Experiences with Executive Assessment - Post Your EA Experience Here

Thanks

Recently took the EA exam. Went through most of the practice materials provided by GMAC and also went through some of the Magoosh math materials.

Practice Exam: 155 (IR:12, VR:12, QR:11)

Real Exam (in-person at test site): 162 (IR:18, VR:14, QR:10)

I found that IR seemed easier than the GMAC practice materials, that VR felt harder than the GMAC materials, and that QR was harder than the GMAC practice assessment but not necessarily the practice materials. I would definitely do the practice assessments in test format because I was a little rattled and tired after IR and VR (the VR difficulty surprised me) going into the QR section.

Anexa,

Congrats on great score. How much time did you prepare overall? 18 in IR is top score. Its really hard to manage the time in IR to get all answers correct.

klic2rohit,

Thanks!

I got started fairly early actually. I started studying in December off and on and took the test first week of February. If I could do something differently, I would have started studying closer to the exam and really focused on it 3-4 weeks out instead of off and on over a couple of months. I actually had a couple of minutes left on IR because of the format and was surprised by my score given the practice test score! On IR questions I found easier, I answered quickly and moved on and then tried to use the extra time on harder questions. I only flagged and reviewed questions when I felt unsure while answering (I didn't go back to review anything I felt confident answering).

Also, if you go to a test center for your assessment, make sure to have the test administrator check any marker they give you and ask that they give you two if possible. I saw this advice somewhere and it saved me time! I was given a dead marker at first and asked to have it checked before I sat for the exam thankfully so I didn't lose time trying to resolve that during the test.

Hi All,

I have a question regarding how to prepare for the EA exam.

Recently I purchased the complete bundle offered by the official GMAC website; however, it only offers practice problems.

Previously when studying for an exam, my preparation usually included both practice problems AND understanding major concepts and how to solve the different types of questions asked effectively.
I noticed that there are not many resources available for that latter.

What kinds of prep recommendations do you all have?
Can I just practice problems, or are there any resources that help explain the concepts and how to approach the different types of questions offered?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Hi. Yes... the EA does not include any help, prep materials or anything like that.
You can review this topic for what people have used. A few prep companies have focused on EA (though it is largely just the same as the GMAT - the questions are the same and basically same types, just diff consistency). EMPOWER has an EA product and so does MGMAT. Those are the only ones I am aware of who have specific products. Otherwise, you can just use GMAT products.

-B



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Thank you for the information!

Hi,
I recently (2/24/21) took my EA and thought of sharing my experience with it here. The GMAT club community has been immensely useful during my prep.
I started preparing for this exam right after Christmas and I had initially planned to appear for the GMAT, but given that I have 9 years work experience and the part time MBA programs that I am considering allow applicants above 8 years of experience to take EA in lieu of GMAT, I decided to go for the EA instead.
I started with the Manhattan prep guides for GMAT and learned the concepts in about 15-20 days, after which I focused on problem solving from the GMAT OG.
I got the OG and Manhattan prep books from FB marketplace, so I managed to save some money there, by not having to pay the full price.
I also brought the official EA practice premium bundle for $150 from the GMAC website and I feel like that was money well spent, particularly for IR and the mock tests.
One might say that all this prep material was an overkill for EA, but given that the last time I appeared for a standardized exam such as this was 12 years back (when GRE was scored out of 1600 ), I feel like all this prep work was necessary for me to achieve a decent score.

GMAC prep material mock scores:
Mock 1: 153 (IR 10, VR 11, QR 12) - took this 1 month before the exam
Mock 2: 161 (IR 11, VR 12, QR 18) - took this 3 weeks before the exam
Mock 3: 158 (IR 11, VR 12, QR 15) - took this a week before the exam
Mock 4: 157 (IR 11, VR 13, QR 13) - took this 2 days before the exam

Actual exam score:
159 (IR 10, VR 15, QR 14)
I was surprised to score more in verbal than Quant, given my engineering background. But I know I am prone to silly mistakes. I could never get to finish IR section even during the practice and my goal was to complete 10 or at best 11 during the actual exam. I finished 10, but seems like I got multiple wrong.
I was nervous at the start of the exam, since R3 deadlines are approaching soon, I did not want to have to re-appear for the EA. That coupled with noise cancelling headphones that I am not used to, threw me off a bit at the start.
I highly recommend the GMATninja and veritas prep videos on youtube. They helped me a lot during my prep. I found the SC videos from GMATninja to be really useful, since SC was my weakness.
I am planning to apply to Haas EWMBA and UCLA FEMBA. I fall under the overrepresented Indian male engineer category, so I am somewehat nervous, but I read everywhere that 155 and above is a good enough score. So, fingers crossed and please wish me luck.
I am not considering another attempt and plan to focus on other aspects of my application. Please let me know if you have any questions that I can answer and I will try my best.
Good luck to everyone who is considering appearing for EA!

How can we access our Executive Assessment percentiles? mba.com / GMAC does not have percentiles in our Official Score Reports, for either our total score or our sub-section scores.

GMAC does not provide official percentiles. We have some feedback from users who heard from schools about that percentile. Apparently GMAT provides schools with the data but not testtakers. I have no idea why.

At one point GMAC had shared a presentation once that had a histogram distribution that we have reversed engineered. The histogram was a few years old so it’s not exact but it’s close enough. Here is the link:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/executive-as ... 22683.html

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I have given my first attempt of EA on Mar 12 and scored: 150(IR:8 VR: 9 QR: 13) I have used the GMAC official bundle for prep. But this score is not sufficient for the schools I target.

All of you who scored above 155 please suggest how to improve my IR and VR score

I am planning to give another attempt mid April

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Hi,
I am not sure if I am the right person to answer about IR improvement since my score wasn't great, but for VR, I highly recommend Manhattan prep GMAT books and GMAT Ninja/Veritas prep videos on youtube. I suggest you try to understand your weak area (RC, CR, SC) and then do targeted practice to address that weakness. For RC, one tip I found useful is to get better at reading the passage. What I mean by that is read the passage thoroughly and slowly to understand the summary/conclusion etc. of each paragraph (don't skip this!), but you can skim while reading minor details, since it is highly unlikely you will remember these after reading them once and you will have to come back to these anyway, in case you need them to answer some question.
For SC, learn grammar rules: like vs as, modifiers, parallelism etc. These rules will help you eliminate 2-3 choices in most of the cases. Then you substitute the answer choices into the original question and analyze if the construction is logical. This is particularly useful when you are down to 2 of 5 choices and both seem correct.
I found that CR is all about practice. If you have completed GMAT OG and Verbal review, you have done a lot of practice already. Most of the guide questions have been solved on GMAT club, so if there's a question you get wrong, you can look it up in the GMAT club forums and people have posted really good explanations for them. You can then compare your thinking and reasoning vs other peoples' approach on a particular problem and see if you have a scope to improve.
Also a general test day tip that I read somewhere and found useful; get a good night's sleep before the test day. I was really nervous before the test day and as a result couldn't sleep properly. I feel like I could've done better on the actual test had I slept well, since I felt mentally fatigued during the actual test.
Also when you are taking mock tests at home, try to emulate the test day as closely as possible. Wear a mask/headphone/earplugs etc. as you would in a real exam, don't pause the exam in between and so on.

Hope you are able to achieve your target score. Good luck!

Thank you so much Nn88. May I ask what was your score.

You are welcome sudhakarri. My score was 159(IR-10, VR-15, QR-14)

Hi - I am struggling through the IR part of EA. IS IR in EA easier than IR in GMAT by any chance and what would be the best place to practice for that?

TIA

I am sorry to say it but EA uses the same questions as GMAT. It is the same 😢

You can practice IR’s in Official Guide (they give online practice). We also have a bunch of them in the IR sub forum.

PS. Please do not spam and double post in multiple topics. This does not seem to be an emergency.


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Can anyone help me to understand how accurate are GMAC EA practice assessments? I mean is the difficulty level very different or just about the same?

Would love to hear from people who have recently given the test.

TIA

I thought they were similar. The practice questions/test are from old exams. I took all 4 practice tests and on the real test, scored higher than 3 practice tests and lower than 1. So, if you're scoring within range of your target score, you're likely to score close to it permitting you have no major issues, i.e. distractions, technical issues, emergencies, etc.

I used the Magoosh videos, youtube PrepScholar GMAT videos, Veritas videos, purchased the full official EA package and also used the Official GMAT Review book.

I found the videos very helpful as I'm almost 11 years out of undergrad. I spent a few months studying mostly on weekends given the demands of my work schedule.

As others mentioned, the online Pearson EA software is full of issues and different from the practice layout. My calculator didn't work on my first online test despite testing the software twice before sitting for the actual exam. A proctor had to reset the software, but the time never stops and I lost ~5 min. I had to spend several weeks fighting with Pearson to get a refund and attempted to cancel that score as one of my two online attempts, which was never resolved.

I took it once more in person as you can take the EA twice online and twice in person.

Practice 1 Practice 2 Practice 3 Practice 4 Online EA 1 Online EA 2 In person EA 3
IR 10 8 9 11 11 8 12
Verbal 11 10 11 10 9 12 10
Quant 9 10 8 7 7 7 9
Total 150 148 148 148 147 147 151

I had been admitted to NYU part-time previously and I'm currently admitted to USC full-time. Waiting to hear from NYU and Columbia full-time currently. Fingers crossed.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience and congrats on your admits!

It is a mystery to me why the official EA practice tests do not mimic the official test. When we were building executive assessment practice tests on GMAT Club, it kept throwing me and developers off in terms of what features are available on the real test versus what’s available in the practice test that is not realistic 🤷‍♂️




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