Can You Reach Your GMAT® Goal Score?

Welcome to the GMAT® Strategy Podcast. You're here because you believe there's a better way to study for the GMAT® and so do we.

We created the GMAT® Strategy to maximize your results and minimize your efforts so you can get to the fun parts about business school and life as quickly as possible.

My name is Isaac Puglia and I've been teaching GMAT® classes and tutoring privately for the GMAT® for almost a decade and I've achieved a 99th percentile score on the GMAT® and helped thousands of students get into the business schools of their choice.

I'm excited to be a part of your MBA journey since we all at TGS think our world can benefit from the best possible business leaders that we can find.

If this show is bringing you value, please share it with your friends and family who are studying so that together we can make this process as easy and as painless as it can possibly be.

Let's go.

Today I want to answer a super important question. Can I reach my GMAT® goal score?

A lot of people wonder whether success, and how they define it, is even possible in this situation. And I want to answer that question very definitively right at the top of this episode. The answer is yes, you can.

I have helped thousands of people do this. Many of them did not think that it could be done, and yet the results are unequivocally there.

And the only consideration here is time frame. It is impossible to guarantee when you will hit any given score. There are way too many variables in that equation — variables like sleep, diet, exercise, and unknown variables of human performance.

If we knew how to control those variables, then every CEO would be at his or her best every single day, every Olympic athlete would win the gold medal 100% of the time. Obviously that's not happening. There are unknown variables that lead to peak performance, and while many of them can be controlled and optimized, as of today we don't know how to do that perfectly.

But I can with a high degree of certainty guarantee that you can reach your goal score. There are going to be things that are required that you do in order to make that happen. But it is possible, even if it might take a little bit longer than you want — and in many situations it can happen a lot faster than you expect.

I want to talk through some of the keys that I have seen work the best in terms of building people's belief in themselves, but also at the same time driving the results. Because a lot of you are not going to believe it's possible for you until you see it.

We live in a world where seeing is believing. If you saw the goal score on a practice exam, you would have a lot more belief that you could hit that score on test day versus if you haven't seen it.

So let's jump right in.

The Right Plan

If you have the wrong plan, that's going to make success really hard. And that might be the way for you to not reach your goal GMAT® score — just following the wrong plan.

Sometimes you can't know what the right plan is for you personally until you try a plan, execute on it well, realize it's not working for you, and then shift gears.

If you want the fastest results available, it's usually going to require a financial investment. A top instructor working with you one on one is going to be the best, but also the most expensive. That's going to get you the fastest results by and large.

Right after that is going to be some course with some kind of live instruction or the ability to interact with a top expert. That's going to be less expensive, but a little bit slower.

Then you'll have digital self-paced classes — less expensive, but slower still.

And then you've got books and free resources, which are going to be less expensive or free, but generally slower. There is quite a bit of variance in this data, but if you look at a large enough data set — 5,000 to 10,000 data points — that is the pattern that emerges.

Budget definitely matters, and the more you can invest, usually the better resources you'll have access to. But some work will still be required of you. If people could just buy a result, that would be the most popular option.

Having said all that, there are still plenty of awesome free resources out there. There are plenty of things you can do that are within your control that are not budget related.

Take a Baseline

You've got to start by figuring out where you are right now. If someone said "hey, tell me the fastest way to Paris" and you didn't know their starting location — could you answer? Neither could we.

Take a baseline practice exam. Use one of the official practice exams from mba.com. It doesn't matter if you score lower than you want. In fact, you probably will. That's the whole point — you need to know the starting point to plan the route.

If you've already taken a baseline but have been studying for a while, take another practice exam to see where things stand. A score that went down is painful, but it's valuable data.

Focus on One Section at a Time

Once you have your baseline, identify the section with the biggest gap between your current score and your target. Start there. Focus on building that section up until you're performing well — roughly 80% accuracy on official questions within the time constraint for that section.

Once you're there, add a second section while maintaining the first. Then a third. This is more efficient than trying to improve all three at once.

The Right Execution

You have to take care of your body. Sleep, diet, and exercise.

Could you get a great score without good sleep, diet, and exercise? It's possible. But the odds of hitting your peak score drop significantly. And improving these areas will probably help everything in your life — not just your GMAT® score.

Here's the simplest approach: just track it. Track your sleep, your diet, and your exercise. You don't need to change anything right away. There's a well-known principle — what gets measured tends to improve.

If you start tracking today, there's a very good chance all three areas will improve over the next 30 to 60 days, even without a deliberate intervention.

Study Consistency

You want to consistently increase your study time until your other commitments start to suffer — and then back off slightly. That's where your limit is.

A useful rule: try to do about 10% more than you think you can. When your performance at work starts to slip, or your relationships start to feel the pressure, or your energy drops noticeably — that's the signal to dial it back. Now you know where the line is.

The other half of study consistency is sticking to the plan. This is where a lot of people struggle. You commit to a study schedule and a specific approach, and then you end up doing what you feel like doing instead.

This is completely natural. Resistance is a normal part of pushing your limits. When you think about a difficult study session, it can trigger the same avoidance response as thinking about something physically uncomfortable. The brain redirects your attention toward easier, more rewarding activities.

The reframe that helps: think about resistance the way you think about the weight getting heavier in a workout. When the weight feels heavy on rep 10, that's not a sign you're doing the workout wrong. It's a sign it's working.

A simple way to track this: at the end of each day, compare what you planned to do with what you actually did. Give yourself a percentage score.

The Right Optimization

This is where your business instincts help you. Check the data at least once a week. Is your accuracy going up? Are your times going down? Are you missing fewer questions you know how to do?

If your numbers aren't moving, run an experiment. Pick one specific change and run it for 100 problems. Then check the data. Did it help?

This is the same process you'll probably use to scale companies and teams. Hypothesis, data, adjust, repeat.

When to Change Your Plan

If you're executing well and your score isn't moving after 4 to 6 weeks, it's probably time to change something. Most people in the space end up working with two or three providers or plans before finding the right one. It happens all the time — don't worry if that's you.

Putting It Together

That's it. The right plan — paid or free — just make a plan. Execute well on it. Then you can evaluate whether it was the right decision. If you need to change plans, that's super common.

Then you need right execution, which is just tracking your sleep, diet, exercise, and how well you're sticking to your plan.

Then you optimize — check the data at least once a week and run a new experiment based on what you see.

If you do those things consistently and for long enough, you will hit your goal GMAT® score. But if you're running the wrong plan, or you're not executing well, or you're not optimizing based on data feedback — then it's not going to happen.

As always, if you have questions about any of this, reach out to us anytime. We love hearing from all of you and after all these years we're still keeping up with DMs. Reach out if you have questions — we never pitch in DMs or anything like that.

If you're interested in working with us, just head to the website, register for the webinar, and then you can book a call to learn more if you like our style. If you don't, totally cool, no stress.

In the meantime, my greatest hope is that this material will make your studies as easy and as painless as they can possibly be. This is a weekly show, so please subscribe and please stay positive and stay consistent with your studies.