Letting Yourself Succeed on the GMAT

GMAT Letting Yourself Learn

Letting Yourself Learn Something New

A student of mine said something recently that resonated with me: “I’m not letting myself see the right answer”. The honesty of this statement really struck me. It was true. He was trying to hold onto the faulty logic of his wrong answer. The first step towards improving something is admitting that you are not doing it well. By defending wrong answers you deny that you had faulty logic to begin with. This is a defensive mechanism. Defensive mechanisms protect our egos and stop us from learning. This happens most in Critical Reasoning. The students who do best on Critical Reasoning accept the correct answer and focus on trying to figure out the correct logic rather than defending their incorrect answer.  Get into the mindset of: there is only one correct answer. That’s it.  End of story!

The better solution for tomorrow might be tough to apply today…

This issue also rears it’s ugly head in Quant. A student will defend a faulty process or write-off trying a new way to approach something because it “seems too long”  or “too complicated” or “just not how I see it”.  There are some things that you learn that click right away with your current way of thinking.  However, there are some things that will not come naturally to you but are still important to learn how to do. Try to keep an open mind when you are learning new things. Lets just face the fact that some of this GMAT stuff will be tough for you. That’s fine. Part of letting yourself succeed on the GMAT is about admitting that the GMAT is a challenge.

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