Why Adderall, Ritalin, and Other PEDs Won’t Help Your Test Score
If you attended an undergraduate program in the United States, you probably know that academic performance-enhancing drugs (let’s call them academic PEDs for short) are a mainstay among university students. I know dozens of students who have popped a few pills – typically ADD medications such as Adderall or Ritalin, obtained through a friend, a law-bending physician, or a black-market dealer – to help them focus while studying.
These drugs are basically legal versions of amphetamines (though their “off-label” use without a prescription is, of course, illegal) that can provide energy and help you hyper-focus while you cram for a test or write a paper. Sounds great, right?
(And just to be clear: I’m NOT talking about anybody who has an actual prescription because of a diagnosed medical condition. I’m referring to off-label use only – and there are plenty of reasons why such use is dangerous, but that’s another story for a different, non-GMAT blog.)
Anyway, I’m not here to moralize about drug use – after all, I guzzled many gallons of performance-enhancing bourbon during my years as a bartender. I’m just here to offer an honest answer to a frequently asked test-related question: can academic PEDs like Adderall and Ritalin help you conquer standardized exams like the GMAT, GRE, EA, or LSAT, assuming that you’re willing to ignore the potential health and legal consequences?
Will Drugs Help Your Standardized Test Score?
The short answer: I don’t think so.
First of all, the whole idea behind academic PEDs is that they help you hyper-focus. Imagine, for example, that you need to spend 14 hours memorizing organic chemistry formulas. Stimulants can help, at least in the short run. Gotta grind your way through some repetitive calculus problems? Well, that takes some short-term energy and focus, and academic PEDs might help with that, too.
But hyper-focusing is actually a bad thing if you’re trying to improve your test score. Tests like the GMAT – especially the GMAT’s quant section – require you to think logically through different solution paths and then choose the best option. In general, if you’re hopped up on amphetamines, you’ll speedily pick the first solution path that comes to mind – even if it’s an inefficient path or a complete dead-end. Basically, academic PEDs cause cognitive tunnel-vision – and that’s a good way to ruin your score.
The second reason why I’m skeptical of academic PEDs is that a few of my students have used them while studying for the GMAT, and they haven’t had much success. In every case, my GMAT students were accustomed to taking Ritalin, Adderall, or a similar drug during their undergraduate studies – and in every case, the academic PEDs didn’t seem to help their GMAT prep. They would stubbornly obsess over unnecessary details of GMAT RC passages, crunch through dozens of lines of algebra when quicker solutions were available, and make score-destroying careless errors because they were moving too quickly.
A Faulty Standardized Test Strategy
In a different context, maybe the academic PEDs would have helped these very same students. But standardized tests require a flexible mindset and a solid approach to time management. Drugs that cause you to energetically develop tunnel vision are exactly the wrong prescription for success on the GMAT, GRE, or any other similar exam.
So if you’re looking for quick fixes – well, you probably already know that you’ve come to the wrong GMAT tutors’ website if you’re looking for gimmicky shortcuts. To be honest, if I thought that academic PEDs could help your test score, I would (probably very quietly) admit it. But the truth is that they don’t seem to do much to improve your scores.
I do, however, have plenty to say about another performance-enhancing substance: food.
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