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Last Updated on August 15, 2023
Let’s face it. Most people are not excited about taking the GRE. In fact, for many of us, preparing for and taking the exam can be extremely stressful. Some stress is good; it heightens our awareness and sharpens our thinking. Nevertheless, too much stress, if not managed properly, can lead to poor performance.
So, how do we limit the deleterious effects of stress and even harness that stress and use it to our advantage? You may be pleasantly surprised to learn how easily this can be done.
One method is to simply get excited about taking the GRE. That’s right – get excited! Research by Alison Wood Brooks, professor at Harvard Business School, supports the notion that by simply getting excited about a stressful task, one can improve one’s performance on that task.
According to Brooks, many people think that the best way to heighten their performance under stress is to try to calm themselves down. To the contrary, Brooks’ research uncovered something interesting: people who got excited about rather than trying to calm down before a stressful task actually performed better. According to Brooks, this is the act of “reappraising anxiety as excitement.” She says: “Individuals can reappraise anxiety as excitement using minimal strategies such as self-talk (e.g., saying “I am excited” out loud) or simple messages (e.g., “get excited”), which lead them to feel more excited, adopt an opportunity mind-set (as opposed to a threat mind-set), and improve their subsequent performance.”
People who got excited about rather than trying to calm down before a stressful task actually performed better.
In one experiment, Brooks looked at how reappraising anxiety as excitement helped graduate students perform better under strict time pressure on difficult math problems (sound familiar to anyone?). Before solving any problems, one group of students would say the phrase “try to remain calm” outloud, while the other would exclaim “try to get excited.” Interestingly, she found that the group of students instructed to say “try to get excited” performed significantly better than the group instructed to say the first phrase.
In another experiment, Jeremy Jamieson, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, studied college students preparing to take the GRE. Jamieson divided the students into two groups and had each group take a practice GRE exam. He told one of the groups about new research suggesting that stress could actually be helpful to exam performance. In addition, he told the group that if they noticed themselves experiencing stress during the exam, they should remind themselves that the stress may actually be helping them to perform better. The other group, the control group, did not receive this pep talk. Jamieson found that the group that had received the pep talk scored higher on the practice GRE exam than did the control group.
About a month later, both groups of students took the official GRE exam. Jamieson then reviewed both groups’ official GRE performances by analyzing participants’ ETS score reports (the ETS writes and administers the GRE). He found that the group that had received the pep talk, just as in the practice exam experiment, performed significantly better on the quantitative section of the GRE than did the control group.
So what are the key take aways? First, if you’re feeling stressed about taking the GRE, it may help to tell yourself that what you’re feeling is actually excitement, not stress. Each time you sit down to practice solving GRE problems, try say something like “I am excited about mastering these GRE questions,” or “I’m pumped about studying for the GRE,” or “I am excited about scoring high on the GRE.” Whatever it is, find a mantra that works for you. Then use that same mantra prior to taking your actual GRE.
Then, if you find yourself stressing out during the official GRE, you can take a moment to remind yourself that the stress is quite likely working in your favor and ultimately helping to boost your final score.
