90 Minutes Is SHORT. Train Like It Isn't.

Here's a scene I see all the time. Say you sit down for a practice Executive Assessment on a Saturday morning. Coffee in hand, laptop open. The first 30 minutes feel GREAT. You're reading cleanly, taking notes, moving along. Then somewhere around minute 65, something shifts. You read a question. You read it again. You pick an answer because it "looks right." You finish, see your score and think, "How did THAT happen? It's only 90 minutes."

That word "only" is the problem.

Ninety minutes sounds like a long lunch meeting. You do harder things than that at work every week. So you train for it like a lunch meeting. A 15-minute set on your phone before bed. A few questions on the train. Then on Test Day you ask your brain for 90 straight minutes of hard, focused thinking. No email. No coffee refill. No one to ask. Your brain hasn't done that in years. Of course the last section feels rough.

The last 30 minutes count EXACTLY as much as the first 30

Here's how the test is built right now. The Executive Assessment (the EA) is made by GMAC, the same group behind the GMAT, and it's built for Executive MBA programs. It runs 90 minutes, split into three 30-minute sections:

• Integrated Reasoning: 12 questions that make you read charts, tables and short passages, and pull facts from more than one source.
• Verbal Reasoning: 14 questions mixing Sentence Correction (fix the grammar), Critical Reasoning (pick apart an argument) and Reading Comprehension (answer questions about a passage).
• Quantitative Reasoning: 14 questions mixing Problem Solving (regular multiple choice math) and Data Sufficiency (more on that below).

Each section is scored from 0 to 20, and your total runs from 100 to 200. All three sections are weighted the same. It's all on GMAC's assessment structure page.

Stop and think about what that means. The section you face LAST is worth just as much as the one you faced first, when you were fresh. A tired final section doesn't cost you "a little." It puts a full third of your score at risk.

The EA is also adaptive section by section. That means the test adjusts the difficulty you see based on how you're doing. So a sloppy stretch isn't just a few lost points. It shapes the rest of that section.

Why 90 minutes is SHORT

Do the math. Verbal and Quant each give you 14 questions in 30 minutes. That's a little over 2 minutes per question. Integrated Reasoning gives you 12 in 30, so 2.5 minutes each. That's enough time to read carefully, take notes and do the work. It is NOT enough time to waste.

Now say you get tired and start re-reading every question for an extra 10 seconds. There are 40 questions in total. That's 400 seconds, or 6 minutes and 40 seconds, gone. That's nearly a quarter of a section spent reading words you already read. That isn't a pacing problem. Pacing problems are symptoms. The disease is what you're DOING when you're tired.

Tired isn't a feeling. It's a set of habits.

When someone tells me their last section "fell apart," I ask what they actually did differently. "I was tired" is not an answer. As a future MBA, you are not allowed to have "no idea." Fatigue shows up as specific habits you can see:

• You re-read the question two or three times.
• You stop writing things down and start doing math in your head.
• You grab the first answer choice that seems close.
• You skip testing values because it "feels like" extra work.

Every one of those is a choice. Choices can be trained. Here's what that looks like on one question, the kind that's easy at minute 5 and deadly at minute 85.

5 ways people train for a "short" test (and what to do INSTEAD)

1. Only studying in tiny bursts. Ten questions here, fifteen there. That builds knowledge, not stamina. It's training for a 90-minute event with sprints.
   INSTEAD: At least once a week, block 90 straight minutes and do three 30-minute timed sets back to back. No phone. No pausing. Treat it like a client meeting you can't move.
2. Cramming practice tests to "build endurance." A full practice test is a measuring device. It tells you roughly where you are. It doesn't make you better.
   INSTEAD: One full practice test per week, max. The days between are for reviewing what went wrong and redoing those questions until the right process is automatic.
3. Dropping your notes when you get tired. This is the big one. Some people think they're "smart enough" to skip notes late in the test. That's pride, and pride is expensive.
   INSTEAD: Your notes on question 40 should look like your notes on question 1. Write the question, write the values you test, cross off answers on paper. Notes keep a tired brain honest.
4. Practicing at the wrong time of day. If you test at 9 in the morning but only practice at 10 at night after a full workday, you're training a different brain.
   INSTEAD: Do your full 90-minute runs at the same time of day as your real appointment.
5. Ignoring the room. Since spring 2020 you can take the EA online at home, or you can go to a test center. Either way, a new setting drains focus.
   INSTEAD: Testing at home? Practice at that same desk, in that same chair, with that same quiet. Going to a center? Practice somewhere that isn't your couch. And plan the whole day, because Test Day starts the night before.

Your challenge for this week

Open your calendar right now. Block 90 minutes this week at the time of day you plan to test. Do three 30-minute timed sets back to back. When you finish, DON'T look at the score first. Put your notes from the first set next to your notes from the last set.

I'll bet the last page is thinner. Count the questions where you wrote almost nothing. Then redo every one of them WITH full notes, and watch how many you get right. That's your endurance gap, in ink. Close it before Test Day does it for you.