GMAT with CJ

An email from a student who "did not" get his target score made my day The best part of the email for me was "...developed a mentality of approaching every problem with a fundamental mindset." While the score is not in our hands, learning is :) I am grateful to have such students!

Your low GMAT score probably has nothing to do with GMAT concepts. In fact, obsessing over them might be making things worse. Success on challenging exams is rarely about surface-level knowledge. It's about the deep, underlying abilities that allow you to apply that knowledge under pressure. I call these "Enabling Skills." I've created a framework that maps these skills—from reasoning and discipline all the way down to self-belief. It's designed to help you find the root cause of your struggle. Read the full model in my new article: https://gmatwithcj.com/how-to-prepare/scored-low-on-the-gmat-after-studying-everything-heres-the-real-problem/ https://gmatwithcj.com/how-to-prepare/scored-low-on-the-gmat-after-studying-everything-heres-the-real-problem/

A student recently asked me whether I think about studying at Harvard or Stanford. Me: Not now Student: Why not? Me: I don’t think I will be able to relate to many things there. I will have to do many things that I may not like. Student: But don’t you want to have that experience of being at these institutions? Me: I am talking about the experience. Are you talking about the grand brand value of these institutions and being a part of that brand? Student: Yeah. Me: Right now, I am at a stage in which I won’t compromise my experience of life to get a big brand. My (or anyone’s) life experience is driven by what I value in life, not what society values. The society may value big brands, and if I am lost, I may also start valuing those things. I may then strive for them and achieve them. However, I’ll not be happy. Why? Because they are not valued by ‘me’. Before we really strive for anything, we should spend some time evaluating what matters to us.

Does it make sense to expect a student who is learning a concept to ALWAYS get the questions right? No. Right? Similarly, I'm a work-in-progress in terms of building my character. Does it make sense for me to expect myself ALWAYS to behave the higher way? No. Rather, when a student makes a mistake, a teacher can choose to improve the student's understanding of the concept rather than rebuking him for making a mistake. Similarly, when I make a mistake, I can choose to compassionately understand why I made the mistake and help myself learn from the experience. A little less self-judgment and a little more self-support perhaps enable faster growth.

Is timing or speed your problem on the GMAT? You're not alone. My students often ask me how they can solve their timing problem on the GMAT. Here's what I say: For a patient, having a pimple on their face is a problem. However, for a doctor, a pimple on the face is not a problem; it's a symptom. The problem perhaps lies in impurities in the blood. The doctor will try to treat the impurities; once the impurities go, so will the pimple. People who consider the pimple their problem may want to treat it directly, perhaps by removing it with a plier! Of course, they don't since they know the consequences involved. However, in the GMAT space, many people, in their efforts to directly solve the "timing" problem, resort to techniques and processes that worsen their problem. We must understand that your speed or timing is a consequence of your skills and process. The skills can be further broken down into clarity and comfort. If you solve questions without timing yourself, will you get 90%+ questions right without getting stuck in the last two options? If yes, you have the clarity to hit the 90th percentile; you may need to work on building comfort. Once you have clarity, building comfort needs just practice with engagement. Over time, as your comfort increases, your speed will improve. If you don't have the clarity, you need to build clarity. One way to do so is by comparing your reasoning with expert reasoning and learning from the differences. One more aspect that can contribute to the speed problem is your process. Some people have a habit of reading faster than they are comfortable with. As a result, they end up rereading a lot of times. Don't do that. Read at the pace you're comfortable at and eliminate rereading as much as possible. Your mindset should be to get things right the first time. Once you build your skills and follow the right process, your speed will automatically improve. There is NO direct way to improve your speed. Remember, speed is not a skill; it's a consequence of the skills.

A student looked at an option in a GMAT question and said, "it’s a trap." I looked at the option and thought, "But this is just an option." The option has become a trap for you because of your misunderstanding. For a person who understands, the option is just an option. If you are clear, you can confidently reject it. However, if you are unclear, you may keep going back and forth and eventually mark it as correct. Then, when you learn that you were wrong, you say you were TRAPPED. However, nobody outside trapped you. Your misunderstandings did. Isn't it the same with life too? You call many situations insufferable. However, is it the situation that causes suffering? Or is it how you look at or respond to it because of your misunderstanding?

What is one of the biggest keys to career success that nobody talks about? The answer is not what you expect. Read till the very end to know the answer. Have you heard the story of the race between a tortoise and a hare? Who won the race? Tortoise. Why? Because even though he was slower, he never stopped walking toward his destination. In careers too, people who succeed are not the ones who begin with an advantage but the ones who keep improving. And how do you improve? By constantly working on your shortcomings. How do you come to know of your shortcomings? When others point them out to you, or you get to know them on your own. Do you know what happens to many of us when we discover our shortcomings ourselves or when others point them out to us? We feel demotivated, sad, and rejected. Does anybody enjoy these feelings? Nope. So, we run away from the source of these feelings, i.e., we run away from our shortcomings. We ignore them as if they are not there. Or justify and defend them as if it is completely okay to have them. What happens as a result? We don't grow. We never become the tortoise who wins! What would we need to avoid this? SELF-ACCEPTANCE This is the answer to the question I asked at the beginning of this post. This is a career skill you need to reach the heights of success. This is a career skill you need to continuously improve and become the grandest version of yourself. However, nobody talks about it. Thus, people who have it have it, and they continue to grow and succeed, while others who don't have it hardly grow and end up being mediocre. Let me clarify a little what self-acceptance means because there are a lot of misconceptions about it. Self-acceptance DOES NOT MEAN - considering yourself perfect - ignoring your mistakes - considering yourself better than others Self-acceptance MEANS - accepting yourself as who you are, regardless of the positives and the negatives you see in you - not rejecting yourself when others around you reject you - seeing your shortcomings and acknowledging them but not letting them define your worth - not making your worth contingent on how you compare with others. - ACCEPTING yourself unconditionally When you accept yourself unconditionally, you're not afraid of seeing your shortcomings because then, the shortcomings don't trigger self-rejection. You can see your flaws, acknowledge them, understand them, work on them, and grow beyond them. When this happens, you can grow uninhibitedly. And thus, you can become the tortoise who wins the race.

"I don't want to spend a single day more than necessary on GMAT prep," a student remarked when he realized he had covered less than average in our first few sessions. He was taken aback when I responded, "That makes sense." He said, "I expected you to tell me to stop worrying about time and just focus on the process." I replied, "I would still ask you to do that, precisely because I don’t want you to spend any more time than necessary on the GMAT. Only by focusing completely on the process can we maximize our pace of improvement and minimize preparation time."

A student was in awe of how effortlessly I solved a difficult GMAT question. I enjoyed that moment — but I also made a mistake. In savoring her appreciation, I forgot to address a likely misconception: that my ease with questions comes from some natural, mysterious ability. It doesn’t. What seems effortless today is built on years of deliberate effort — solving thousands of questions, reflecting deeply, and returning to the same concepts again and again until they became second nature. Rather than being in awe of me, I wish she had been in awe of what engaged practice can do. That would help her believe in her own ability to grow. Otherwise, she may continue to doubt herself. I missed the chance to say this that day. I won’t miss it next time.

I had a realization a few days back - that I am preparing people for a competitive exam. A student shared why she joined me, “You have a different take on preparing for a competitive exam like GMAT.” As she made this statement, I realized I had forgotten that I was preparing people for a COMPETITIVE exam, in which there should be a mad rush to get ahead of others. On the other extreme, I have been, for a very long time now, asking people to slow down, focus on building their clarity of thought, enjoy the process, and not compare themselves against others. I am preparing people for competitive exams in a very non-competitive way. Still, my way is working. Rather, it is working quite well. Perhaps, a good way to compete is to focus on improving oneself and not worry about others.

A student recently approached me and said that she had gone through some of my content, and she appreciated that I emphasized slowing down and not rushing through the process. And then she added, “But, you know, I am in a hurry. I have to meet this the deadline and thus have to take the GMAT within two months. So, how can we go about it?” Did you notice the “but” in the student’s statements? The “but” lay between how I teach and her desire to get fast results. People don’t understand there is no need for a ‘but’. There’s absolutely no conflict between my approach and your desire to get fast results. Let me clarify. When I emphasize slowing down, I’m not saying you take more time than required. I’m just saying that you take whatever time you require. You are trying to finish it in less time than you require, which is impossible. And since you’re doing something impossible, you will not succeed at it and will have to repeat the whole process. This is what I’m trying to prevent by asking you to slow down. In essence, I also want you to complete your process in the least amount of time possible, but to accomplish that, I need to ask you to slow down. I understand this may sound paradoxical to you that you need to slow down to take the least amount of time, but this is so. And you will realize that this is so if you just spend a little time thinking clearly about it.

One of my past students lived in Boston and used to regularly visit HBS. He was a tennis coach, so he used to coach a couple of students and professors there. One day, he asked the HBS student he was coaching, “I am thinking of preparing for the GMAT. What should I do to get a good score?” In the student’s mind, he was asking just the right guy - someone who not only scored high on the GMAT but got into HBS. The HBS student replied, “Oh! That’s not difficult. Just do the official guide well, and you’ll be set.” That’s it! And he did just that and scored 355 on the GMAT. Did the HBS student not give him the right advice? Of course. But why did he not? After all, he had scored high on the GMAT. How could he give wrong advice? For the simple reason that just because you are strong/intelligent/beautiful/etc doesn’t mean that you know the ‘way to become’ strong/intelligent/beautiful/etc. — I see many posts on LinkedIn from people who have scored high on the GMAT sharing tips and documents containing such tips. And people lap onto such tips, believing these tips are coming from authentic sources. No. They are not authentic in terms of ‘how to score high.’ Not Every great tennis player is a great tennis coach; they could be a really bad coach. So, if you are a GMAT aspirant, take the tips that you hear on LinkedIn with a pinch/fist of salt.

After we had spent 30 minutes trying to understand a logical nuance in critical reasoning, my student said, "I am sorry. I am still not understanding it." I could sense guilt in his "sorry" - he felt guilty that he couldn't understand even though we had been trying for half an hour. I told him that in the morning, someone told me, "You are not understanding." I replied to that person, "I agree with the content of your statement but not with the implied causation." "What?" I clarified, "I agree that I didn't understand you, but I don't agree that the problem necessarily lay in my intent or capability. The problem perhaps lay in the way you tried to make me understand." When my student heard this, he immediately said, "But I never blame anyone. If I do something wrong, I blame myself. I am generally harsh on myself." I said, "You are doing a helpful thing by not blaming others. Blaming doesn't help - the other could be trying his best and you're still not understanding. However, you're doing an unhelpful thing by blaming yourself. Blaming yourself also doesn't help. If you are not understanding, support yourself; try your best to understand. How would blaming or criticizing yourself help?" Student: Self-criticism helps at times - I make some changes that help me. However, sometimes, I go overboard - I engage in too much self-criticism. CJ: So, you understand that self-criticism doesn't always work. What about self-compassion? Which of these two work more often? Have you ever evaluated that? It is possible that self-compassion works more often than self-criticism. Shouldn't you then embrace self-compassion? Also, irrespective of which of these two works, what kind of person do you want to be? Someone who engages in whatever works, or someone who engages in self-criticism, or someone who is into self-compassion. A choice to be self-compassionate exists, even though we may not be sure whether it works more often than self-criticism. Our decision may not be outcome-driven, i.e., in terms of what works more often. Our decision can be driven entirely by what kind of person we want to be.

Practice doesn’t lead to a better score. Learning leads to a better score. Practice doesn’t even lead to learning. Practice provides an opportunity to learn. One may or may not make use of that opportunity. I have seen people practice much while learning little. Religion doesn't lead to a more joyous life. Spiritual growth leads to a more joyous life. Religion doesn't even lead to spiritual growth. Religions provides an opportunity to grow spiritually. One may or may not make use of that opportunity. I have seen people involved in religion for decades without having grown spiritually.

While I am at GMAT 735 (excellent skills), I am at GMAT-equivalent-405 (very poor skills) in many other domains of life, including leadership, public speaking, managing people, and character. If I enroll in a public speaking program, I'll be constantly humbled by my performance. If I have a habit of defining my worth based on my performance, I'll constantly feel inferior and, thus, very uncomfortable in a public speaking program. I may perform poorly than even college students. If I feel ashamed that despite being an IIMA graduate I'm worse than college students, I'll spend enormous amounts of time dealing with my emotions rather than learning. The shame may be so overwhelming that I may drop out of the program altogether. In other words, I may end up choosing not to learn since learning involves facing my shortcoming. The bigger the shortcoming, the greater the need for learning. However, the bigger the shortcoming, the poorer I perform and, thus, the more inferior I feel. The more inferior I feel, the more I tend to drop out. The way out is to stop defining my worth by my performance. If this happens, I'll not feel inferior when I struggle. I may choose to define my worth by my decision to pursue learning even in the face of public struggle. I may then choose to call myself courageous to pursue a not-so-comfortable path. Or, I may choose to call myself worthy unconditionally. My worth, in such a case, will never be in question. Then, I may struggle and falter, but I'll not feel inferior. I come across many GMAT aspirants for whom the GMAT prep has been a long struggle. Many of them spend enormous amounts of time doubting their capabilities/worth. This post is for them. They need not define their capability or worth by their performance in one domain. I respect them for their courage and doggedness to pursue GMAT in the face of challenges. When I see their struggles, I see a person with enormous foundational skills of perseverance and courage.

That sinking feeling when you get an "easy" question on the GMAT is a classic mind game. You immediately think, "I must have messed up the last one." This assumption is not only wrong, but it can be more damaging to your score than an incorrect answer. The GMAT algorithm is more complex than we think, and staying motivated throughout the test is essential. In my latest article, I break down why this happens and how to build a mindset to stay focused and maximise your score. https://gmatwithcj.com/how-to-prepare/got-an-easy-gmat-question-does-it-mean-your-score-is-dropping/ https://gmatwithcj.com/how-to-prepare/got-an-easy-gmat-question-does-it-mean-your-score-is-dropping/

The Paradox of GMAT Preparation (and perhaps, life) If you are in a learning mindset, you'll get your target score the FASTEST. However, if you want to get your target score the FASTEST, you'll likely not be in a learning mindset; you'll instead look for tricks and hacks to somehow get your score. As a result, you'll take much longer than you need. The faster you want to get done with the exam, the more you engage in practices that lengthen your journey. Understand this. Avoid this. Focus on learning. The score will take care of itself.

Recently, I had one of my biggest achievements as a teacher when a student remarked during a session, “What has changed for me is that earlier, whenever I made mistakes, I’d get irritated. Now, when I make mistakes, I get curious.” The student continued, “I’m now beginning to see even my work in a new light.” This shift—from seeing mistakes as failures and reacting with irritation, to seeing them as opportunities and responding with curiosity—is a deeply meaningful transformation. Whenever this shift happens in a student, it brings immense satisfaction as a teacher. Because GMAT concepts and techniques may fade over time, but this mindset can stay for life. And it can profoundly shape the quality of life a person ends up having.

A student recently interrupted me as I was advising him to take the GMAT a little lightly. He said, “Sir, it doesn’t matter how much anxiety and stress I have to go through. I want to get my score.” His words stayed with me long after the conversation ended. I kept wondering: how did we get here? How did we reach a point where we’re willing to suffer—deeply and continuously—just to reach a goal? Isn’t the reason we chose that goal in the first place because we believed it would make us happier? So if happiness is the final goal, how does it make sense to completely ignore our inner state while pursuing a means to that goal? Have we lost perspective? Have we forgotten that no goal—no matter how ambitious or prestigious—is more important than we are? Have we forgotten that our external goals are valuable only because they serve something internal? How have we come to prioritize the means over the end?

What prevented my student from seeking help for her mental health problem? She was suffering from extreme anxiety regarding her GMAT preparation. A part of the reason, she once shared, was her memory of being shamed by her father for not being good at Math. But despite months of struggling with this anxiety, she didn’t seek professional help. Why? Because she couldn’t accept the situation. She kept asking herself, “How can I be so anxious about something as small as a test?” She labelled herself “weak” for feeling this way. “If I can’t handle a test, how will I handle bigger things in life?” she’d often rebuke herself. That self-judgment — not the anxiety itself — is what kept her stuck. Only after many painful months did she recognize that the way she was handling her anxiety wasn’t working. So she decided to get help. And one of the first things she was asked to let go of… was that label of weakness. She was told: it’s okay to feel anxious. Feeling anxious doesn’t mean you’re weak. Once she stopped judging herself for being anxious, she could finally deal with her anxiety. And once her anxiety reduced, she could finally focus on her GMAT preparation. --- In essence, she couldn’t prepare for the GMAT because she was anxious about her ability to do well. And she couldn’t deal with her anxiety because she was judging herself for feeling anxious in the first place. There were layers to her struggle. To solve the top-most problem (preparing for the GMAT), she had to begin by solving the bottom-most one (her self-judgment). So if you’re struggling with something right now… Have you gotten to the bottom of it?