The Best GMAT Practice Methods

Reading Time: 10 minutes

Last Updated on September 24, 2023

If you’re planning to take the GMAT to apply to MBA programs, you’ve likely looked into what you need to learn to master the test. You also may have chosen some GMAT preparation resources. At the same time, how you practice for the GMAT can be as important as the resources you use and the concepts you learn. In fact, how you practice can make or break your GMAT preparation.

Many people prepare for the GMAT extensively without getting the results they seek because their practice isn’t effective. So, in this post, I’m going to discuss the best GMAT practice methods, so that you can fully understand this key aspect of getting the results you want from your GMAT preparation.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• The Goal of GMAT Practice
• Topic-Focused GMAT Practice
• Start Your GMAT Practice Untimed
  • Practicing GMAT Quant Untimed
  • Practicing GMAT Verbal Untimed
  • Speed Comes From Skill
• The TTP Streaks Method
  • How the TTP Streaks Method Works
  • You Can Use the TTP Streaks Method Timed or Untimed
  • You Can Choose the Categories of Questions for Your Streaks Practice
  • The TTP Streaks Method Trains You to Do What the GMAT Rewards
• Timed, Mixed Practice Toward the End of Your GMAT Prep
• What Accuracy Levels You Need to Score 700+ on the GMAT
• In Summary: The Best Ways to Practice for the GMAT
• What’s Next?

Let’s begin by discussing the goal of GMAT practice.

The Goal of GMAT Practice

Unlike most tests we take, the GMAT is not primarily a test of knowledge or understanding. It’s a reasoning game. So, the goal of GMAT practice is to develop skill in playing the GMAT game.

There are a few aspects of skill in playing the GMAT game. They include skill in

• understanding what a question is asking.
• finding a path to the answer to a question.
• arriving at a correct answer without making any errors along the way.

So, when we’re practicing for the GMAT, our goal is to develop all these aspects of skill.

Let’s now discuss the type of practice we’ll do most, which is topic-focused practice.

Topic-Focused GMAT Practice

People preparing for the GMAT often find a set of questions and start answering random practice questions one after the other. However, this method isn’t efficient or effective. The main issue with it is that what you learn when answering one question is often forgotten by the time you see a similar question. This outcome occurs because, in between answering similar questions, you’ll answer many questions of other types.

So, what works much better is focusing on one topic at a time and answering questions on a topic until you’re getting them correct consistently. By focusing on one topic at a time, you get to apply what you learned in answering one question to answering the next question. Thus, you allow yourself to develop skill in a topic. For instance, if you’re focusing on Overlapping Sets questions, and you make an error in applying a formula, you can answer more questions that require the use of that same formula until you won’t ever make that error again.

You can see how, by doing topic-by-topic practice, you can master one topic at a time until you’ve mastered the entire GMAT.

Let’s now discuss another important aspect of effective GMAT practice, practicing untimed.

Start Your GMAT Practice Untimed

Because they are aware that the GMAT is a timed exam that allots only about two minutes per Quant or Verbal question, people often believe that they should do all their GMAT practice timed. In other words, they believe that they should give themselves only about two minutes to answer each practice question. However, that impression is not really correct. Timed practice is not the best method for mastering the GMAT. What works much better is starting off doing practice questions untimed, giving yourself all the time you need to answer each question correctly, and here’s why.

As we discussed, the goal of GMAT practice is to develop skill in understanding what questions are asking, finding paths to answers, and arriving at correct answers without making any errors along the way. If you do all your practice questions timed, you won’t have time to develop these skills. Rather, you’ll rush through questions faster than you can handle them, get a significant percentage incorrect, read answer explanations to find out what you should have done, and fail to develop skill.

On the other hand, if you give yourself all the time you need to fully understand and correctly answer each question, you’ll develop strong GMAT skills that will get you to your GMAT score goal.

Practicing GMAT Quant Untimed

When practicing for the Quantitative section of the GMAT, take all the time you need to carefully read a question, determine what mathematical concepts and strategies to apply, and arrive at the correct answer.

Often, when answering a GMAT Quant practice question, at first won’t be sure how to go about solving it. By practicing untimed, you’ll give yourself time to learn to consider different potential approaches until you find one that works. Also, you’ll have time to learn to carefully perform calculations to answer Quant questions without making errors.

Practicing GMAT Verbal Untimed

When practicing for the Verbal section of the GMAT, take all the time you need to carefully read each question, analyze all five answer choices, and find a way to solidly support your answer. If you’re having trouble choosing between the last two choices, stick with the question until you find a way to determine which choice is correct. By practicing GMAT Verbal in this untimed way, you’ll develop strong skills that will get you a high Verbal score.

Speed Comes from Skill

If you’re worried that, by practicing untimed, you won’t learn to answer GMAT questions fast enough to complete the Quant and Verbal sections when you take the test, keep in mind that skill is what makes you fast. So, by practicing untimed and developing strong skills, you’ll be doing just what you need to do to answer questions quickly on GMAT test day.

Later in your preparation, you can focus on developing skill in answering questions quickly. Also, once you’re ready, you can practice answering questions at test pace by taking full-length GMAT practice tests.

Skill is what makes you fast.

Now that we understand the basics of GMAT practice, let’s discuss a super effective method for developing skill in getting GMAT questions correct consistently.

The TTP Streaks Method

Once you’ve practiced for a while, you’ll likely be able to correctly answer most questions involving each GMAT topic. However, while getting, say, 70 or 80 percent of questions correct may seem to indicate that you’re strong in a topic, the truth is that you can get even 80 percent of the questions you see correct by getting only 3 or 4 questions correct in a row at a time. After all, if in answering 10 questions, you get 3 correct, miss 1, get another 4 correct, miss one, and get the last 1 correct, you just got 80 percent correct.

So, getting 80 percent of practice questions in a topic correct doesn’t mean that you’re highly skilled in that topic. After all, if you typically get only 3 or 4 questions of a type correct in a row, then you haven’t really mastered that topic.

So, what’s the move? One move you can make is to use the TTP Streaks Method. Here’s how it works.

How the TTP Streaks Method Works

The TTP Streaks Method of practicing for the GMAT, developed with Dan Cummins, involves shooting for streaks of correct answers. The rationale underlying the method is that, if you can get questions involving a topic correct in long streaks, then you’ve mastered that topic. So, to practice by using the Streaks Method, you keep working on a question type until you get questions of that type correct in long streaks.

For example, say you were working on Assumption questions. You could do easy Assumption questions until you got 15 correct in a row. Then you could do medium Assumption questions until you got 15 correct in a row. Finally, you could do hard Assumption questions until you got 10 correct in a row. At that point, you would be confident that you had mastered Assumption questions.

This 15 easy, 15 medium, and 10 hard questions correct in a row pattern has been shown to indicate that a test-taker is strong in a topic. If you want to score extremely high on the GMAT, you could shoot for longer streaks, such as 20 easy, 20 medium, and 15 hard. Or if you have a relatively modest score goal, you could shoot for 10 easy, 10 medium, and 5 hard.

Whatever streak lengths you shoot for, the key is to keep working on a category until you achieve your streak. So, for instance, if you were shooting for a streak of 15 medium Geometry questions and got 11 questions correct and then missed 1, you would start over at 0 and continue to shoot for your streak until you got 15 correct in a row.

You Can Use the TTP Streaks Method Timed or Untimed

The TTP Streaks method works well whether you’re doing GMAT practice questions timed or untimed. As long as you get questions correct in long streaks, it doesn’t matter how long you take per question. The point of using the Streaks Method is simply to learn to do whatever it takes to be consistent.

You Can Choose the Categories of Questions for Your Streaks Practice

Which categories of GMAT questions you choose to practice answering in streaks is up to you. The categories can be based on your strengths and weaknesses or any other criteria you consider relevant. For instance, you could choose to shoot for streaks of correctly answered Absolute Value questions or Inference questions. Alternatively, you could shoot for streaks of correctly answered Sentence Correction or Quant questions. Whatever you want to master can be your topic for streaks practice.

The TTP Streaks Method Trains You to Do What the GMAT Rewards

The TTP Streaks Method is a great way to train because it supports development of key skills that you need to get GMAT questions correct consistently. Also, the method is valuable because the GMAT is a computer-adaptive test. Because the GMAT is computer-adaptive, it rewards long streaks of correct answers by presenting harder questions that are worth more. So, by practicing getting questions correct in long streaks, you develop skill in doing what the GMAT rewards.

Now that we know about topic-by-topic, untimed, and streaks practice, let’s discuss the role of timed practice with mixed sets.

Timed, Mixed Practice Toward the End of Your GMAT Prep

After doing topic-by-topic, untimed, and streaks practice with hundreds of GMAT Quant and Verbal practice questions, you should be getting questions correct consistently. Also, you’ll likely be answering them pretty quickly. All the same, to complete your preparation, you’ll want to do some timed practice with mixed sets of Quant questions and mixed sets of Verbal questions. By doing timed practice with mixed sets, you’ll get some experience answering questions under conditions similar to those you’ll experience when taking the GMAT.

Let’s now wrap up our discussion of GMAT practice with some key information on accuracy levels.

What Accuracy Levels You Need to Score 700+ on the GMAT

When you’re practicing for the GMAT exam, it’s helpful to be aware of the accuracy levels you need to hit your score goal. So, here’s what I’ve seen regarding what it takes to score 700+ on the GMAT.

Most people with 700+ GMAT score goals are shooting for Quant section scores in the upper 40s or 50s. To achieve a Quant score in the upper 40s or 50s, you need to be achieving accuracies of 90+ percent on easy, 70+ percent on medium, and 60+ percent on hard practice questions.

Most people with 700+ GMAT score goals are shooting for Verbal section scores in the upper 30s or 40s. To achieve a Verbal score in the upper 30s, you need to be achieving accuracies close to 100 percent on easy, around 85 percent on medium, and around 75 percent on hard practice questions. To score in the 40s, you need to be achieving accuracies close to 100 percent on easy, close to 90 percent on medium, and around 80 percent on hard practice questions.

I realize that those Verbal accuracy levels seem high. However, to score in the upper 30s on GMAT Verbal, you need to get 75 percent of medium and hard questions correct, and to score 40+, you have to get at least around 85 percent of medium and hard Verbal questions correct when you take the test. So, you can see that those accuracy levels actually make sense.

Let’s now sum up what we’ve discussed.

In Summary: The Best Ways to Practice for the GMAT

What we’ve seen about GMAT practice is the following:

• The goal of GMAT practice is to develop skill in playing the GMAT game, which is a reasoning game.
• The best way to master the various topics that appear on the GMAT is to practice one topic at a time.
• Untimed practice works best for developing strong GMAT skills.
• The TTP Streaks Method is a great way to master getting questions in a category correct consistently.
• Doing mixed and timed practice toward the end of your prep is a good way to train to answer GMAT questions under conditions similar to those you’ll experience on test day.

What’s Next?

If you’d like to learn more about how to prepare for the Quant and Verbal sections of the GMAT, check out these posts on how to increase your GMAT Quant score and how to score high on GMAT Verbal.