correct answer. By extension, your pride is keeping you from learning new, faster ways of approaching the prompts.<\/p>\n Thankfully, ALL of these issues can \u2018fixed.\u2019 Since the GMAT is predictable, you can train for every subject and every situation that you\u2019ll face on Test Day. But the key word there is \u201ctrain\u201d; if you\u2019re letting your pride keep you from training properly, then you\u2019ll likely get \u2018stuck\u2019 at a score level that is less than your potential.<\/p>\n One of the things that you\u2019ll almost certainly have to overcome is your pride. To that end, we are here to help.<\/p>\n GMAT assassins aren\u2019t born, they\u2019re made, by Rich Cohen, \u00a0Rich.C@empowergmat.com \u00a0www.EMPOWERgmat.com Over the years, the EMPOWERgmat Team has worked with tens of thousands of Test Takers, helping each to score at a higher level on the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":156,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1,243,940],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat","category-uncategorized","category-blog","category-gmat-prep-gmat","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33973","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\/156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33973"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34065,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33973\/revisions\/34065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nRich<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"