5 Biggest MSCEIT Preparation Mistakes

1. Thinking you cannot study for the MSCEIT.

   I was the guy who thought you could not study for emotional intelligence tests. And I feel I could not have been more wrong. I personally completed the MCEIT twice where the first time I was reluctant to receive help or prepare for the test and it impacted my performance. The second time I completed the MSCEIT, I received external assistance to help me prepare and boy did it make me feel silly. I failed to recognise that half of the MSCEIT is “intelligence”, which means in the eyes of the test creators, there are, in some sense, correct and incorrect answers. I also used external assistance to help me not feel thrown off by the uniqueness of the question types in the MSCEIT.

   Now, while my story is anecdotal evidence for receiving help, the literature appears to support this.

   Here is a meta-analysis (the gold standard of journal articles) that investigates whether emotional intelligence (EI) training has any effect on EI performance. Indeed, the results do show a relationship between training and performance on EI tests.

   1. Hodzic, S., Scharfen, J., Ripoll, P., Holling, H., & Zenasni, F. (2018). How Efficient Are Emotional Intelligence Trainings: A Meta-Analysis. Emotion Review, 10(2), 138–148. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073917708613

   If you need to read something to believe it, then I encourage you to review the publication above. I also think everyone can benefit from understanding emotions more, which is why I am convinced getting help to prepare for the MSCEIT is genuinely worth it.

2. Overthinking your answers

   Yes, there are questions that require in-depth thinking, but often, the MSCEIT can leave us cycling between multiple answers. For example, in my first MSCEIT, I sat there thinking the face was a little bit angry, maybe even a little bit sad. I thought every emotion displayed in the answer options needed to be selected. What I failed to do was realise it is completely possible not to observe emotions in faces. But when we chronically overthink, we often miss these simple facts that make a big difference in the grand scheme of the test.

   Now, this is where preparing can be a blessing and a curse. It often fills your head with a lot of content you feel you need to remember and apply. While this is true, you have got to make a concerted effort to let the external help make things simpler rather than more complicated.

3. Downplaying the importance of the MSCEIT

   Irrespective of which programs use this test for application, the reality is, that it could be a crucial step in your admission into a law firm, medical school, or military program. The list of potential users of the MSCEIT goes on for ages. My advice is that you should NOT underestimate the test difficulty and the performance of your competition. I think we are all slightly biased into believing we are more emotionally intelligent than we really are. And frankly, I had this belief too. My prediction is that a lot of people doing the MSCEIT have been told once or twice in their life that they are an “emotionally intelligent” person. While that may be entirely possible, it is more likely that the observer does not recognise what “emotional intelligence” actually means with respect to the MSCEIT. So, ignore what people have told you, assume you are not emotionally intelligent and work on becoming more emotionally intelligent for the purpose of doing well in the MSCEIT.

4. Not getting exposure to the types of questions

   While I appreciate it is very difficult to find practice questions online (see our free resource if you have not already!), the MSCEIT is very different from other tests. If you are not somewhat aware of the types of questions you will be asked, then you will feel flustered when you commence on test day. If you have graduated from an Australian school, then you would never have encountered a test like this before. So please get some exposure to the types of questions asked in the MSCEIT. Download our free sample questions as a start. Keep updated, we are bringing out more and more resources on the MSCEIT!

5. Spending too much money on MSCEIT training

   Let me make this clear: I am not saying you should not get help, but be careful how much you spend. The MSCEIT is quite a specific test to offer training for, so naturally, companies can charge hefty fees for their services. Now, while I agree that MSCEIT expertise is hard to come by, requires a lot of research and is a rare knowledge to have, you should not be paying more than $800.0. I would even say you should not spend more than $500.0. The hard part is often organisations will require you to do a minimum number of sessions for them to offer their services. This makes external help financially unjustifiable.

   External assistance is excellent, but not if you are spending an excessive amount. You can often spend very little and get access to other organisations resources, or in our case, spend very little and get access to our resources for a quarter of the price.