GRE Anxiety Mantra – How to cope up with GRE Anxiety

GRE is an examination critical to shaping your future life and hence anxiety for this exam is a common phenomenon. However, letting this anxiety overtaking you completely can have a negative impact on your performance. Therefore, it is essential that you understand the causes of this anxiety and find ways to overcome it. Remember, taking an exam is not a matter of life and death; it is just about the feeling that you’ve proved your abilities! Instead of thinking that ‘you HAVE to take your GRE’, think that ‘you WANT to take the GRE’- that is the key to self motivation!

Skill Maestro suggests some ways that can help you cope up with your anxiety levels.

1.  Figure out the Root Cause

Understand the root cause of your stress. Is your anxiety arising from inadequate preparation? If it is so, you must fully prepare yourself first. It will definitely take time for getting fully equipped. Give 6-7 hours daily for your prep.  When your prep is adequate, it fuels up your confidence.

2. Plug in the Loopholes

It is always a good idea to focus on your loopholes. Which are those areas where you are facing troubles? Plug them in. This can prove to be very effective rather than just taking a list of endless questions without evaluating your weaknesses. When you plug in your weaknesses, your confidence (and your score) drastically improves.

3. Leave Pestering Areas 

If still weakness in certain areas persists (even after devoting adequate time), do not waste much time chasing those areas incessantly. For example, if you feel your critical reasoning questions are not gaining much improvement even after more than adequate devotion of time and practice, you may want to focus on other areas than just be bogged down with it. As it is, critical reasoning questions carry little weight on the exam. So weigh you pros and cons wisely. There is no point being alarmed by certain areas which just aren’t improving as it may have a chain effect and may negatively impact your performance on other areas of the test too, which is certainly an unnecessary cost that you are paying.

4. Remember that ‘A little progress everyday adds up to big results’ 

It has been proven by cognitive psychology that daily practice leads to better retention of memory than a prolonged one shot study. Thus, it is important that you study bit by bit daily to add up to big results rather than attempting to do things in one shot. This is effective not only to reduce your anxiety levels, but also improving your score.

5. Do not Compare

Stop comparing your results with your peers, it just fuels up your anxiety levels and puts you under performance pressure. Studies show that performance pressures are a deterrent to optimum performance.

6. Stop Painting that too Big a Picture

While taking the actual/practice tests, do not take questions with the attitude ‘I want to score a really high score’, instead face the questions with the attitude ‘I need to answer this question correctly and carefully’. Take care of the small things and the big things will take care of themselves.

7. Biological Clock

Setting your biological clock is an effective strategy to boost your performance. Take practice tests on the time slot when your actual test is scheduled so that your mind becomes agile during those hours of the day. This strategy can be a great confidence booster.

It is not a big deal to crack GRE if you have the iron will to manage your anxiety levels. More than half the candidates on any exam are not able to score up to their abilities, just because they do not know how to manage stress levels. You are not among those people anymore. Now that you have the mantra to manage the anxiety, go ace your GRE!

About Skill Maestro

At Skill Maestro, We guide prospective students about the entire application process as well as suitable universities as per their profile/test scores. We have consulted dozens of prospective students for MIS across the globe. We have a physical presence in Indore where we also help students prepare for GRE, GMAT & SAT

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