Doing It in Your Head Is PRIDE

Say you're on question 9 of the Quant section. A price goes up 20%, then down 20%, and you're asked for the original price. You've done this kind of math a hundred times at work. Up 20, down 20, back where you started. You click the answer that matches the final price, feel a little rush of speed and move on.

You just handed back a point you had already earned.

Here's my blunt verdict: doing the Executive Assessment in your head is not a skill. It's PRIDE. And it's the most common way I watch smart, experienced people throw away points they knew how to get.

Why it feels smart

If you're aiming for an Executive MBA or a part-time MBA, you've probably been the person in the meeting who runs the numbers while everyone else reaches for a calculator. At work, that's a real strength. On this test, it's a trap.

The Executive Assessment (the EA) is GMAC's test built for Executive MBA programs. It runs 90 minutes in three 30-minute sections: Integrated Reasoning with 12 questions, Verbal Reasoning with 14, and Quantitative Reasoning with 14. Each section is scored 0 to 20, the total runs from 100 to 200, and all three sections are weighted the same.

Stop and look at that. There are only 40 questions in the whole test. There's no giant pile of questions where one careless miss gets lost in the crowd. The EA is also adaptive, which means what you see next depends on how you've been doing. A silly miss isn't just one point. It can shape the rest of your section.

The forced choice

So you have to decide what you want MORE: a higher score, or to look like you don't need paper.

Nobody grades your scratch work. No admissions committee will ever see it. The only thing that leaves the room is the score. Writing things down costs you nothing except a little ego.

Now pull up the last practice set you did. Find every question you got wrong. I'll bet MORE of them were questions you knew how to do than questions that were truly beyond you. Now look at your notes for those questions. I'll bet they're thin, or there are none at all.

Stop reading and go check. Seriously. Don't read another word until you've looked.

5 ways pride shows up (and what to do INSTEAD)

1. "I can hold it in my head." You can hold two numbers. The EA asks you to hold four numbers, a condition and what the question actually asked, all at once, against a clock. INSTEAD: write every given as you read it, in short form. "Price up 20%. Down 20%. End 96. Find start." Then work from the paper, not from memory.
2. "I don't have time to write." Yes, you do. You get 30 minutes for 14 Quant questions, a little over 2 minutes each on average. That's enough to read, write and work. What really eats your time is re-reading a prompt three times because nothing is on paper. INSTEAD: time yourself on 10 questions with full notes. You'll likely find you're not slower at all.
3. "I'll just pick the statement that feels right." On Data Sufficiency, you don't solve for a number. You decide whether the facts you're given are ENOUGH to answer the question. Doing that in your head is how people mix up "enough to answer" with "enough to answer yes." INSTEAD: write "AD BCE" on your paper and cross out letters as you rule them out. More on that below.
4. "I'll just eyeball the table." Integrated Reasoning gives you charts, tables and information from several sources, and many questions have more than one part. Eyeballing is how you read the wrong column. INSTEAD: before you touch the data, write what the question wants in a few words. Then go find only that.
5. "I know what the argument says." Critical Reasoning questions give you a short argument and ask you to strengthen it, weaken it or find what it assumes. They're won or lost on the conclusion, the main point the author is trying to prove. INSTEAD: write the conclusion in five words or fewer before you read a single answer choice.

This is training, not a talent show

A pro golfer doesn't skip her pre-shot routine because she's good. The routine is WHY she's good. It's the same set of steps every single time, so nothing is left to mood or luck. Your notes are your pre-shot routine. Givens on paper. Question on paper. Work on paper. Every question, even the easy ones. ESPECIALLY the easy ones, because those are the points you're most likely to give away.

That matters even more now. Since spring 2020 you can take the EA online at home, and your kitchen table comes with a dog, a phone and a stack of work email. When the setting changes, habits are what hold. That's the whole idea behind keeping your study plan steady when your routine breaks. Before test day, check the official test day FAQs so you know exactly how note-taking works for the version you're taking, and practice the same way.

And if you've been doing it in your head this whole time, don't get too down on yourself. This is one of the most fixable problems on the whole test. It's not about being smarter. It's about a behavior, and behaviors can be trained. Build it into a real training plan, not a vague promise to "be more careful."

Your challenge for today

Pick 10 Quant questions you've already gotten RIGHT. Redo them with every step on paper: the givens, what's being asked, the work, and the AD BCE grid on every Data Sufficiency question. Time the whole set.

Then look at what you found. I'll bet you finish inside the time you'd get on test day. And I'll bet at least one of those "right" answers turns out to have been a lucky guess your head talked you into.

Go do it tonight. Pride can wait until after you see your score.