Switching Tests Won't Fix a STUCK Score

By EMPOWERea on October 17, 2023

Here is a scene I watch play out every week. Say you have taken three Executive Assessment practice tests, and your score lands in the same narrow band every time. At midnight you find a forum thread where somebody swears the other test "suits people like you better." By 1 a.m. you are planning a whole new prep schedule for a whole new exam.

Stop. Switching tests because your score is STUCK is a TERRIBLE IDEA. The other test is not the problem. The problem is that YOU are coming along for the ride. Your habits pack themselves into your bag and walk right through the next door with you. The good news is that habits are trainable, and they are fixable in the next few weeks if you do the work.

A person walks out of one doorway and into a second doorway, hunched under the same heavy backpack the whole way. — New door, same backpack.

The test changes. Your pencil does not.

Quick ground rules on the test you are already taking. The Executive Assessment (the EA) is a 90 minute exam from GMAC, the group that also makes the GMAT, and it is built for Executive MBA programs. It has three sections of 30 minutes each:

Integrated Reasoning (IR): 12 questions that make you pull facts out of tables, charts and short texts and combine them.
Verbal Reasoning: 14 questions, a mix of Sentence Correction (fix the grammar), Critical Reasoning (pick apart a short argument) and Reading Comprehension (answer questions about a passage).
Quantitative Reasoning: 14 questions, a mix of Problem Solving (regular multiple choice math) and Data Sufficiency (decide whether you have ENOUGH information to answer, not what the answer is).

Each section is scored 0 to 20, the total runs from 100 to 200, and all three sections count the same. The test is adaptive section by section, which means the difficulty adjusts based on how you are doing within each section. There is no essay.

Now the wager. I'll bet that if you pulled out the scratch paper from your last practice test right now, you would find less than a page of notes for an entire Quant section. Go look. I'll wait.

Before you read another word, name THREE reasons a score could stay flat across three tests. Not "I'm bad at math." Not "I'm a bad test taker." Real causes you could point to on your scratch paper. You are going to lead teams. You are not allowed to have "no idea."

5 habits that will follow you to ANY test

Doing the work in your head. You are smart. You run budgets and meetings in your head all day. So you skip the notes, you re-read the question three times, and you drop a negative sign on question 9. That is pride, and pride is the most common ceiling I see.
INSTEAD: Write down every given fact, every step and every answer you eliminate. Every question, every time, even the "easy" ones. Most of all the easy ones.
Solving every Quant question like it is a math class. The EA Quant section is not a math test. It is a thinking test that uses math as the measuring stick. People who grind the algebra on every question run slow and fall for traps.
INSTEAD: When a question has variables, TEST VALUES. Plug in real numbers and watch what happens. Try this one.
Try it
Is x greater than 1?
(1) x² > x
(2) x > 0
1. Statement (1) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (2) alone is not sufficient.
2. Statement (2) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (1) alone is not sufficient.
3. BOTH statements TOGETHER are sufficient, but NEITHER statement ALONE is sufficient.
4. EACH statement ALONE is sufficient.
5. Statements (1) and (2) TOGETHER are NOT sufficient.
Show the answer
Statement (1) alone. Test x = 2. Is 4 > 2? Yes, so 2 is allowed. Is 2 greater than 1? YES. Now test x = −1. Is 1 > −1? Yes, so −1 is allowed too. Is −1 greater than 1? NO. One yes and one no means not sufficient. Cross off A and D on your pad.
Statement (2) alone. Test x = 2: allowed, and the answer is YES. Test x = 1/2: it is positive, so it is allowed, but 1/2 is not greater than 1, so NO. Not sufficient. Cross off B.
Together. Now x must be positive AND x² must be bigger than x. Try x = 1/2: is 1/4 > 1/2? No, so 1/2 is no longer allowed. Try x = 1: is 1 > 1? No, not allowed either. Since x is positive, you can safely divide both sides of x² > x by x, which gives x > 1. Every allowed number gives YES. Sufficient. The answer is C.
The trap: Most people look at statement (1), divide both sides by x in their head, get x > 1 and pick A. But you can only divide that way when you KNOW x is positive, and statement (1) never tells you that. Testing x = −1 on paper catches it in ten seconds.
Taking practice test after practice test. A practice test is a measuring device. It tells you roughly where you are. It does NOT make you better, any more than stepping on a scale makes you lose weight. Three tests in two weeks with no deep review is like training for a marathon by timing yourself on the same run over and over and never changing how you run.
INSTEAD: One full practice test per week at most. Spend more time reviewing it than you spent taking it. Redo every miss with full notes, and redo it again a week later. Being the commander of a few hundred questions beats being an acquaintance of a few thousand.
Chasing the hardest questions. You spend your study nights on the nastiest problems you can find, while on your practice tests you are dropping questions you KNEW how to do. Those gettable questions are where your missing points live.
INSTEAD: Sort your misses into two piles: "I could not do this" and "I could have done this." I'll bet the second pile is BIGGER. Train that pile first. Here is the kind of question people miss without ever noticing.
Try it
A store raises the price of a jacket by 20%, then cuts the new price by 20%. The final price is $96. What was the original price?
1. $80
2. $96
3. $100
4. $104
5. $120
Show the answer
TEST THE ANSWERS. The choices are real numbers, so try them instead of setting up an equation. Start with C, since it sits in the middle and 100 is easy to work with.
Raise $100 by 20%: 20% of 100 is 20, so the price becomes $120.
Cut $120 by 20%: 20% of 120 is 24, and 120 minus 24 is $96.
That matches the final price. The answer is C.
The trap: B. It feels like "up 20%, down 20%" should land you back where you started, so the original must be $96. Check it on paper: $96 raised 20% is $115.20, and cut 20% is $92.16. Not $96. The cut is 20% of a BIGGER number, so you end up lower than you started. Rushing in your head is exactly how a "could have done this" question turns into a miss.
Blaming the clock. "I just need to be faster." No. A pacing problem is a symptom, never the disease. Each EA section gives you 30 minutes. That is a little over 2 minutes per question in Quant and Verbal, and 2.5 minutes per question in IR. That is an AVERAGE, not a rule for every question. You run out of time because you re-read, because you work in your head, and because you take the long route.
INSTEAD: On your next practice section, mark every question that took way too long. Then figure out WHY for each one. Fix the cause and the clock fixes itself.

Two sheets of scratch paper side by side, one almost blank with a single stray mark, the other covered in neat, organized rows of notes. — Which sheet came from a stuck score?

When a switch actually makes sense

There ARE good reasons to pick one test over the other. Your target programs might prefer one. One format might fit your schedule better. Those are decisions about FIT, and you should make them by checking what each of your programs accepts.

"My score won't move" is not a fit reason. It is an escape reason. And here is the forced choice: what do you want MORE, a fresh start that feels good for a week, or a higher score? If you switch with the same habits, you will spend a month learning a new test and then get stuck again, just in a new place. If you fix the habits first, the fixes work on ANY test. Then you can choose the test on its merits, with a clear head.

Also remember how the EA is built. All three sections count the same. If you have been treating IR as the section you "get through" while you pour your energy into Quant, that is points sitting on the table on the test you already know.

Your move, today

Pull up your most recent practice test tonight. Not a new one. The old one. For every question you missed, write one cause next to it: no notes, did it in my head, took the long way, fell for a trap, or truly did not know it. Then pick the three misses from the "could have done this" pile and redo them from scratch with full notes on paper, testing values or testing the answers wherever you can.

If that list of causes is mostly about HOW you worked and not WHAT you knew, you already have your answer. You do not need a new test. You need new habits, and you can start building them before you go to bed.

Sources

GMAC: Executive Assessment structure, question counts and scoring