How to Eliminate GMAT Anxiety

Good news: GMAT anxiety can be managed with the right approach. To minimize GMAT anxiety, focus on preparation, mindset, and stress-management. First, ensure that you’re thoroughly prepared; confidence stems from mastery. Take full-length practice tests under realistic conditions to reduce fear of the unknown. Train yourself to focus only on the question at hand, not on the question before or after. Second, learn techniques to reframe anxiety as excitement, use positive self-talk, and visualize your success on a daily basis. Strategies such as deep breathing, exposure therapy, and setting realistic expectations can help keep nerves in check. Finally, avoid perfectionism, don’t compare yourself to others, and have a Plan B to reduce pressure.

Continue reading to discover other practical strategies to transform test-day stress into peak GMAT performance.

Here are the topics we’ll cover:

• Signs and Symptoms of Test Anxiety
• Anxiety and the Fight-or-Flight Response
  • Fight-or-Flight and the GMAT
• Strategies to Help You Eliminate GMAT Test Anxiety
  • Strategy One: Be Prepared
  • Strategy Two: Take Many Practice Tests
  • Strategy Three: Visualize Success
  • Strategy Four: Exposure Therapy
  • Strategy Five: Recognize and Limit Anxiety in Your Life
• Strategy Six: Rethink Hazardous Attitudes
  • Positive Self-Talk
  • Transform Your Negative Self-Talk into Positive Affirmation
  • Strategy Seven: Transform Anxiety Into Excitement 
  • Strategy Eight: Make Up a Mantra
  • Strategy Nine: Be Aware of Your Breathing 
•  Strategy Ten: Eat Anxiety for Lunch by Getting Busy Answering Questions
  • Don’t Get Anxious About Being Anxious! Focus on Answering Questions!
  • Strategy Eleven: Eliminate the Need for Perfection
  • Strategy Twelve: Leverage the Compound Effect
  • Strategy Thirteen: Separate Fact from Fiction
  • Strategy Fourteen: Don’t Compare Yourself to Others
  • Strategy Fifteen: Have a Plan B and a Plan C
  • Strategy Sixteen: Hydrate
• Summary
• What’s Next?

Let’s start by taking a look at some common symptoms of test-day anxiety.

Signs and Symptoms of Test Anxiety

Test anxiety can affect the mind and body in numerous ways. Some common signs and symptoms include:

• Your mind feels blank while taking the test.
• It’s hard to make sense of the questions. You read and reread, but you just can’t figure out what the questions are asking.
• Your thoughts are racing and you feel unfocused.
• Your concentration level is poor.
• You’re worried about how you’re performing.
• Your breathing and heart rate are faster than normal.
• You feel tense.
• You feel lightheaded, faint, or dizzy.
• You’re sweating.
• You have cramps.
• You have a dry mouth.
• After the fact, you reflect on the questions and know that you could have answered them correctly, although you couldn’t solve them at the moment.

If you’ve experienced these symptoms while taking the GMAT (or a practice exam) or thinking about your upcoming exam, you may have been experiencing test anxiety.

KEY FACT:

Common physical symptoms of test anxiety include increased heart or breathing rate, dry mouth, and sweating. Common mental symptoms include racing thoughts, poor concentration, and inability to comprehend what the questions are asking.

Let’s examine the causes of these symptoms.

Anxiety and the Fight-or-Flight Response

A little bit of anxiety is good, as it is a normal physiological response to situations that could result in harm and thus require a heightened state of alertness from our bodies. Anxiety increases our level of awareness, our visual and auditory sensations, and our processing skills. However, as our level of anxiety increases, we can see a steep drop in our performance. This drop in performance is the result of what is known as the fight-or-flight response.

During the fight-or-flight response, our bodies prepare to either fight a threat or escape from it. Several physiological processes occur to ready us to fight or flee: digestion shuts off (no time to eat while running from a lion), pupils dilate to temporarily enhance our vision, glucose levels and stress-hormone levels rise to provide energy to our muscles, and blood leaves certain regions of the brain that focus on higher-level thought, flooding the muscles, heart, and lungs and readying the body for a physical confrontation.

The fight-or-flight response is an evolutionary adaptation that likely served us well in the distant past, during an encounter with a bear or a rival clan looking to steal our food, but it isn’t always appropriate in our modern lives. If you’ve ever been angry and said something quickly that you later regretted, your outburst was likely the result of the decreased cognitive functions that result from the fight-or-flight response. Our fight-or-flight response is triggered in seconds, but its effects last well beyond the point at which a threat, or perceived threat, has disappeared.

KEY FACT:

Heightened anxiety levels give rise to the fight-or-flight response, in which your cognitive functioning is decreased and your body prepares for confrontation or retreat.

Fight-or-Flight and the GMAT

When taking the GMAT, if your anxiety level is too high, your fight-or-flight response may kick in and make it difficult to focus on the problem at hand. Blood is leaving your brain to be available to your muscles. While this is a useful physiological response if you’re facing a mountain lion, it’s not so useful in helping you set up an equation.

One of the keys to earning your highest possible score on the GMAT (aside from, of course, mastering GMAT content), is taking the necessary steps to minimize stress related to your exam and mitigate any anxiety that arises on the big day. 

TTP PRO TIP:

Learning how to minimize stress is critical to your success on the GMAT.

Let’s look at some simple yet effective strategies that all GMAT students can follow to help decrease their test anxiety and increase their scores.

Strategies to Help You Eliminate GMAT Test Anxiety

Strategy One: Be Prepared

The better you know the material, the more relaxed you’ll be on test day. This is the most obvious strategy to reduce GMAT anxiety. Consider a 21-question math test on basic addition and subtraction. Would you be nervous about taking that test? Most people are very comfortable with addition and subtraction. Why? Well, they’ve been practicing addition and subtraction for many years. So they’re well-prepared to tackle questions involving those operations.

Now, change those 21 math questions to ones involving prime factorization, roots and exponents, rates, and probability, and now, people get a little nervous. Why? Well, they know that they are not that strong with those concepts. Their bodies know this fact, too, and their bodies are telling them that this test is an important one and they may not be prepared to effectively handle its challenges. That’s stressful!

So, what do you do? Prepare, prepare, prepare! Then, after you have prepared enough, prepare some more. There is nothing better for combating test anxiety than to be so prepared that the material is no longer a source of stress. Here is a good strategy: Don’t practice until you can get questions right; practice so much that you can’t get them wrong.

Once you know that you are properly prepared for the GMAT, the test won’t be that anxiety-provoking. In fact, it may even be enjoyable. After all, you’ll be able to put all of your hard work to good use and show the test what you’re made of!

There is nothing better for combating test anxiety than to be so prepared that the material is no longer a source of stress.

Solid preparation requires a lot of practice. Let’s look at how practicing can increase our comfort level. 

Strategy Two: Take Many Practice Tests

There is a saying in sports: “You won’t play any better than you practice.” In other words, if you take a lackluster approach to your training, don’t expect to perform well on game day. The GMAT is no different. Too many students do a lot of preparation with GMAT material yet fail to take enough practice tests. This is a bankrupt strategy. If you know the material well but don’t take practice tests to simulate test day, how well do you think you’ll perform when it’s the real deal?

Taking (and reviewing) all six official practice tests from mba.com is an excellent way to reduce test anxiety because you build comfort and familiarity with the GMAT that you can’t get from simply doing problem sets or untimed practice. When you take many full-length practice tests under realistic testing conditions, you make the real GMAT feel like just another day and just another practice test.

For example, one of my former GMAT students told me that her GMAT test center was so cold that she had to wear her coat to take the exam. Additionally, she had not slept well the night before. However, she had taken many practice tests, so she realized that this day was not much different from many others on which she had awakened, eaten breakfast, and taken a practice GMAT. So, in spite of issues that could have resulted in her becoming anxious, she exceeded her dream score that day.

Of course, it’s essential to space out your practice tests, so that you can leverage them to your greatest advantage. Check out this article for more advice on how to use GMAT practice tests to help reach your score goal.

KEY FACT:

Taking many practice tests acclimates you to the rigors of test day.

Strategy Three: Visualize Success

The best of the best in any field know that battles are won and lost in the time leading up to the battle. Often, people mistakenly believe that winning or losing has everything to do with the battle itself. We know that preparation and practice are crucial, but if you don’t believe in your ability to succeed, you could be sabotaging yourself before you even get the chance to put your skills to work. You must visualize yourself being successful. You must visualize yourself correctly answering questions on the GMAT and earning a high score. You must feel it and believe it. 

Many top professional athletes use visualization to gain a game-day edge. The human brain is an amazing machine, and we often underestimate the large role that our thoughts play in our performance. Remember that your thoughts become your actions, and your actions become your life. You have a choice as to how you feel. If you believe that you cannot lose, you’re all but guaranteed to perform at your best. 

For 15 minutes each day, visualize your success. If you have never tried this before or are skeptical as to the efficacy of visualization, you are the person most in need of this exercise. You need not do anything sophisticated. Visualization can be as simple as sitting quietly for five minutes at a time, three times a day, and thinking positively. You could visualize:

• Little green men placing necessary GMAT knowledge in your brain.
• Remembering everything you learn during the study session.
• Developing a deep mastery of the material.
• Recognizing and knowing how to solve all of the questions you encounter on test day.
• Being happy and feeling positive during the test.
• Being fast and accurate during the test.
• Walking out of the test center feeling amazing, with an exceptional GMAT score in hand.
• Knowing that your business school application includes a great GMAT score. 

TTP PRO TIP:

Practice visualizing your GMAT success for 15 minutes every day.

Another type of visualization that you can do to reduce test anxiety relates to what is called exposure therapy. 

Strategy Four: Exposure Therapy

Exposure therapy involves changing fearful or self-sabotaging responses by putting yourself in situations that trigger those responses, thus creating opportunities to practice responding differently. For instance, a person who is afraid of heights would spend some time in high places, learning to manage that response.

Interestingly, merely visualizing being in a situation that triggers an anxious response can produce nearly the same response that actually being in that situation does. So, to learn to stay cool while taking the GMAT, you can imagine that you are taking the GMAT, and feel and learn to manage any anxious responses that arise. If thinking about the test triggers anxious feelings, you could visualize yourself taking the test and feeling that pressure, and then you would practice acknowledging that feeling without becoming anxious. 

The basic idea is to get used to handling the things that you respond to anxiously until you don’t respond that way any longer. As you do this exposure therapy, don’t seek to repress anxiety; rather, notice how you are responding and sit with any anxiety you feel until you calm down. You can also think about how you respond and consider alternative ideas. For instance, becoming anxious over your career goals is not doing you any good. Can you talk yourself out of becoming anxious? Yes, you can.

KEY FACT:

Exposure therapy allows you to face your fears head-on and defuse the resulting anxiety.

Of course, if you want to be less anxious about the GMAT, recognizing and limiting anxiety in all areas of your life can help.

Strategy Five: Recognize and Limit Anxiety in Your Life

If you’re a person who tends to get anxious and stressed throughout the day, if you let the small stuff bother you, it’s going to be difficult to walk into the test center and be cool. After all, each day you’re training your body to be on edge. 

If you allow yourself to be flustered by every gust of wind that comes your way, you’re going to be blown off course. Your strategy is to remain calm each day. There are strategies you can employ to be calm under fire. For example:

• Work to be more patient with the people around you. Don’t allow yourself to be rattled by little annoyances such as a friend’s being late to meet you or a disagreement with a family member. Make a conscious effort to keep your cool, and recognize that doing so may actually help the situation. 
• Develop the ability to be comfortable sitting in traffic. What good does getting flustered do? Stress won’t get you to your destination any quicker. Do the same for delayed flights and long lines at the supermarket — just be cool. 
• Practice not being hard on yourself during the study process. If you get a question wrong, don’t agonize; use it as a learning experience. If preparing for the GMAT is taking longer than you planned, recognize that this process can be unpredictable, and continue to do your best.
• In general, realize that the problems and situations that are stressing you out are probably quite small compared to those you could face.

TTP PRO TIP:

By limiting and controlling anxiety in your life, you will limit anxiety on test day.

While it’s important that you don’t let little annoyances derail your day, you should also seek to transform your pessimistic thought patterns related to the GMAT.

Strategy Six: Rethink Hazardous Attitudes

Often, it’s not the difficulties we face in life that cause us the greatest problems. Rather, it’s the way we view those difficulties — our attitude in the face of challenges — that proves most problematic. For example, students who experience test anxiety tend to exhibit a wide range of negative, harmful thought patterns, which we’ll collectively refer to as “hazardous attitudes.” 

Hazardous Attitudes

Common examples of these hazardous attitudes include:

I’m bad at math and I’ll never improve.

The GMAT is too hard. I’ll never be able to improve my score.

The GMAT is stupid. Why do I have to spend my time studying for this test? 

I’ll never be able to answer GMAT questions quickly enough.

I really dislike studying. It’s such a waste of time. 

The material that I learn while studying for the GMAT won’t be useful to me in business school or life.

I can’t remain calm and focused while taking the GMAT.

KEY FACT:

How we deal with adversity can be problematic.

Positive Self-Talk

Students who score well on the GMAT tend not to engage in this negative self-talk. Instead, they view the GMAT dispassionately, even positively. They are rational, realistic, and optimistic when it comes to their current skill sets, score goals, and the time and energy that will be required to reach their goals. Examples of their self-talk include:

At this moment, I need to improve my math skills. With hard work and time, I can improve them to a very high level.

Yes, the GMAT is hard, but I’m up for the challenge. Nothing valuable in life comes to anyone without hard work.

I can use the GMAT as a tool to help me gain a seat at a top business school. I’m not entitled to anything unless I’m willing to spend the time to earn it.

At the moment, I may not be fast at solving GMAT questions, but I can and will get better and faster each day. In time, I will be fast and accurate.

Although studying may not be as much fun as taking tequila shots, I realize that in today’s world, knowledge is power, and having more of it can provide me with a major competitive advantage over my peers.

The GMAT tests reading skills, writing skills, logic skills, critical reasoning skills, and quantitative analysis skills, all of which are vital to success in business school and beyond.

The GMAT may be a big deal, but there are many steps that I can take, both in my studying and while taking the test, that will help me to stay calm, ready, and focused.

KEY FACT:

High scorers on the GMAT tend to engage in positive self-talk.

Transform Your Negative Self-Talk into Positive Affirmation

If you’ve ever found yourself engaged in detrimental self-talk, that’s OK. Recognizing hazardous attitudes is the first step toward eliminating them. Pay close attention to your self-talk, and each time you catch yourself engaged in a hazardous attitude, stop and write it down on the left side of a page in a journal. Then, on the right side of the page, next to the hazardous attitude, come up with a restatement of that attitude. For example:

Any time you fall prey to hazardous attitudes, take note and perform a restatement in your journal. As you perform this task over and over, you’ll likely begin to notice that your view on the GMAT, the study process, and even yourself is moving in a positive direction, which will decrease your anxiety.

Just as you can transform your negative thoughts into positive ones, you can transform anxiety into excitement. Let’s look at how.

TTP PRO TIP:

Decrease anxiety by restating self-effacing comments as self-affirming ones.

Strategy Seven: Transform Anxiety Into Excitement 

Research by Alison Wood Brooks, professor at Harvard Business School, supports the notion that getting excited about a stressful task can improve your performance on that task.

According to Brooks, many people think that the best way to heighten their performance under stress is to calm down. But Brooks uncovered something interesting: People who got excited in anticipation of a stressful task, rather than trying to calm down, actually performed better. Brooks says: “Individuals can reappraise anxiety as excitement using minimal strategies such as self-talk (saying ‘I am excited’ out loud) or simple messages ( ‘get excited’), which lead them to feel more excited and improve their subsequent performance.”

In one experiment, Brooks looked at how reappraising anxiety as excitement helped students perform better on a timed math assessment. (Sound familiar?) Before the test, one group of students stated “Try to remain calm” out loud, while the other exclaimed, “Try to get excited.” Brooks found that the students instructed to say “try to get excited” performed significantly better than those in the other group.

Key takeaways? First, if you’re feeling stressed about taking the GMAT, it may help to tell yourself that what you’re feeling is actually excitement. Each time you sit down to study, try saying something like, “I’m excited about mastering these GMAT questions” or “I’m excited about scoring high on the GMAT.” Find a mantra that works for you. Use that same mantra before taking your actual GMAT. Then, if you find yourself stressing out during the official GMAT, you can take a moment to remind yourself that the stress is likely working in your favor by keeping you on your toes.

TTP PRO TIP:

Getting excited rather than trying to calm down may be a way of minimizing your anxiety.

Let’s consider using a mantra.

Strategy Eight: Make Up a Mantra

Positive affirmations can help with test anxiety. Think of a mantra that you like and repeat it throughout each day. For example: “In all ways, I will crush the GMAT” or “Nothing can keep me from a 655+ GMAT score.” Keep repeating your mantra in your mind. Over time, you will likely come to believe it. 

You can also employ a different positive affirmation if and when you feel too much anxiety rearing its head. This is an affirmation that you can use to re-center yourself if you’re getting off track. For example: “I am a master of this content. I am very prepared.” As soon as you feel your emotions getting away from you, repeat that mantra to help yourself refocus.

Another mantra that can be very effective in a variety of situations, including taking the GMAT, is: “I can handle this.”

TTP PRO TIP:

A mantra can be an effective self-soothing technique.

Now, let’s look at the importance of controlled breathing.

Strategy Nine: Be Aware of Your Breathing 

We’ve already discussed that breathing faster than normal is a common symptom of test anxiety, so it’s no surprise that calm people tend to breathe deeply. Interestingly, mimicking the behavior of calm people by taking long, deep, full breaths, can actually make you calmer. When you engage in the type of breathing that calm people do, you deliver more oxygen to your brain and calm your system. In this case, “fake it ‘til you make it” is worthwhile advice.

So, whether you are taking the actual GMAT or a practice test, or even just doing some concept review, to put yourself in a calm state that is optimal for learning and problem-solving, breathe deeply, so that the breaths don’t stop in your chest but go lower, into your abdominal area. Doing this type of breathing is one of the simplest, fastest, and most effective ways to reduce anxiety.

KEY FACT:

You can reduce anxiety by breathing deeply.

This brings us to an essential strategy when taking the GMAT: Get busy answering questions.

Strategy Ten: Eat Anxiety for Lunch by Getting Busy Answering Questions

All of the strategies we’ve discussed so far have focused on reducing anxiety to optimal levels. However, what if you were to do all of the above and still found yourself becoming anxious while taking the actual GMAT? Is it game over? Definitely not.

In coaching people taking the GMAT, we at Target Test Prep realized something: Eliminating test anxiety entirely is pretty much impossible, and the idea that you have to do so can be debilitating because if you find yourself becoming anxious while taking the test, you may decide that you have already lost the game. So, eliminating all anxiety is not the goal. Rather, the goal — and a key part of winning the GMAT game — is to deal with any anxiety that you do experience.

Don’t Get Anxious About Being Anxious! Focus on Answering Questions!

So, what do you do if you feel yourself becoming anxious while taking the actual GMAT? First, as we’ve already learned, some degree of anxious alertness can be beneficial. Furthermore, responding to anxiety by becoming anxious over the anxiety clearly doesn’t help. Instead, get busy. Focus on the question in front of you so intensely that you don’t even notice whether you’re anxious or calm.

Focusing on the question in front of you is a great test-taking strategy for a variety of reasons, and one of them is that in doing so, you will be too busy to make yourself more anxious. The intense focus on a purpose will serve to calm you by distracting you from your feelings of anxiety. 

Whether you’re taking a practice test or the real test, you can adopt the following attitude: Whatever is going on, focus on getting the right answer to the question in front of you. Is the test center room temperature a bit too cold? Focus on getting the right answer to the question in front of you. Feeling tired? Focus on getting the right answer to the question in front of you. Worried that you won’t get into your first-choice business school? You can fall apart or pass out after the last question in the last section has been answered. While you are taking the test, focus on the question at hand and nothing else.

A perfect GMAT scorer shared his secret for test-day nerves. He did practice questions! So, your response to test anxiety can be to focus on getting correct answers. 

TTP PRO TIP:

To divert your anxious feelings, focus on getting the right answer to the question in front of you!

Strategy Eleven: Eliminate the Need for Perfection

Everyone wants everything done perfectly and done yesterday. Great. Now that we have that fact on the table, let’s get real: Nothing is done perfectly, and things often take longer than anticipated. Most things in life that are valuable are not easy to achieve. They can require a significant investment of time and hard work.

Here we see another major difference in the thinking of students who experience test anxiety and those who don’t: The former need to be perfect. Along with this perfection comes a need to get things done as fast as humanly possible. This is a lose-lose scenario when preparing for the GMAT.

Perfectionist students see every question that they incorrectly answer as an affront to their vision of how they should perform rather than as an opportunity to improve. They see a question that they take longer than two minutes to answer as a sign that they are not “where they need to be,” instead of seeing that faster time is a natural result of study and practice. If they score 615 on a practice test, they view this score as “100 points below 715,” instead of realizing that 615 is a great starting score, and that almost no students need to score 715 on the GMAT to secure a seat at a top business school. 

With each affront to the students’ perfectionist worldview, their anxiety grows, doing a disservice to their GMAT preparation and their performance on test day. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that you or anyone else taking the GMAT can and must achieve perfection.

TTP PRO TIP:

Don’t let the need for perfection derail your study efforts.

As a corollary to getting rid of the need to be perfect, you can leverage what is known as the compound effect.

Strategy Twelve: Leverage the Compound Effect

The compound effect says that small, continuous changes over time can produce dramatic results. For example, imagine if you cut your daily caloric intake by just 100 calories a day for six months. How many pounds would you lose? Imagine if you learned one line of a piano piece each day. How many songs would you be able to play after a year? 

We can apply this principle to GMAT prep. Sometimes students feel that they must study five hours a day in order to make progress, so on days when they can’t devote five hours, they simply don’t study. These missed study days foster anxiety that can spill over into test day. These students are missing out on the compound effect.

Perhaps some busy students can study for only 30 minutes in the morning and 40 minutes at night. Even so, if they consistently study 70 minutes a day over the course of some number of months, they can develop a strong skill set.

Even if you can’t carve out as much study time each day as you’d like, by consistently studying a little each day, you can make large improvements in your skills.

TTP PRO TIP:

Even if you can study only a little each day, over time you’ll have studied quite a lot!

Now that we know that studying a little is always better than not studying at all, let’s discuss some other myths and misconceptions surrounding the GMAT.

Strategy Thirteen: Separate Fact from Fiction

Standardized tests tend to become sensationalized, giving rise to false information, which often creates unnecessary anxiety in students. Let’s take a look at some common GMAT falsehoods and the GMAT reality:

Fiction: The GMAT measures how good I am at taking standardized tests.
Fact: Every question on the GMAT is designed to test a specific concept, skill, or piece of knowledge.

Fiction: If I’m not fast, I won’t be able to earn a good GMAT score.
Fact: GMAT questions are designed to be solvable by well-prepared test-takers in the time provided.

Fiction: The GMAT tests an obscure body of information, and you need to know the “tricks” to earn a high score. 
Fact: The information tested on the GMAT is extremely pertinent to the success of MBA students. The questions have logical, methodical solutions. There are no secret “tricks” to getting correct answers.

Fiction: I must get every question correct to earn a high score.
Fact: On an adaptive test such as the GMAT, you can incorrectly solve a number of questions and still earn a high score.

Fiction: Because the GMAT is a reasoning test, it tests how well I think. Since it’s hard to improve my thinking skills, it’s hard to improve my score.
Fact: Yes, the GMAT is a reasoning test. However, you can learn to be a better thinker by mastering predictably tested concepts. Once you master these, you’ll be able to increase your skill at getting questions correct. 

TTP PRO TIP:

Learn to separate GMAT fact from GMAT fiction.

Next, let’s look at why you should resist the urge to compare yourself to others when preparing for the GMAT.

Strategy Fourteen: Don’t Compare Yourself to Others

Theodore Roosevelt said: “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Well, comparison can also detract from your GMAT performance. Maybe your friend earned a 685. Maybe your colleague nailed it after studying only for a month. Who cares! These people are not you. Don’t waste your limited time and energy comparing yourself to anyone. Also, ignore the stories about people who scored 655+ after one week of studying. First, you have no way of knowing whether these stories are true. Second, even if the stories are true, those people are extremely rare. Comparing yourself to them is like comparing yourself to Tiger Woods while playing golf; you’ll always feel inadequate no matter how good you get.

TTP PRO TIP:

Compare yourself only to the best version of yourself, not to others.

Comparing yourself to others can worsen your GMAT anxiety, so do yourself a favor and focus on your personal goals. That said, it’s smart to have a backup plan (or two) just in case things don’t turn out the way you were hoping they would on test day.

Strategy Fifteen: Have a Plan B and a Plan C

One of the most important steps you can take to help eliminate test anxiety is to have a Plan B and a Plan C. Consider a scenario in which you have one shot to take the GMAT just before the round two deadlines. If you do well, you think you’ll get into a great program. If you don’t do well, you feel your chances of acceptance are low. This is a stress-evoking situation for most people because so much rests on one test. 

You don’t want to create a do-or-die situation. Instead, you want to have a backup plan. For example, if you don’t hit your GMAT score goal, a solid Plan B would be to continue studying until you earn a competitive score and reapply in the fall for round one. Sit down and make a list of all the ways you can enhance yourself both personally and professionally during the coming year. In doing this exercise, you may see that waiting to go to school is a very positive move. 

TTP PRO TIP:

Have a backup plan in case you don’t hit your target score by your application deadline.

Last but not least, let’s look at one of the easiest strategies for reducing test-day anxiety: staying hydrated!

Strategy Sixteen: Hydrate

The sensation of thirst does not appear until a person is 1% to 2% dehydrated, and studies have shown that even 1.5% dehydration can have a negative impact on a person’s mind and body. Tasks may seem more difficult than they normally would, and a mildly dehydrated person may be more likely to experience anxiety and tension.

Staying fully hydrated helps to keep you at peak performance and reduces physical stress. Of course, the method for addressing dehydration is simple. Drink some water before you take the GMAT, and maybe drink some during breaks. Don’t drink so much that it will make you uncomfortable during a nearly 2 1/2-hour test, but make sure you drink enough to keep feelings of thirst and dry mouth at bay. 

TTP PRO TIP:

Staying hydrated during your GMAT will help lessen feelings of tension or anxiety.

Summary

In this article, we have focused on the deleterious effects of anxiety when studying for the GMAT or taking the test. You want to be able to focus on getting correct answers on test day rather than experiencing excessive anxiety.

We looked at the following 16 strategies for minimizing anxiety.

1. Be Prepared
2. Take Many Practice Tests
3. Visualize Success
4. Exposure Therapy
5. Recognize and Limit Anxiety in Your Life
6. Rethink Hazardous Attitudes
7. Transform Anxiety Into Excitement 
8. Make Up a Mantra
9. Be Aware of Your Breathing
10. Eat Anxiety for Lunch by Getting Busy Answering Questions
11. Eliminate the Need for Perfection
12. Leverage the Compound Effect
13. Separate Fact from Fiction
14. Don’t Compare Yourself to Others
15. Have a Plan B and a Plan C
16. Hydrate

 Employ these basic yet effective strategies to combat test anxiety, and before you know it, you’ll be cooler, calmer, and ready to win the GMAT game!

What’s Next?

Need more advice on how to handle the days leading up to your exam? Check out this article for other essential GMAT test-day tips.

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