Your Score Is ONE Piece of Your Application
It's 10:47 on a Tuesday night. You just finished your fifth Executive Assessment practice test this month. Your score went up two points. Meanwhile, your essay document, the one titled "Why EMBA," has exactly one sentence in it. That sentence has been sitting there for three weeks.
Here's the blunt verdict: that is a TERRIBLE trade. You're polishing the one piece of your application that is probably already good enough, while the pieces that tell an admissions committee who you ARE sit blank.
Your score matters. But it is ONE piece of your application, not the whole thing. Let's talk about how to tell when that piece is done, and where your hours should go once it is.
First, know what the score actually measures
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, 12 questions where you pull answers out of charts, tables and short texts.
- Verbal Reasoning, 14 questions: Sentence Correction (fixing grammar and meaning), Critical Reasoning (picking apart short arguments) and Reading Comprehension (answering questions about a passage).
- Quantitative Reasoning, 14 questions: Problem Solving (regular multiple choice math) and Data Sufficiency (deciding whether the facts you're given are enough to answer a question).
Each section is scored 0 to 20, your total runs from 100 to 200, and all three sections count the same. The test adapts section by section, so how you perform shapes the questions you see. There's no essay. You can take it at a test center or online at home. GMAC lays out the full structure and scoring if you want every detail.
Now notice what is NOT on that list. Your leadership. Your career story. Why this program. Why now. The test can't measure any of that. Your essays, your résumé, your recommenders and your interview do.
How to tell when your score is good enough
Stop reading and answer this: what is your target score, and WHERE did that number come from? Don't read another word until you have an answer.
If your answer is "higher" or "as high as possible," you don't have a target. You have a treadmill. A real target comes from the programs you're applying to. Look at what each one publishes about its class, ask the admissions team what they look for, and set a number BEFORE you start training. If you skipped that step, go back and pick a target score, a REAL one.
Then remember what an average actually means. If a program says its students averaged a certain score, some of them scored above it, and some of them scored BELOW it. Let that sink in. Your score doesn't have to beat the average to be competitive. It has to land in the range where the rest of your application can do its job.
So here's the check. If your official score, or your recent practice scores taken under real test conditions, sits in that range, your score piece is probably done. If it's well below, keep training. But train on WHY you're missing questions, not by taking more tests.
The forced choice
What's MORE valuable to your application: two extra points on the EA, or an essay that makes an admissions reader want to meet you?
You already know the answer. And I'll bet that if you add up your hours from the last month, your practice tests got MORE of them than your essays did. Go check. Write both numbers down on paper.
Practice tests are measuring devices. They tell you roughly where you are. They don't make you better, and they definitely don't write your essays. Once the measurement says you've hit your number, taking another one is like a runner who already made the qualifying time running the same time trial over and over instead of training for the actual race.
Why do people do this? Because the test feels safe. It has right answers. Essays don't. Writing about why you want this degree and what you'll do with it is HARD thinking, so it's tempting to hide in the thing with an answer key. Don't.
Do the math on your own calendar
You're working full time. Your free hours are limited, so where they go is a real decision. Try this one the way you'd see it in the Quant section: a Problem Solving question with five answer choices.
Look at the order in that problem. The essays came off the top FIRST. Test prep got what was left. Once your score is in range, that's the order your real calendar should run in too.
5 mistakes I watch people make every week
Retaking to chase a few points. Your score is already in range, but you book again "just to see." With nothing new in how you prepare, you're likely to land in the same neighborhood and burn weeks doing it.
INSTEAD: If you're in range, stop. If you're not, name the exact question types you're missing and WHY before you book another date.
Leaving the essays for the last week. Good essays need a rough draft, a rest, and a rewrite. That takes calendar time, not just hours.
INSTEAD: Write an ugly first draft now. Ugly is fine. Then put two or three short writing sessions on your calendar every week.
Asking recommenders at the last minute. Your recommenders are busy professionals too. A rushed letter is usually a vague one.
INSTEAD: Ask early, and hand them a short list of specific projects and results you'd like them to speak to.
Rushing the test to hit a deadline. Cramming the EA into the last two weeks before an application is due puts your score AND your essays at risk. Here's why rushing the EA to make a deadline is a TERRIBLE IDEA.
INSTEAD: Book the test date, then build backward, with your essay time blocked out AFTER the test and well before the deadline.
Treating the score as a shield. Thinking a big number will cover for a thin essay or a weak résumé. It won't. Each piece answers a different question about you.
INSTEAD: Treat every piece as its own job with its own deadline. When one is done, move to the next.
None of this means the test doesn't matter. It does. The EA will give you the score you EARN, and you can train for it. But training has a finish line, and once you cross it, more training is just avoidance with a stopwatch.
Your challenge for today
Before you open another practice test, grab a sheet of paper and write two numbers side by side: your target score and your best recent score taken under real conditions.
If the second number is in range of the first, open your essay document right now and write 200 words. Badly. You can fix bad words. You can't fix a blank page.
If it isn't in range, write down the three question types you miss most and one specific reason for each. "I don't know" is not allowed.
Either way, you're done measuring for today. Go build the rest of the puzzle.
