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25 Jul 2026, 04:53
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I'm in between my GMAT prep right now, and one of the things I'm struggling with is: what type of question should I do at the last stage of my preparation?
I've been doing a lot of hard questions through different platforms, like EGmat or GMAT clubs, hard questions, 80s plus. After doing all those hard questions, when I go into the actual official mock exams or I give another sectional exam and tackle the level of questions that will actually be there in the exam, there is a difference in mindset. When you solve a lot of hard questions, you expect every question to not be solved easily, if that makes sense, and so you go into the exam with a very different mindset than you should.
While I do believe doing hard questions is important, I don't think they are unnecessary, or I think they are counterintuitive at the end of your preparation.
I've been doing a lot of hard questions through different platforms, like EGmat or GMAT clubs, hard questions, 80s plus. After doing all those hard questions, when I go into the actual official mock exams or I give another sectional exam and tackle the level of questions that will actually be there in the exam, there is a difference in mindset. When you solve a lot of hard questions, you expect every question to not be solved easily, if that makes sense, and so you go into the exam with a very different mindset than you should.
While I do believe doing hard questions is important, I don't think they are unnecessary, or I think they are counterintuitive at the end of your preparation.
27 Jul 2026, 06:27
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Yeah, I hit this exact wall. I spent the last three weeks before my test grinding 700-805 level stuff from e-GMAT and GMAT Club, and by the time I sat for an actual official mock, I caught myself over-thinking questions that were genuinely straightforward. My brain had been trained to assume every problem has a trap hiding in it.
What fixed it for me was switching to mixed-difficulty sets in my last two weeks, actual official practice sets that blend easy, medium and hard the way the real GMAT Focus adaptive algorithm does. It forces you to recalibrate your gut sense of "this looks too easy, something's wrong" back to normal.
I'd still keep some hard reps in the mix so you don't go soft on the ceiling questions, just don't make them the majority this late. Trust your first read on a question again, that's the real skill you're rebuilding here.
What fixed it for me was switching to mixed-difficulty sets in my last two weeks, actual official practice sets that blend easy, medium and hard the way the real GMAT Focus adaptive algorithm does. It forces you to recalibrate your gut sense of "this looks too easy, something's wrong" back to normal.
I'd still keep some hard reps in the mix so you don't go soft on the ceiling questions, just don't make them the majority this late. Trust your first read on a question again, that's the real skill you're rebuilding here.
04 Aug 2026, 21:50
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As someone who has coached hundreds of people through the GMAT, I have found that spending too much time on hard problems is one of the biggest mistakes that students make in their prep. At best, it is inefficient, and at worst, it can undermine your skills.
Remember that the GMAT is an adaptive test: if you get problems right then you get harder problems; if you get problems wrong then you get easier problems (sure, it's a bit more complicated than that). This means that the easier questions are the more important ones: if you don't get these right then you won't even see the harder ones. For example, anyone 75 in their GMAT quant will have got a handful of easy problems wrong (or they didn't finish the section). For many students, simply guessing on the 3-5 hardest problems in their test may be the fastest way to raise their score. I've seen many students who have taught themselves never to let go of problems, so that they get into the habit of running out of time in their quant section.
Consequently, getting really fluent at the easy-medium problems should be the aim for most students. This often means mastering more strategies than simply translating into algebra, which can often be a sub-optimal strategy, as it takes a long time and is easy to mess up. Also, learning to check your answers is a healthy habit: I teach that any time you solve a problem quickly (less than a minute), you should check your answer. Perhaps there's a trap, or perhaps you made a mistake in the calculation.
If you study well, then easy-medium problems are the best way to improve your skills: get good at recognizing problem-types and generic situations; be fast at arithmetic; learn to read the 'clues' in the problem and take good strategy decisions; develop security by estimating and thinking in 'real world' terms; be familiar with common traps. These skills, if well-learnt, will help you on harder problems later on.
Sure, hard problems can be important too. If you're aiming for 85+ on quant then you need to be ready to tackle these ones. But remember also that hard questions often require a mixture of strategies, and even some smart guessing (such as by eliminating answers). Hard problems can be a way to mix up your studies, give your brain a workout, and challenge your strategy skills. However, if you finish a problem thinking 'I'm still confused', or 'there's no way I could solve a problem like that in around 2 minutes', it means that problem is probably not important for you right now.
Remember that the GMAT is an adaptive test: if you get problems right then you get harder problems; if you get problems wrong then you get easier problems (sure, it's a bit more complicated than that). This means that the easier questions are the more important ones: if you don't get these right then you won't even see the harder ones. For example, anyone 75 in their GMAT quant will have got a handful of easy problems wrong (or they didn't finish the section). For many students, simply guessing on the 3-5 hardest problems in their test may be the fastest way to raise their score. I've seen many students who have taught themselves never to let go of problems, so that they get into the habit of running out of time in their quant section.
Consequently, getting really fluent at the easy-medium problems should be the aim for most students. This often means mastering more strategies than simply translating into algebra, which can often be a sub-optimal strategy, as it takes a long time and is easy to mess up. Also, learning to check your answers is a healthy habit: I teach that any time you solve a problem quickly (less than a minute), you should check your answer. Perhaps there's a trap, or perhaps you made a mistake in the calculation.
If you study well, then easy-medium problems are the best way to improve your skills: get good at recognizing problem-types and generic situations; be fast at arithmetic; learn to read the 'clues' in the problem and take good strategy decisions; develop security by estimating and thinking in 'real world' terms; be familiar with common traps. These skills, if well-learnt, will help you on harder problems later on.
Sure, hard problems can be important too. If you're aiming for 85+ on quant then you need to be ready to tackle these ones. But remember also that hard questions often require a mixture of strategies, and even some smart guessing (such as by eliminating answers). Hard problems can be a way to mix up your studies, give your brain a workout, and challenge your strategy skills. However, if you finish a problem thinking 'I'm still confused', or 'there's no way I could solve a problem like that in around 2 minutes', it means that problem is probably not important for you right now.
