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.
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.
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