HOW TO ANALYZE YOUR DATA AND IMPROVE YOUR PERFORMANCE

On this page we will show you how you can analyze your GMAT data and improve your performance using the performance chart. This can help in establishing your time management strategy for the test day, as well as improving the quality of your answers in the future.

What is exactly the performance chart? 

The performance chart is a tool that helps you to improve your time management on the GMAT. It is a spreadsheet where you can log the data of your timed set. To train your time management, you will have to start practicing problems in timed sets and blind reviews. Its essential to monitor your data. 

Monitor your data

For each question in the timed set, you can log the time spent on the question, your timed answer and your reviewed answer, and lastly the correct answer.

The time spent can be read from the stopwatch function on your phone. You can read the timed answer and review answer from your notebook or scrap paper. Lastly, take the correct answer from an official resource (such as a book). As soon as you enter the correct answer in the last column, your timed answer and review answer will automatically turn green or red.

Analyse your performance

When you have logged all the data of your timed set you can start analyzing your performance. Now you can see what time pressure did to the quality of your answers. Analyzing these results can be very useful in establishing your time management strategy for the test day, as well as improving the quality of your answers in the future. Be sure to save your performance charts from every session to be able to track your progress.

After practicing a few timed sets, you will have gathered quite some data in your performance chart.

How to analyse your data

Analyzing your data in the chart will help you obtain insights in your strengths and weaknesses. You can use this knowledge to optimize your study efforts and improve your time management strategy. Obviously, your strengths are questions that you solve quickly and correctly. Your weaknesses are questions that take a long time to solve or that you often answer incorrectly, or both. Review the theory of areas that you have difficulty with. Continue practicing GMAT questions specifically on these topics and repeat your analysis. Were you able to improve?

Accept and move on

You might identify certain topics that stay difficult, even after extra practice. Accept this and use this fact. Avoid spending too much time on questions that you find too difficult. Instead, make an educated guess by eliminating a few wrong answers. Or, if you’re completely lost, use a freebie. Train yourself at letting go of problems that are too difficult to you. This will save you time and energy to spend on question that you should be able to answer correctly.

Score points on the 'easy' questions

People often make the mistake to spend time on the questions they find difficult and rush on the problems they know they’re good at. It should be the other way around! Make sure you score points on the questions that you know you’re good at. Giving a wrong answer to a question that you know you should be able to solve is very ‘expensive’. Take a bit more time on these questions.

Don’t try to minimize the time spent per question. Your goal is to maximize the correct answers per time spent. 

As the GMAT exam is to be made within a tight time schedule, time management is an important component. These circumstances make practice inevitable. We offer multiple courses that will prepare you for the GMAT exam in the best way possible. If you want to know more about the GMAT, join our free introduction session.