Ksterr wrote:
Thanks mikemcgarry for your thoughtful insight. I can't thank you enough for the continued support you've given me.
I agree that I may have some test anxiety, but if I did why would it only apply to verbal specifically? My quant / IR / AWA scores are all consistent, it's only verbal that seems to suffer. I've scored no better than V25 on the official test, with my most recent attempt today actually regressing to V23.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but from the small sample of my recent CAT verbal scores (V29, 36, 33) - there seems to be no consistency and the range of 29 - 36 is enormous in GMAT raw score terms?
This leads me to believe that perhaps I still don't fully understand verbal and perhaps my success from the
MGMAT tests were a little luck based?
I do plan to write the exam one last time, but not immediately. I'm a little mentally exhausted through months of prepping and want to enjoy the summer. But when I start up again, I'm going to continue with
Magoosh and purchase a new set of CATs with
MGMAT. That way, even if I see repeat questions I won't remember the answers.
Dear
Ksterr,
My friend, brain processes are funny. You see, when we experience high stress and anxiety, it impairs higher order thinking, but exactly what subjects it affects depends on how deeply we know something. For example, the stuff we had already mastered at the age of five ---- walking, basic facial expressions, speaking a native language ----that's all stuff so much a part of us that stress doesn't affect it at all. Furthermore, anything we just know inside-out, forward and backwards, is less impacted by stress. You are really good at math: there is a great deal of math knowledge and mathematical thinking that you know in your bones. You probably could take the GMAT entirely sleep-deprived or drunk or on drugs, and you will still do very well on math. Not that I recommend taking the GMAT under any of those circumstances, but my point is that you know math so deeply that stress & anxiety don't meaningful impact it. It's almost as if some of your mathematical abilities are just on automatic pilot: much of math probably happens effortlessly for you. I am guessing this, because that's how math happens for me. That's a level of comfort with math that is beyond what stress can impact.
What stress & anxiety really challenge are all those topics in which we are not completely sure, all those area in which we have to stop and remember, "wait, is it this way or that way?" Anything that we have to understand by actively thinking about it: that can be absolutely devastated by stress. When you have not achieve mastery in something, when you have doubts about your own abilities, then you are particularly vulnerable to the impact of stress and anxiety. You struggle with Verbal, even on practice tests. You really have to work and focus and actively remember a lot to do well on Verbal. That is precisely the stuff that stress destroys. It is the very nature of stress that it attacks us where we are weakest.
What's the solution? Well, it's pretty much impossible to get from Verbal struggles to Verbal mastery, the same depth of understanding you have with math, in a reasonably short time. Instead, you have to learn to manage stress and anxiety. Those articles to which I linked in my last post talk about concrete practices you can apply that, over time, will reduce the impact of stress and anxiety. Once again, you need to practice those as diligently as you would practice the academic skills.
It's important to appreciate that we all live in a civilization that promotes much higher levels of stress and anxiety that most humans in most periods of history have experienced. We live in a time when even the forms of recreation and entertainment people pursue (action movies, video games, etc.) further enhance stress. People now are simply used to living with a high baseline of stress, and anything extra, like sitting for the GMAT, puts stress over the top. It is possible to experience little or no stress, but this doesn't happen automatically. We need to commit to all the centering and stress-reducing practices.
Does all this make sense?
Mike
_________________
Mike McGarry
Magoosh Test PrepEducation is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)