Tips for the EA

If you google for GMAT tips and tricks for quant and verbal there are almost unlimited links out there. So in this blog post I am going to only state the top tips and tricks i found useful.

Quant:
1. Learn when number N is divisible by X :
In particular in N divisible 2, 3, ,... 9 .  This will save you time. For example N is divisible by 2 only if last digit is divisible by 2. N is divisible by 3 only if sun of all digits of  N are a multiple of 3. etc

2.  Every positive number has  positive and negative square root, however if the radical sign (square root sign) is used it means only positive root

3. is fraction a/b > c/d ??  cross multiply (a*d and c*b) and the greater product is the bigger fraction

4. If consecutive numbers are evenly spaced then average is the same value as the median

5. N! is divisible (has factors) all numbers between 1 and N

6. In counting, permutations/ combination questions alway ask are they asking for unique/distinct values or not.

Verbal:

Sentence correction:
1. Learn the idioms, these are rules of grammar and hence every sentence must comply
2. Every sentence must have a main subject and a verb corresponding to the main subject.
3. The sentence MUST be grammatically correct
4. For answer choices that are grammatically correct, we must choose the answer that makes the most logical sense (conveys what the sentence is trying to say) in the most concise manner (avoid wordiness). In general active voice is preferred over passive, remove redundant info,

Reading comprehension (RC)
Every passage in the EA has a specific purpose, the author of the passage is stating some points of view and has some views that the passage is supporting. So while reading make a map of what was being said in each paragraph in your own words and when finished reading try to loosely state what the purpose the passage was.  Each RC passage will have typically 3-4 questions so its worth taking a couple of mins to read and digest the passage.
Tip:  In EA you can skip ahead to see how many questions are there for the passage, so you can budget time accordingly

Critical Reasoning:  This is also similar along the lines of RC, do active reading and summarize the points in own words.  Typically these are single questions so you need to be efficient.

Integrated Reasoning
1. Multi-source reasoning:  Typically 1-3 screens of questions are asked,  Tip: look ahead and see how many questions are there so you can budget time.  For this question remember to look at all the tabs and note what data is presented in which tab and short summary what each tab is stating. Don't get too hung on specifics though, because you want to move onto the questions promptly
2. Table analysis:  remember you can sort the columns so used that feature.
3. Graphs:  try to summarize high level what the graphs are presenting, and do read the explanations that the EA provides for the data so that it matches your understanding
4. Two part analysis:  There is no tip i can provide since its a large variety
5. Use the calculator as a last resort,  you will need it only if two answer choice are very close. Otherwise, calculator is not needed, there is some logic that can get the answer quickly.

Overall Exam Tips:
1. Do the IR section well, that sets the tone. If you get stuck on first question (3 mins have gone by) take a guess and move on and flag it. If you have time you can try and revisit but its important to set the momentum from question 1.
2. Make sure you really pay attention to the question, sometimes we think they ask greater than x, but maybe its less than x.  Make sure that you verify that you are marking the correct choice, which may seem silly but in our time pressure rush, mistakes happen.
3. I personally like to leave 3 mins for the last question of each section, just to avoid panic, so i budget my time accordingly.
4. Final tip, remember to not panic,  if at the time you can't think of how to solve just take a guess and move on. The EA is just one of the criteria and goal is not to score perfect but hit the minimum bar set by your school of choice. 

EA Exam day

I took my EA exam on Dec 4th which was a weekday. My exam time was at 1pm and checkin time was 30 mins prior. I decided to take the day off from work so that I would not get distracted.  I also tried my best to sleep late into the morning but that did not quite work (nerves). On the morning of the test I had plenty of time at hand and I did not waste it on surfing web social media or worse checking work emails. So instead i went to the gym and worked out. Came back home and had late breakfast (light meal) and some chai tea and got ready.  The test center was 20 mins drive and I planned to leave at 12noon.

I will mention that do take your passport in addition to drivers ID, seems like they ask for both. I checked in the front desk and had to do ID verification and some other paperwork. They do provide lockers to store your phone etc. You can only take ID into the test center and rest has to be put in locker. After checking in, I took a couple of glasses of water and then used the rest room since there are no breaks during the actual test and you can't take water inside.

Your test center may vary, but my center had a standard table chair and multiple applicants in a room. You are given a noise cancelling headphones (check what your center offers) should you choose to use. Besides the computer you will be given a marker pen and a laminated pad for doing scratch work. Its a nice secure and quiet place so my testing experience was pleasant. Once you begin the tests, the screens will appear in similar format to the EA practice tests with some minor changes here and there. After you finish your test you will see the score on the screen and then you will leave the room. The checkin desk will provide you with a print out of your test score.

If you try to emulate the testing environment while practicing then test day will just feel like any other day and will calm your nerves ! 

My personal prep plan and strategy for the EA

Lets just start by first outlining my background. I am computer scientist and work as computer architect designing microprocessors. I finished my PhD in 2009 and decided to seek out an executive MBA in 2020. When I did my research I realized that some schools (specially the top ranked) required the EA exam. So toward the end of Fall 2019 i had made up my mind that I would give the EA so i could have the best choice of schools.  Given my engineering background I expected that I would do well in quant and since I worked a lot in R&D (publishing papers, patents) i expected to be very comfortable with IR material.

Reality check :)  The last time I took a course which required a timed test was back in 2003 (rest of time was Phd research/dissertation).  So now that its fall 2019, the gap was more like 15 years !  I looked at the topics and identified where i was rusty

Integrated Reasoning: Multi-source reasoning, graphical interpretation, two-part analysis, and table analysis.

Math Topics are : Properties of Integers, Fractions, Decimals, Real Numbers, Ratio and Proportion, Percents, Powers and Roots of Numbers, Descriptive Statistics, Sets, Counting Methods,  and Discrete Probability

Verbal : covers topics in Reading comprehension, Critical Reasoning and Sentence Correction.  

Sentence correction test Verb form, agreement, diction, grammar, idioms, logical predication, parallelism, and rhetorical construction.  

For IR I expected to be very comfortable with Table analysis and graphs. For Math i had to focus on Rates, Counting Methods, and discrete probability.  For Verbal I had to get upto speed with Sentence correction topics. 

I started looking at EA prep in October with the intention of giving the EA test around thanks giving. In month of October I looked at all the material and basically laid out the difference between EA and GMAT, what materials and books etc i can reuse from the GMAT and what i needed to do in addition to that for the EA. All that research has been distilled in these series of blog post! 

After getting a good understanding of the EA I started by prepping from the GMAT book. I practiced in set of 14 for quant and verbal giving myself 30 mins. My key idea was that I was always going to practice with the time limit that I would have in the real EA test. I stuck to this even when i was just practicing. I must have finished about 150 questions from GMAT for verbal and quant (i skipped geometry questions). 

In doing so i got refreshed on a lot of stuff i had forgotten or got rusty. For instance how to get roots of equations, how to do permutations and combinations, how to do basic div/multiply by pen and paper (no calculator). 

Its surprising how many mistakes one makes when under time pressure, so I knew that time pressure is the key and had to learn some logic to solving. After solving the GMAT questions I also took the live webinar offered by Booth and got some good pointers from the instructor. 

IR is a tough section to practice, I found some free IR practice questions on GMAC site and veritas but by and large there is not much out there. 

After the basic material I went through the verbal and quant lessons by magoosh. They have some useful tips specially for the quant which i took note of. In the EA since you are time constrained you can't expect to solve everything fully, you have to use some logic to find ways to do things faster or just enough to narrow down the choice (it is multiple choice questions after all).  So going through magoosh lessons helped me with some tips and strategies as well as some of my other reading. I will write another blog on tips that I used for EA. 

In November I switched from GMAT books to GMAC EA prep which has 100 questions each of IR, Verbal and Quant.  Again i would do a timed practice of doing 12 IR questions in 30 mins, 14 of verbal in 30 mins and 14 of quant in 30 mins. Initially I would just do practice on the weekend and go through Magoosh lessons during the week. I had budgeted about 45 mins during weekday and 2-3 hours on weekend. As a part of self realization I realized i am not very sharp at the end of the day so I switched to morning studies before work in 2nd week of november.  After about 50 - 60 practice questions per section in isolation and getting good in the material and accuracy (70-80% correct) I switched to doing all three section in 90 mins like the EA.  This was a big step up and my scores initially tanked !  I went through a week of doing 2-3 90 mins practice questions.  One thing this helped is that it identified that IR section is difficult to do in 30 mins. So I continued to work on IR section to reduce my time and become more efficient.  For Math i identified counting and rate problems to sometimes consume too much times so I practiced more of those (just google search for GMAT counting problems,  lots of free problems are out there).  

I had made some notes on Math and Verbal and by now I was just referring to my hand written notes for review and not looking at any other material. Its useful to make your own notes and refine them with tips and short cuts all in one place.  

On 24th-november I decided to take the first EA practice exam and I score 154 which was my target. Its only after this test did I go ahead and book an exam date which was Dec 4th. The dates run out pretty fast so book as soon as you can. This year thanksgiving was the last week of November so I used that entire week and the two weekends to set course for a concentrated effort. This was the final stretch and i wanted to collect momentum. Being thanksgiving also meant that work was kind of slow so the Dec 4th date worked out well.  I set a daily plan from Nov 24-Dec 3rd , it included 4 practice tests and days of material review, and some practice based on what I was not doing well in my tests. Doing all 4 tests was crucial since it gave me plenty of practice. 

I should mention that in my practice tests I tried to emulate the test environment,  no water food etc during test, no breaks, no phones. This helps because we do get thirsty so planning around that is important so that during test day there are no surprises. In my practice tests i did scores of 154, 156, 151, and 154.   In the EA exam i scored 155, so the practice tests are accurate dead on !     

A special mention to practice test 3,  I had run out of time on all three sections and had to guess the last 2-3 questions in each section, so that was by far my worst session but i still scored 150 which is what is required.  The key takeaway is that there maybe questions that will stump you, so focus on the timer and take a guess and move on and don't panic.  

Preparing for the Executive Assessment

Executive Assessment (EA) is a new exam that is administered by GMAC for experience and seasoned professionals who are pursuing an Executive MBA.  The EA is a new type of exam which has been devised by GMAC after getting feedback from top MBA programs and is tailored to test the candidates on the most relevant skills needed to be successful in an Executive MBA program.

So is EA the same as a GMAT.  At the surface, both GMAT and EA have the verbal and quant section. The EA in addition also has an integrated reasoning (IR) section (GMAT does not count IR for scoring).  So is EA a mini GMAT, well the answer is it is not. The EA first of all is 90 mins long with three 30 mins sections in order: IR, Verbal, Quant. The types of questions and the base material will be quite similar as GMAT but the flow and adaptive nature is different and so we must follow different study and testing strategies.

The EA has the following flow: IR section has two sub sections of 6 questions each, followed by Verbal which has two subsections of 7 questions each and finally followed by Quant which has two sub sections of 7 questions each.  Within a given section a test taker can go back and forth within a sub section, once a subsection is submitted the answers cannot be revised further. This is the major difference between GMAT and EA.  Second major difference is the importance of the IR section. The EA takes the scoring of the IR section to determine the starting difficulty level in the first subsection of the Verbal as well as first sub section of the Quant.  Note: If you do really well in the IR and score high then you will start off with high difficulty in both Verbal and Quant (higher difficulty means you are scoring higher).  So its really important to do well in the IR section because it sets the tone for the remaining sections and thus your overall EA.  GMAT does not use IR to calculate the final score, so most GMAT oriented test materials will primarily skim past the IR.

So now we know roughly what is EA and how it mainly differs from GMAT.  There are many useful things from the GMAT that we can use to prepare for the EA.  The verbal section features questions from reading comprehension, critical reasoning, and sentence correction. GMAT material for preparing for verbal is totally applicable for EA.   Quant section features data sufficiency and problem solving questions, the EA and GMAT share almost all the covered topics with the exception of Geometry which is not tested in the EA. Thus we can use all the material from GMAT quant, skipping geometry, to prepare for the EA quant portion of the test.

The most challenging aspects of the prep is how to prepare for the IR section. The key point in the IR section is that the 12 questions, are shown in 12 screens. Each screen will present some data in table, graph format or wordings and we need to typically answer 2 -4 questions. We get credit only if we answer all questions correctly on the screen, and remember I said there are 12 of them !   hence practice is key for IR and timed practice is essential.

In this blog post i will just list the set of resources i found useful for my EA prep.  One thing I will mention is that most top schools do require the EA, so its a good idea to email and ask them what kind of scores do they want to see in applications.  At the time of writing this blog, most schools want to see a score of 150. The Executive MBA is not dependent on academic credentials alone unlike the full time MBA. The exec MBA student is expected to be a mid career successful professional with high quality leadership and management experience with  minimum of 8 years of relevant experience (typical range tends to be 12-14  years). Hence the EA test is mainly to ensure that the candidate is still academically sharp but its unlikely that high EA score is going to offset lower quality of work experience.  Think of EA as a minimum filter that gets the conversation started with the admission committee.

So without further ado here are some resources that I found useful for prep. In my other blog post I will discuss my specific strategy and study plan should you desire to read on.

1) GMAT book :  Use this to get reacquainted with a lot of the topics and materials and get warmed up by solving 100-150 questions in Verbal and Quant. Will help identify areas that need further attention.
2) Magoosh :  This is an online GMAT prep site with lots of good free resources.  I downloaded the magoosh verbal and quant app and followed the free lessons. The website has an Verbal idiom e-book that I found very useful.
3) Chicago Booth:  The booth school offers free live webinar on verbal and quant. These courses are offered by a faculty member and is very useful as part of the prep.
4) GMAC EA practice : this has 100 questions in the test format. Once done with GMAT and magoosh switch to the EA practice. Costs about $150 for practice and tests. Probably the only way to practice IR is by the EA practice set.
5) GMAC EA practice tests 1-4; The real deal, a simulation of the EA test for practice. Use this once you have covered most of material and finished the practice set.