This is the realest advice you will ever hear about the GMAT. The single biggest determinant of how easy it is going to be for you to prepare for the GMAT is what you did up until you were 15 years of age. What you did from secondary school—maybe from the time you were 9 or 10 years old, maybe even earlier—up to 14 or 15 years of age is the single biggest determinant of how easy it is going to be for you to study for the GMAT and hit the 90th percentile score. That is a fact. Anybody who tells you otherwise is not telling you the truth or they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Key Takeaways
- 90th percentile means you beat 90% of people taking the test—90% will never achieve this score
- Educational background before age 15 is the single biggest factor determining GMAT difficulty
- Minimum 6 months from average score to 90th percentile—anyone promising faster is misleading you
- Skills learned as a child are 100x more effective than skills acquired as an adult
- Progress is non-linear—there are no hacks, shortcuts, or guaranteed formulas that work
- You’re competing against self-selected candidates with undergraduate degrees, many with strong quant/verbal backgrounds
What Does 90th Percentile Really Mean?
When you start to prepare, like everybody else, you think: I want to achieve the 90th percentile score. You think only about yourself and the plan you need to make to study to get to the 90th percentile.
But I encourage you to think of the following:
90% of people will never achieve the 90th percentile score. That’s what it means.
This test is scored on a bell curve. For you to achieve a certain score, you have to become better than 90% of people who are taking this test. This is extremely challenging. It is not easy when you consider the type of people who are taking this test.
In the past, the 90th percentile was a 700. Now with the GMAT Focus Edition, it’s a 645 or 655. That is the gold standard, the coveted score.
Why Do We Even Take This Test?
The GMAT is just one of the barriers to achieving admission into a top business school. Why do you want to go to a top business school? Because it provides access to a better career and more money, more income throughout your life. Perhaps something more meaningful, more fulfilling, something with more leadership, more responsibility—things that people want.
There is value to taking an MBA that is going to enhance your career, make your life better. Especially if you go to one of the top schools, it opens a lot of doors and expands your network. It’s a force multiplier for who you really are as a professional. There is absolute value in pursuing an MBA and getting it from a top school.
The Network Is the Real Value
The main value that you get out of an MBA is the network. The people you know in your surroundings. We are the average of the five people we surround ourselves with. You want to surround yourself by people who are better than you, and they form your network. That is going to enhance your life. That is the main value—the network.
This still exists today, even in the age of AI and rapid change.
How Schools Distinguish Between Candidates
A lot of people compete for admission to these schools. How do schools distinguish between candidates?
Based on:
- Your work experience
- Your educational background and what you’ve done in your life
- How interesting your profile is
- How good of a communicator you are
- Do you have a track record for progress?
- Do you learn from your mistakes?
- Are you able to impact others?
- Do you have the values that the school has?
Another requirement they look for, which brings us to the GMAT, is your intellectual abilities. What are the quantitative, verbal, and logical reasoning skills that you’ve built throughout your life?
This is important because think about why you actually take this degree and what you do after you finish. You work in a company where you’re going to assume a position of leadership where there’s a lot of information, and this information changes really fast, especially in this day and age. They’re looking for someone who’s able to handle that course load. They want to get the best students. That is why you take this test.
The Brutal Truth: Skills Learned as a Child vs. as an Adult
Whatever it is that you do as a child—up to adolescence—matters a hundred times more than what you do as an adult. I’m using this number to emphasize the point. Whatever effort you put in as a child, the return is at least a hundred times larger than as an adult.
I’m talking both qualitatively and quantitatively.
The return you get on the effort you put in as a child—the output and how good you are at a certain skill, how fast you are at mental math—is at least 100 times larger. But also qualitatively, in the sense of what you’re able to derive from that skill in terms of innovation and creative problem-solving.
Whatever it is that you master as a child, the time you put in is at least 100 times more effective than what you do as an adult.
This matters because you’re going to prepare for the GMAT as an adult.
Realistic Timelines: The Truth Nobody Tells You
Let’s say you are 25 years of age. You prepare for two to three weeks just to familiarize yourself with the structure of the exam. Then you take the first mock test and you score around an average score—555, 545.
If you want to achieve the 90th percentile score, it is best case scenario going to take you six months. Best case scenario. Usually it’s going to take a lot more.
Anybody who tells you otherwise—nonsense.
If you don’t believe that, then you’re more likely to get scammed, especially if you’re feeling under a lot of pressure. You feel like: I have to apply by September and now it’s May. Someone tells you it’s guaranteed—finish my platform and you will achieve that score. But then you’ll never be able to finish that platform because there’s just so much content. And even if you finish that content, you will not achieve that score in two to three months. Extremely unlikely.
Versus someone who tells you: You know what, this is going to take you at least six months, maybe eight months, maybe a little bit more. And the results are not guaranteed.
The Further You Are, the Less Likely You’ll Reach 90th Percentile
The further away you are from a 90th percentile score, number one, the longer it is going to take you to study to hopefully achieve the 90th percentile score. But number two, the less likely it is that you will achieve that score.
If you achieve a score on your first mock test of 455, 465, or 485, it is extremely unlikely that you will achieve the 90th percentile score in less than a year, maybe a little bit more even. But it is also extremely unlikely for you to achieve that score. It’s just very difficult for you to arrive at that point.
It is not about innate ability that is in your DNA. It is about what you did or didn’t do in your childhood that matters more.
If you weren’t someone who performed the tasks or acquired and rehearsed and mastered the skills that are assessed on the GMAT—quantitative reasoning, verbal reasoning, using principles we learned when we were relatively young—if you haven’t mastered those skills at that critical stage in your life, it’s going to be so difficult for you to put in the time.
Be Smart: Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
If you take this advice and you understand that it’s going to be a very difficult task, it’s going to take you a lot of time, and it’s unlikely that you may achieve that score—if you accept it—then you’ll be smart as follows:
You’ll think: Okay, an MBA is a very valuable career option. This is something that is valuable. I want to pursue this career, but my GMAT score is just not good enough.
What you do in this case is put a realistic plan. If you’re 25 years of age, you really have a window on average of two to three years, up to maybe four years, to do everything that is required to actually finish the GMAT, do your essays, maybe build your profile, improve your work experience a little bit, and then apply.
You have that window, but you need to be smart about that window given what I told you about the GMAT.
What you would do is put the plan and begin to prepare, and then say: This is one track that I’m going to pursue to enhance my career. But there are other tracks.
Have plans B and C as far as improving your career. Don’t just put all those eggs in one basket. Don’t obsess over the MBA and don’t obsess over the GMAT.
Why GMAT Quant Is So Hard
Let me explain why it’s so difficult to improve and achieve the 90th percentile unless you put in an excruciating effort over time.
Remember that this is a timed test. Whatever you have to do needs to fit in, on average, a two-minute window, which is really fast. It’s as fast as having a conversation in real time with someone.
An Example Problem
When I look at a quant question, I want to remind you that I do not have any unique, exceptional mathematical talent. I’m relatively good at math, mainly because I put in the time when I was a kid due to the upbringing that I had. I acquired this skill.
Mathematical talent that is unique, that is exceptional, is very rare. What I will show you is what I would do as a consequence of what I did when I was a kid.
For example, if I’m reading a question about a tank that is full to three-quarters, and then they add some volume and now it’s 80% full:
In my mind immediately, I know that three-quarters is 75%. Then I keep reading and I say: Okay, they put in some volume, and now this volume is 80%. Four over five is 80%. That conversion is there. It’s accessible. It’s just floating around in my mind because I drilled it so many times in the past.
It’s very much like learning a language. The words just linger around in your mind waiting to be used. We just don’t even know where the words come from. We just kind of know what the topic is, and the ideas just flow. The ideas flow as a consequence and as a function of their ease—how assimilated these ideas are. These are drills you do as a kid.
When I’m reading this, I say: Three over four, that’s 75%. Four over five, that’s 80%. That’s 5%, and this is what was added. What is the total capacity? Multiply by 20: 80,000. And it happens like this.
Multiple Solution Paths
Another way to do it is to write down an equation: 4,000 plus three over four x. Or you say 4,000 plus four over five x minus three over four x equals something, and then you solve for x.
What you realize is that there are a lot of different ways to solve quant problems. I think that’s something you’ve faced when you’re solving quant. You ask yourself: But how do I solve this problem?
It’s very important to do well on quant to be able to derive a lot of different solutions on your own. That is a process that you acquire. That is a skill that you acquire in a very non-linear fashion.
It is a function of acquiring a lot of skills that are related to the basics of mental math, linear equations, adding fractions, converting between fractions and decimals, and being able to understand words. Then as you read those words, you write them down as an expression or as an equation. But then you have enough experience and intuition—mathematical intuition—to know that what you wrote down is actually correct.
That intuition, that appreciation of whether this thing is true, is something that takes a lot of years to build. And the time that you spend as a child matters a lot more.
Why Time Pressure Is Brutal
I think that is something you probably have faced if you struggle with quant. You think: I can solve this if I have five minutes or 10 minutes, but then something happens and I cannot really think fast enough under time.
Well, obviously you can’t think fast enough because these are not skills that you have acquired or assimilated.
What happens is that you don’t have the confidence as you’re solving under time to use a particular skill, number one. Or you won’t even have enough time to actually summon it.
Remember the example I gave you earlier where I said three over four, that’s 75%, then you have 80%, that’s 5%, and if 5% is 4,000, the whole thing is times 20. Why? Because 5% represents 1 over 20.
The reason is that that particular code I’ve used so many times in the past that it’s just there as a tool or a skill set that is ready to pounce on a context that is familiar, related to pattern recognition.
These are skills that take a lot of time to build. You need to put in a lot of time to actually build them.
Why GMAT Verbal Is So Hard
Verbal is very difficult, and it’s very much similar to quant. You need to ask yourself: How do you understand when you’re reading something? How are you able to actually solve a problem?
It’s just based on retrieval and matching whatever it is that you read with whatever already exists in your memory.
The Reading Comprehension Challenge
In the test they tell you that prior knowledge of a passage or a text is not required to answer it, which is true, but it’s a little bit misleading.
If you’ve never read in your life something about biology, would you expect that you can understand it as well as someone who studied biology or who read about biology?
When you’re reading, you understand when you parse the words, you decode, you understand what they mean. This has to be almost instantaneous. If you have that problem or that lag—maybe you’re a non-native English speaker—there’s a lag there which is a substantial lag.
What you need to do is match it to some kind of a structure that you’ve already acquired in the past. When it’s matched, either it fully matches or there’s a little tweak that you have to do based on reading and re-reading. Then you ultimately arrive at that understanding. This is basically the cycle of understanding.
The conclusion is: Obviously if there’s vocabulary that you don’t understand, that also introduces a lag. You have to go back and you have to reread again, and you have to derive things from context. That is why reading comprehension, critical reading, or verbal is very difficult. If you haven’t had that reading developed at that age in your life, you’re going to struggle because you need to spend the time. You need to spend the time to develop that skill.
That time that you didn’t spend as a kid, you’re going to have to spend now as an adult. And I don’t have to tell you that as an adult we don’t learn as fast. We’re not as fluid anymore. These are the facts of life.
How to Improve Reading: Volume and Context
The only way to improve that reading is to read a lot. To read a lot—not the Time Magazine, not the Economist, not the New York Times—but to read passages structured specifically for this type of test.
This is to improve that ability, and that is the fastest way to expose yourself to a lot of different contexts. I’m not only talking about the context or the theme—humanities, sciences, history, law, etc.—which is absolutely essential. That is the only way that you’ll be able to process that information fast enough and understand what are the factors that are at play.
The Clinical Trial Example
Let me explain. Imagine that you’re reading about a clinical trial that is testing a new medicine. The conclusion is that because these trials were successful, this medicine is going to be a success and it’s going to help a lot of people.
If you’re someone who understands or appreciates this context well enough, you’ll immediately think: But wait a minute, will it have very serious side effects? Because if the side effects are worse, then what is the point?
That is a trade-off that you are able to immediately consider when you’re reading this context. The only way that you are able to recognize it is because you’ve encountered it sometime in the past and you’ve engaged in these kinds of debates throughout your life. That is what allows you to understand and appreciate these problems quickly.
What does that mean? There is no hack. There is no hack or a cheat sheet or a trick that you’re going to learn in two months that is going to move you from 50th percentile to 90th percentile. None.
The only thing that is going to create that move is to read a lot of these texts, solve a lot of these problems, and in the process, you improve your ability to process the English language and you expose yourself to a lot of contexts that allow you to understand what you’re reading and compare it to something that you’ve already read that lingers around somewhere in your memory. Then you think: Aha, this is what this means. And then you’ll be able to make some logical conclusions.
Again, the difficulty is that you have to do this in on average two minutes per question. That is why it’s extremely difficult.
Why Linear Paths and Guarantees Don’t Work
You’re trying to teach—in essence, to brainwash yourself—to teach your unconscious how to operate in a different manner using tools that you have to acquire. Otherwise, you won’t be fast enough to actually do it in the test. It has to be almost unconscious.
Very much like language, we only communicate in real time because we’ve acquired the language. Otherwise we couldn’t communicate in real time. That is what you have to do, and it requires a lot of volume in order that you teach your unconscious mind how to operate under time conditions in a more accurate fashion.
That process is not linear. It doesn’t work the same for everybody. It’s not a clear formula where if I put in 10 hours, this is the result.
We have the inclination or the feeling that we can perform this kind of analysis on other products that we’ve bought or that we use. For example, if I pay this much in ad spend, I expect this many views. It doesn’t work that way.
This is something that is extremely human, and it requires a lot of time.
The Triathlon Analogy
I’m going to give you an analogy. Imagine that you’re going to run a triathlon—swim, run, bike. There are 10,000 people running this race. Those people who sign up to run this race come from different backgrounds.
If you’re someone who never swam, never ran, never rode a bike, and you expect to go into a popular boot camp of eight weeks, and that boot camp is going to allow you to win the race, and you believe it—then you allowed yourself to be scammed.
This industry is very much the same.
The most important factor is your starting point, and that starting point is determined by what you did up to the age of 15. If you’re not someone who’s already very well immersed in that skill set—whether we’re talking about math or verbal—if you didn’t engage in these acts for a lot of time during childhood, that is why you’re going to really have to put in the time to assimilate all the different skills that allow you to perform really well.
What you’re trying to do is develop a skill very similar to skills required to do well on a triathlon and beat 90% of people. It’s foolish to believe that if you’re not experienced in this sport, you would do a boot camp of two months, four months, and achieve a 90th percentile result just because you read it somewhere on a marketing page.
Why Tutors Are Expensive (And Why Some Are Worth It)
Where’s the challenge when a lot of people say tutor fees are very high?
Tutor fees are high because there is demand. What you’re looking for is someone who will pinpoint to you where your problems are and tell you: This is the thing that you need to work on to improve your ability to solve questions under time. And then you have to drill them.
That is very difficult in an on-demand course where you don’t have someone who’s experienced enough with the math to tell you: This is how you put in your time.
It is also a question of expectations. A lot of people expect: I’m going to buy this course, it’s two months, it can be done in two months, there’s a guarantee, and then if I finish this material, I’m going to get that score.
It doesn’t work that way.
Gatekeepers to a Valuable Prize
When you want to think about admissions consultants or GMAT tutors as gatekeepers who are going to charge you a toll—why are they able to charge you this high fee? Because you want to pursue an MBA because it’s valuable.
Are there tutors and test prep who are going to take advantage? Perhaps, yes. Are there tutors and test prep who are going to be honest? Yes, there are a lot of honest tutors who will tell you: Listen, this is going to take you a long time.
The reason that they charge a high price is because you want this prize. It’s that simple.
What you need to do is be smart about the assessment and about the prospects that you have of actually achieving that score that you want to achieve.
Is the GMAT Industry a Scam?
There’s a question that is very common on Reddit and forums: Is GMAT test prep, MBA admissions consulting, essay editing—all a scam?
Let’s answer this question. Is there a lot of value in pursuing an MBA? Yes, there’s a lot of value. There is a lot of data that shows that you can enhance your career. It opens a lot of doors. You make more money.
But does that mean that there’s nothing scammy about this industry? For sure there is, just like any other industry.
Wherever there’s an opportunity for success, wherever there’s something of value that people want—for example, marketing, learning how to market yourself, learning how to improve your physical fitness—there’s a lot of value in this and there are a lot of valuable products out there. But are there scams? Obviously there are scams because things of value will attract scammers who want to make money.
This brings us to the question of how you can protect yourself.
Protecting Yourself from Scams
You need to understand and be in a better position not to feel scammed at the end of the road. You have to answer serious questions:
- Is the GMAT hard?
- Why is it so hard to improve?
- Is it really worth it to put in all this time and money to improve, to raise your score?
- Very importantly, are you going to be able to raise your score?
What does 90th percentile score mean? It means you performed better than 90% of a self-selecting group—all people who have undergraduate degrees. But also it means that 90% of people will never achieve this score. It’s a very tough score.
Can you achieve that score? If you answer that question, you will understand and you will be in a better position not to feel scammed.
You need someone who understands this test well enough and who’s honest enough to tell you: This is where you need to put in the time, and these are the real prospects or the odds of you achieving that score by this time.
That is why anybody who offers you a guarantee if you solve a certain number of questions is scamming you. But it is your choice to accept the scam.
Why AI Tutors Won’t Replace Human Tutors (Yet)
Incidentally, that is why until now, AI tutors aren’t really going to help. It’s still a very human experience where you need that exchange with a human sometimes if you haven’t acquired those skills.
You need someone to tell you: Why is this way better than that way?
It needs that friction, that touch point with reality for you to appreciate why something is so, why I can do it this way versus that way, which way is better. That requires time.
If you haven’t spent that time a long time ago when you were a kid, sometimes you’ll need a tutor who will tell you: That is how you’re supposed to do it.
That tutor may be expensive because it is a gate to something that is still in demand.
The Three Reasons Why the GMAT Is Excruciatingly Difficult
This is why this is an excruciatingly difficult exam:
Reason 1: You’re Competing Against Others
This is a fact. If you want to achieve the 90th percentile, you have to become better than 90% of people. This is difficult. Especially as you improve your score, you begin to compete with people who’ve mastered these skills when they were very young. That is very difficult.
Reason 2: You’re Acquiring Skills as an Adult
As an adult, it’s a lot more difficult to learn new things, to master new skills. The time that you spend has to be a lot more. For everybody, it’s different. But more importantly, when you improve, if you stop studying, you regress a lot faster than someone who acquired that skill as a kid. It’s always there for them. You don’t lose it, or it’s harder to lose it.
Reason 3: Progress Is Not Linear
You’re not doing a linear test. You’re doing a quantitative reasoning test and a verbal reasoning test. It requires certain skills that you must have mastered when you were a kid. If you haven’t, it takes a lot of repetition in order that you are able to understand and fully dominate these skills required and to develop that autonomy.
You need to understand what it is that you can do in a certain mathematical problem and what are the different ways that you can approach a problem. You can look at it and say: This is one way to solve it, and that’s one way to solve it—based on your ability to understand how numbers work, your appreciation of numbers that is not just theory that you read on a cheat sheet, but an absolute understanding of what this means and how it maps to the real world.
That is a skill that is very difficult to develop. It requires a lot of repetition until you assimilate the skills and you rehearse them so many times that they can be summoned on autopilot only by being presented with a context where they could apply.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I really go from an average score to 90th percentile in 2-3 months?
No. Anyone telling you this is misleading you. Best case scenario from average (545-555) to 90th percentile (645-655) is 6 months of consistent preparation. Usually it takes 8-12 months. The further you are from the 90th percentile, the longer it takes and the less likely you are to achieve it. This timeline assumes you already have decent foundations from your education before age 15.
Why does my educational background before age 15 matter so much?
Skills acquired as a child are at least 100 times more effective than skills acquired as an adult, both quantitatively (how fast you can do mental math) and qualitatively (your ability to innovate and problem-solve). If you built strong math and reading foundations between ages 9-15, you have assimilated skills that are automatic and don’t regress easily. Adults learning these skills for the first time have to work much harder and the skills recede faster when you stop practicing.
Are GMAT prep courses and tutors a scam?
Some are honest, some aren’t. Red flags for scams: guarantees of specific scores, promises of 90th percentile in 2-3 months, claims that “anyone can achieve 700+ with our system,” courses with so much content you can’t finish in the promised timeframe. Honest tutors will tell you: this will take 6-12+ months, results aren’t guaranteed, your starting point determines difficulty, and you need to work on fundamentals extensively. High prices don’t mean scam—they reflect demand for a valuable outcome (MBA admission).
What if I have a weak math or verbal background from childhood?
Then you need to be realistic about timelines and outcomes. If you scored below 500 on your diagnostic, reaching 90th percentile may take 12-18 months or may not be achievable within the typical MBA application window. You should: (1) Build foundations with non-GMAT materials first, (2) Consider schools that fit your realistic score range (70th-80th percentile may be more achievable), (3) Don’t put all your career advancement eggs in the MBA basket—pursue other options simultaneously.
Why is verbal hard even for native English speakers?
GMAT verbal isn’t just about speaking English—it’s about processing complex academic texts quickly, recognizing logical structures, and making inferences under time pressure. If you didn’t read extensively between ages 10-18 across different academic domains (science, humanities, law, history), you lack the mental structures to quickly match new passages to familiar patterns. Native speakers who didn’t read much as kids struggle just as much as non-native speakers who did read extensively. Volume of reading in youth matters more than native fluency.
Is there any way to speed up my GMAT preparation?
No shortcuts exist, but you can optimize: (1) Assess your true starting point with a diagnostic, (2) Work with an experienced tutor who can identify your specific gaps rather than following generic courses, (3) Focus on fundamentals before GMAT-specific strategies, (4) Practice consistently (daily 1-2 hours beats weekend cramming), (5) Accept that this is a marathon and plan accordingly. The “speed up” comes from not wasting time on ineffective methods, not from finding a magic hack that beats the fundamentals requirement.
Now You Know Why the GMAT Is Hard—What’s Next?
Understanding why the GMAT is hard helps you set realistic expectations and avoid scams. Now you can make an informed decision about your MBA path.
If you’re committed to the GMAT:
- Take a diagnostic test to assess your true starting point
- Accept realistic timelines (6-12+ months for significant improvement)
- Build foundations first before GMAT-specific strategies
- Don’t put all your career eggs in the MBA basket—have backup plans
- Find an proven tutor or program that sets realistic expectations, not guarantees
If your starting score is very far from your target:
- Consider schools that match your realistic score potential
- Explore alternative career advancement paths alongside GMAT prep
- Extend your timeline or accept that 90th percentile may not be achievable
Need honest assessment of your prospects? Work with a tutor who will tell you the truth about timelines and likelihood of reaching your target score.
Ready to build foundations? Check out our foundation-building resources for students starting from scratch.