**Warning: During this article, I’m going to stop you periodically and ask you to perform some basic math and logic ‘tasks.’ The work that you do on earlier tasks WILL impact your understanding of later tasks.** 

During the Quant section of the GMAT, you’ll be asked to deal with averages on a few questions - sometimes you’ll be asked to calculate an average or an average speed, sometimes you’ll be given an average and asked to figure out something else.  You  will probably handle all of those questions just fine, but you would be amazed how many GMATers mis-apply the “concept” of averages when deciding on their ‘goals’ for Test Day and their application plans.

Your first task is pretty straight-forward…

Task #1: Do you know how to calculate an average? Right now, in the simplest way possible, describe how to calculate an average…

If you’re thinking something along the lines of “the sum of the terms divided by the number of terms”, then you are correct. This is essential information and is the basis for ALL averages that you will perform on the GMAT and beyond.

Task #2: If you’re told that the average of 3 numbers is 100, then can you come up with a few different examples of what those 3 numbers COULD be? With an average of 100, does that mean that all 3 numbers have to be 100?

There are many different examples that you could come up with (especially since I didn’t say that the numbers had to be integers and I didn’t say that they had to be positive). Here are some examples:

100, 100, 100

99, 100, 101

.1, .9, 299

0, 100, 200

0, 0, 300

-100, -100, 500

Etc.

My guess is that you handled these first two tasks with ease. Now let’s see what you think about these next concepts…

Task #3: How much time should you spend on EACH GMAT Quant question? And why do you THINK that…?

Many Test Takers WANT to spend less than 2 minutes per Quant question, but have you ever really stopped to think about WHY they think that?

You have 75 minutes to answer 37 Quant questions on Test Day, so assuming that you use the entire 75 minutes and answer all of the questions, the AVERAGE amount of time that you will spend per question is a little over 2 minutes. But does that mean that you should spend 2 minutes on EACH question?

Certain Quant questions can be answered relatively quickly (in under 30 seconds), while others are wordy and complex – these questions will require 3 minutes of your time (and that’s if you KNOW what you’re doing. If you don’t know what you’re doing, then these questions will take you 5 minutes each AND you’ll end up getting them wrong anyway).

Thus, the answer to that prior question is NOT “less than 2 minutes per question.” The correct answer to the question in Task #3 is “whatever amount of time is necessary for me to answer the question in the most efficient way possible, without wasting time or making any silly mistakes. Trying to answer every question in under 2 minutes is a silly idea and I’m not in the habit of doing silly things.”

That last part is difficult for many Test Takers to accept – that THEY are ultimately responsible for their own efficiency and accuracy. Part of your GMAT training MUST involve finding those efficiencies and learning to do work in an organized, strategic fashion.

At a certain point in this grand process, you have to decide that your Official GMAT score is competitive enough for you to be ‘done’ with the Test, then you have to choose your Schools and get to work on your applications.

Task #4: If Harvard’s incoming MBA class last year had an average GMAT score of 720, then does that mean that everyone who got accepted had a 720? Does that mean that you MUST have a minimum of 720 just to apply? Does that mean that if you have a minimum of 720, then you will get in?

At this point, the prior work that you’ve done throughout this blog post should be ‘kicking in’ – with an average of 720, some invitees clearly scored higher than 720, some scored 720 exactly and others scored less than 720… So the answer to ALL 3 of those questions in Task #4 is NO. Hundreds of people got into Harvard last year with scores that were BELOW AVERAGE FOR HARVARD.

Let THAT fact ‘sink in’ for a moment… You DON’T necessarily need to hit that average score to get an acceptance letter. YES, you still need a strong OVERALL application and YES, a higher GMAT score is better for you than a lower one, and if you’re after scholarship money, then you might need a higher GMAT score…but having a score that is slightly ‘below average’ for a given School/Program will not necessarily keep you out of consideration.

This is all meant to say that you should strive for excellence in your studies and put together the best performance possible. If your score is a little lower than you want it to be though, then you still have a chance at your dream School. The averages say so!

GMAT assassins aren’t born, they’re made,