Study! Stick to your plan

Six Steps to Successful Studying

Week One Learn about and practice reading comprehension skills.

Week Two Learn about and practice critical reasoning skills.

Week Three Continue with critical reasoning. Do extra work in 501 Challenging Logic and Reason-ing Problems.

Week Four Learn about and practice sentence correction skills. Continue with critical reasoning.

Week Five Learn about the AWA section and review effective writing skills. Practice writing Analysis of Argument essays.

Week Six Practice writing Analysis of Issue essays. Review all Verbal section skills.

Week Seven Learn about and practice problem solving skills.

Week Eight Learn about and practice data sufficiency skills.

Week Nine Do two practice tests from the Official Guide for GMAT Review, 10th Edition.

Week Ten Review any question types you do not understand. Get lots of rest!

Naturally, if you have longer than ten weeks to prepare, your weekly schedule will be broken up dif-ferently. (And good for you for starting ahead of time!) You may want to work on all your skills each week, making progress simultaneously on all fronts. That is fine too. Adjust the schedule accordingly.

Your schedule will also be different if you have less than ten weeks, or if you are a whiz with numbers, but have trouble with analytical writing.

6. Just Do It! Stick to your plan. It is easy to say, but difficult to do. How can you stay motivated? How do you follow your schedule so that you do not fall behind? How do you keep from thinking about other things when you are supposed to be working? These are the really big questions, and there are no easy answers. The following sections discuss some tried and true techniques for maintaining self-motivation.

Now you have to see what works for you.

It’s important to stick to your study plan, but sometimes life will get in the way, and you will get off schedule.

When this happens—and it almost certainly will—don’t despair. Don’t let the fact that you have fallen a little behind cripple you so that you fall even more behind. Instead, just keep going. Adjust your schedule to fit your new time frame and do what you can to make up for lost time by squeezing in another hour of study here or there. It may mean you will have to sacrifice some leisure time, but remember what you are working for. A lit-tle more sacrifice now can get you much closer to your ultimate goal.



Yo u A r e Wo r t h I t : M o t i v a t i o n a l a n d R e l a x a t i o n Te c h n i q u e s T h a t Wo r k

Whenever you find yourself tempted to give up your hard work for an hour or two of entertainment, remind yourself that many people never reach their goals because they seem so far away and difficult to achieve. It is important that you break down your preparation for the GMAT exam into small, manageable steps. It’s also important to keep in mind why you are working so hard.

Remember your visualization about business school? The more often you practice that visualization, the more real it becomes to you. The more real it is, the more clearly you will see that your goal is within your grasp. Just stick to your plan, and take things one day at a time.

Sometimes your study plans are derailed for legitimate reasons. You get sick; a family member needs your help; your teacher or boss assigns a project that takes more time than you expected. Life happens, but don’t let it discourage you; just pick up where you left off. Maybe you can squeeze in a little extra study time later. Keep working toward your goal.

One Step at a Time

Many people get discouraged when the task seems too big; they feel that they will never get to the end. That’s why it’s a good idea to break down all big undertakings, such as this one, into smaller, manageable tasks. Set small goals for yourself, such as “this week I will learn logical fallacies.” “Learning logical fallacies” is a much more manageable task than “preparing for the GMAT exam”—even though it moves you in the same direction.

Establish positive momentum and maintain it, one step at a time. That is how you get where you want to go.

Because You Deserve It

Don’t forget to reward yourself for your progress. Your daily reward can be a small one, such as sending off a few chatty e-mails or paging through your favorite magazine. Your weekly reward might be something larger, such as buying a CD you have wanted or renting a favorite film. Your biggest reward, of course, is being able to live out the dreams you have visualized.

Reach Out

Another way to motivate yourself is to get other people to help you. Everybody likes being asked to help someone—it makes those around you feel important, especially when they are being approached for their expertise in a particular area. You will often be more motivated when studying means you also get to be with people whose company you enjoy.

You may want to form a study group with one or more of your friends. Maybe reading comprehension just comes naturally to you, but you struggle with math. Chances are you have a friend who is a math whiz, but who may need help with reading comprehension skills. You could agree to get together once a week or so for a tutoring and drilling session. You take one subject to study and explain, while your friend explains a different subject to you. Now you are benefiting from your friend’s expertise, reinforcing what you know by explaining it to someone else, having more fun than you would on your own, and helping yourself (and your

–S T U D Y S K I L L S–

We all need positive feedback. When you could use some motivational help, say the following out loud (be specific):

My goal is to

I am working to achieve my goal.

I will succeed because I am working toward my goal.

A family member or a roommate could also help. If you are working on building your vocabulary, for example, why not make up some flashcards with word roots or prefixes and suffixes, and ask your roommate or a family member to work with you?

Thought Police

Finally, as you struggle to stay motivated, it helps to check in periodically with your thoughts—the things you sometimes find yourself thinking when you should be focusing on your work. If you are thinking, “Oh boy, I’ll have that last piece of chocolate when I finish this!” or “Columbia has never seen an MBA student like me”

when you sit down to study, you are in good shape. If you are thinking “That TV show I really like is on now,”

or “I could get in a few hoops before dark,” you could be headed for trouble. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with television or basketball; it is just that you promised yourself you would work right now. Often, just noticing these deviant thoughts is enough to keep them in check. “Good try,” you can tell yourself, “but you have other commitments, buster!”

If this doesn’t work and you are still tempted to ignore your scheduled study time, sit down and think for a moment about why you are working so hard. Use your visualization. Promise yourself a bigger reward than usual when you finish your work. You can do it because you want to do it. This is the person you want to be: disciplined, focused, and successful.

Another strategy is to trick yourself into a study mode. Start with something easy, such as a brief review of what you have already learned. Starting with a quick and easy task will often ease you into the work and motivate you to continue with your self-assigned task of the day. A review will also reinforce what you already know.

Take Care of Yourself

You may have noticed that the last thing on the sample study plan is “get lots of rest.” During the last few days before the exam, you should ease up on your study schedule. The natural tendency for many people is to cram.

Maybe that strategy has worked for you with other exams, but it is not a good idea with the GMAT exam. For one thing, the GMAT exam is a three-and-a-half-hour test, and you need to be well rested to do your best.

For another thing, cramming tends to raise your anxiety level, and your brain doesn’t do its best work when you are anxious. Anxiety produces a fight-or-flight response that sends blood away from the brain to the arms and legs, in case we need to defend ourselves or run away. Without a good supply of oxygen-carrying blood,

Stay Away from Cramming!

By creating a study plan, you can avoid cramming, a study technique that will only make you more anxious. If you wait until only a week or two before the exam to prepare, you won’t be able to review all of the material and practice the questions enough to perform your best on the exam. If you stay up late night after night try-ing to get everythtry-ing done, you will be too tired to study effectively.

Instead, create a study plan that spaces out your learning goals. Give yourself plenty of time to learn and time to review.

your brain won’t be able to think as well as it should be able to. So it’s important to reduce your anxiety about the GMAT exam by relaxing and changing your anxious attitude to one of calm self-assurance.

How to Relax

If you want to do productive work the night before the GMAT exam, spend the time working on your confidence (“I have worked hard and will do well.”). Visualize your business school environment—really see yourself there. Here are some other relaxation techniques you can use if you find yourself feeling anxious at any time before or during the GMAT exam:

1. Breathe. When most people think about breathing, they think about breathing in. However, when you want to relax, it’s more important to focus on breathing out. You want to be sure you are exhaling completely. It’s also important to breathe deeply and to use abdominal breathing rather than shallow chest breathing. Try this: Place one hand on your stomach and the other hand on your chest. Sit up straight. Now inhale deeply through your nose. Try to move your stomach as much as possible and your chest as little as possible. Exhale and feel your stomach deflate. Again, your chest should hardly move. Count slowly as you breathe to make sure you spend at least as much time breathing out as you do breathing in. This kind of breathing relaxes you. It gets rid of carbon dioxide that can otherwise get trapped in the bottom of your lungs. You can practice this deep breathing anytime, anywhere you need to relax.

2. Tense and relax your muscles. As your anxiety mounts, your muscles tense, just in case they are going to be called on to fight or flee. Of course, in the case of the GMAT exam, you have to fight with your brain, and running away would result in a very low score. So the best thing you can do is to relax. It can be hard to know which muscles are tensed. Many people hold tension in their shoulders or their jaws and are never even aware it’s there. It’s helpful to start with your toes and work your way up through all the muscle groups, first tensing (really tightly!) and then relaxing each muscle group.

(Tense your toes, and relax. Tense your feet, and relax. Tense your calves, and relax . . . ) Don’t forget your facial muscles, especially your jaw.

3. Visualize. This is a different exercise from your graduate school visualization. This time, imagine