Be the COMMANDER of Fewer Questions

It's 9:40 on a Tuesday night. You got home from work at 7, ate dinner standing at the counter, and now you're on practice question number 1,142. You got it wrong. You glance at the explanation, nod, think "oh right, I knew that," and click NEXT. Question 1,143.

Here is my verdict on that night: it was wasted. Not because you aren't smart. Because you didn't learn a single thing you'll use on Test Day. You met a question, shook its hand and walked away.

So let me ask you something, and I want a real answer before you read another line. What's MORE powerful: being an acquaintance of 3,000 questions, or being the COMMANDER of 300?

The EA is a small test. Train like it.

The Executive Assessment, made by GMAC, is 90 minutes long. It has three 30-minute sections. Integrated Reasoning has 12 questions where you read charts, tables and short sets of data and pull out what matters. Verbal Reasoning has 14 questions. Quantitative Reasoning has 14. Each section is scored from 0 to 20, your total runs from 100 to 200, and all three sections count the same. Every one of those numbers is on GMAC's assessment structure page.

Now stop and look at that. 40 questions. TOTAL. You don't need to have seen every question ever written. You need to handle 40 of them cleanly, under a clock, probably after a full week of work. That's a PROCESS problem, not a volume problem.

The test is also adaptive section by section. Adaptive means your answers help decide what the test hands you next. So the gettable questions you drop with a silly mistake aren't just one lost point. They shape the rest of the section. That should scare you more than the hard questions do.

What "commander" actually means

You are the commander of a question when you can do ALL of these:

• Solve it the fastest reliable way, with notes on paper, not in your head.
• Point to the trap answer and explain why people pick it.
• Say why every wrong answer is wrong.
• Spot the same pattern when it shows up wearing different words and numbers.

If you can't do all four, you don't own that question. You rented it. And rentals get taken back on Test Day.

Try one, then do it again

Now here's the part almost everyone skips. Say you picked (C). You read the explanation, see the slip, and file it under "careless." That word is a cover story. The REAL cause is specific: you read "what remains" and didn't put it on paper. That's a note-taking problem, and it will hit you again on a different question with different numbers until you fix it. When you review, you are not allowed to say "I have no idea" about why you missed something. Name the cause.

Then, a week from now, redo this exact question from blank paper. Then change it: make the third analyst's share $5,000. If your process is clean, you get $10,000 in under a minute, because half the pool is $5,000. If you hesitate, you didn't own it yet.

Here's my wager. Go through your last 50 wrong Quant answers. I'll bet you find the same three or four mistakes over and over. I'll bet the list of repeats is LONGER than the list of truly new problems. New questions won't fix repeats. Redoing will.

5 mistakes that turn practice into busywork

1. Buying another question bank when your score stalls. More questions feels like progress. It's just more handshakes.

   INSTEAD: Go back to the questions you've already missed. That pile is your real study material. It's custom made for your weak spots, and it's free.

2. Reading the explanation and calling it "review." Nodding along is not the same as doing it. Everything looks easy once someone shows you the way.

   INSTEAD: Cover the explanation. Redo the question on blank paper. THEN compare your steps to the solution, line by line.

3. Only redoing the ones you got wrong. A lucky guess is a wrong answer that hasn't been caught yet. A right answer that took four minutes is a problem too.

   INSTEAD: Mark every guess and every slow question while you practice. Those go in the redo pile right next to the misses.

4. Redoing the next morning. If you remember the answer, you're testing memory, not process.

   INSTEAD: Wait about a week. Then redo it, and when you can, change a number or two so you can't coast on memory.

5. Skipping Integrated Reasoning because it feels strange. Plenty of people pour every hour into Quant and Verbal. But IR is scored 0 to 20 just like the other two, and it counts the same.

   INSTEAD: Give IR its own redo pile. Twelve questions, the same weight as the other sections. Ignoring it is a choice to leave points on the table.

A redo loop that fits a work week

You have a job. Maybe a family. You don't have four free hours a night, and you don't need them. Say you have 45 minutes on a weeknight:

• 15 minutes: redo 4 or 5 old questions from blank paper, full notes.
• 20 minutes: a small timed set of new questions, mostly to feed the redo pile.
• 10 minutes: for every miss, guess and slow one, write ONE sentence naming the exact cause.

When a busy stretch hits, and it will (the holidays will eat your study plan if you let them), cut the new questions first. Protect the redo pile. That's where the score comes from.

You decide what you want MORE: the feeling of having "done" thousands of questions, or a higher score. You can't have both on a working professional's schedule.

Your challenge for tonight

Don't open a single new question. Pull 10 questions you missed or guessed on in the last month. Blank paper. Redo every one with full notes, no peeking. For each one you miss AGAIN, write one sentence on exactly what went wrong. Tomorrow, read that list. It's your study plan for the next two weeks, and it's more honest than anything you could buy.