Why Sleep Is Essential to Your GMAT™ Prep
Getting enough sleep each night boosts your immune system, promotes healing, and recharges your energy levels.
Sleep also comes with several benefits in the realms of memory and concentration, making sleep a powerful study aid as you prepare for the GMAT™ exam.
Whitney Garner, a veteran GMAT instructor at Manhattan Prep, says sleep plays a crucial role in your GMAT performance, “not only on test day, but also during the weeks or months you spend preparing for the big day.”
Here’s why you should consider sleep as an essential component of your GMAT prep strategy, and what you can do to get a better night’s sleep.
Sleep improves learning
Preparing for the GMAT is a rigorous learning experience. To succeed, you’ll need to pick up new skills and learn to apply them to a broad range of problems. Getting enough sleep helps this learning process go smoothly.
Firstly, sleep promotes focus and concentration. If you’ve ever sat down to study the morning after a late night, you’ll already be familiar with how easy it is for a sleep deprived mind to wander. One reason for this is that sleep clears the brain of adenosine—a neurochemical that makes us feel drowsy.
Sleep also plays a fundamental role in memory retention. When you drift off, your brain is hard at work processing the information you gathered throughout the day and storing it safely away.
Research has demonstrated that the hippocampus—part of the brain that supports long-term memory formation—is even more active during sleep than it is when you’re awake.
Backing this up, multiple studies have found that people retain more of what they learned if they have the chance to sleep between learning and testing.
“A study even found that getting consistently high-quality sleep accounted for almost 25 percent of the differences in performance between students on tests and quizzes,” Whitney explains.
Sleep and motivation
As well as consolidating new information, sleep can help you maintain the positive attitude required to cope with the stresses of GMAT prep.
As anyone close to a toddler will tell you, sleep plays a significant role in emotional regulation. Even well-behaved children are liable to throw a tantrum when they’re overtired.
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Although fully grown adults are less likely to scream and pound their fists on the ground, sleep deprivation can still render us irritable, anxious, and pessimistic—not a winning combination for learning.
A 2015 study by researchers at Tel Aviv University found that sleep deprivation actually impedes the function of the amygdala, which is a small, almond-shaped brain region handling the body’s stress and fear response.
After just one night without sleep, participants were less able to regulate their emotional responses to both neutral and distressing images. Getting enough sleep will help you keep a level head and avoid mood swings that could disrupt your study.
Tips for a good night’s sleep
There some simple tips and tricks you can use to boost the quality and quantity of your sleep in the weeks leading up to your GMAT exam.
According to the Sleep Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to sleep education, one of the best ways to improve your sleep is to stick to a sleep schedule. This means going to sleep and waking up at roughly the same time every day, which allows your body to get into a natural rhythm.
Establishing a daily sleep ritual can help you stick to this pattern. Try a wind-down activity like listening to music, reading, having a warm bath or shower, or gently stretching to relax before bed.
It’s also a good idea to lower the lights and avoid looking at electronic screens for at least 30 minutes before bedtime. The bright light emitted by electronic devices in particular slows the body’s production of melatonin, a sleep-promoting hormone.
As GMAT test day draws closer, however, you might need a few extra strategies.
“I think what most people in stressful situations run up against isn’t just the typical modern-day insomnia,” reflects Whitney. “What my students are dealing with are the late-night ruminations.”
These ruminations are intrusive anxious thoughts that pop into your mind as you try to fall asleep. They could tell you that you haven’t studied enough, that you’re going to fail, or that your friends and family will judge you if you perform poorly on the test.
Rather than trying to block out these thoughts, Whitney advises addressing them directly.
“I like to think of these ruminations as scared little toddlers,” she explains. “If you ignore them, or yell at them, they’re just going to be more scared and more desperate for your attention.”
To soothe the anxious voices, she suggests keeping a journal by your bed and writing down all your worries, rather than trying to bat them away. The act of writing gives you an opportunity to work through your concerns and put things into perspective.
With these worries put to rest, you’ll find it easier to rest yourself—and enjoy all the benefits to your memory, mood, concentration, and GMAT prep, that come with consistent good sleep.
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