Week 6: How to Actually Review a GMAT Practice Test | GMAT Summer Study Series with Hailey Cusimano, Menlo Coaching

Spoiler Warning: This episode discusses questions from the second free Official GMAT Practice Exam on mba.com. If you haven't taken that exam yet, there will be some spoilers.

What should you do after taking a GMAT practice test?

For the final installment of our six-week Summer GMAT prep series, GMC Zach and Menlo Coaching Director of Tutoring Hailey Cusimano go inside the results of a real student practice exam—and discover that the score itself tells only part of the story.

After beginning at a 545 and seeing her score fall to 515 after weeks of self-study, this student could easily have concluded that she simply needed more Quant practice, more Verbal practice, or more questions.

But a deeper review revealed something very different.

Across Quantitative Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning, and Data Insights, the same patterns kept appearing: overinvesting time in difficult questions, rushing when the clock became intimidating, getting lost in unnecessary details, and sometimes solving a problem correctly only to answer the wrong question.

Hailey breaks down how to spot those patterns, turn mistakes into actionable strategies, and use practice exams as learning tools—not just score predictors.

And the payoff? That same student eventually scored a 715.

If you're taking GMAT practice exams but aren't sure what to do with the results, this episode is your guide to finding the story behind your score.

About Hailey:

Hailey Cusimano is a 99th-percentile performer and a self-proclaimed standardized test nerd. Drawing from her years of experience as an instructor, she knows how to assess students' main obstacles and strategize accordingly, maximizing efficiency in short study windows. Plus, her enthusiasm is infectious, and most students find studying with Hailey actually becomes—dare we say—fun.

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