This week, we’re going to tackle a challenging GMATPrep problem solving question from the topic of Rates & Work.

Let’s start with the problem. Set your timer for 2 minutes. and GO!

*Circular gears P and Q start rotating at the same time at constant speeds. Gear P makes 10 revolutions per minute, and gear Q makes 40 revolutions per minute. How many seconds after the gears start rotating will gear Q have made exactly 6 more revolutions than gear P?

(A) 6

(B) 8

(C) 10

(D) 12

(E) 15

Given info about two different gears, P and Q, we have to figure out something about how quickly they move relative to each other. In particular, we’re supposed to figure out when this is true: (# of Gear Q revolutions) = (# of Gear P revolutions) + 6.

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Business school applications are a daunting prospect, and new questions pop up constantly. That’s why mbaMission founder Jeremy Shinewald will be holding regular Q&A sessions in our live online classroom, starting tomorrow at 6pm EST. Feel free to drop in at any point during the session”Jeremy will be available for the full hour.

If you can’t make it tomorrow, we’ll be holding another MBA Q&A in two weeks, on May 13. Stay tuned for future sessions as well.

[This article has been updated in a new post featured May 9, 2014. Read the newest version of The Distinction Beween a 700 Score and a 760 Score]. Recently, I was asked to write an article addressing what it takes to score in the 99th percentile. I have some reservations about writing such an article, but I agreed to write it.

First, I’m going to tell you why I have reservations about writing this article. A lot of people may read this article and think: Great! I can just do this and score in the 99th percentile! In order to have this conversation in the first place, however, we have to assume that the tester is already scoring at least 700, if not higher.

In other words, you cannot start with the information in this article (unless you’re already at 700+!). In addition, I can’t write an article that tells anyone, at any current level, how to get to 760. What I can do is write an article detailing the differences between a 700-level scorer and a 760-level scorer. What you can do, if you really want a 760, is first get yourself to a very solid 700-level “ using other articles and resources, not this one. (A very solid 700-level refers to someone who can consistently score 700 under full, official test conditions; it does not refer to someone who got 700 once after skipping the essays.)

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The GMAT just keeps expanding. GMAC reports that there are now more than 500 centers worldwide where you can take the test, up more than 25 percent since 2006.

A record 267,000 people took the test in 2009, and for the first time since its creation, there were more international than US test-takers (by just a single percentage point). A lot of the growth comes from China and India. The number of Chinese citizens taking the GMAT rose 35 percent in 2009, while 7 percent more Indians took it. The growth in the number of test-takers on the subcontinent has been explosive recently, increasing 128 percent in the last 5 years.

To meet the additional demand, the GMAC is opening an office in India, according to the Times of India. It will be the company’s third, after the US and UK. “I feel there’s great potential for growth in the country,” GMAC CEO David Wilson told the paper.

Thinking of going to school abroad?  You’re not alone! Applications are up sharply at European B-schools, according to Business Week. It’s part of an upward trend worldwide, but the increase is particularly high in Europe, where many institutions say apps are up 10 percent or more. The Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School in Belgium has doubled its class in the past year, while Switzerland’s St. Gallen has grown its part-time program 100 percent. The trend is also ramping up competition in many places–Westminster Business School, in the UK, has had to wait-list full-time MBA candidates for the first time in the school’s history.

The piece attributes the growth largely to career changers and young people looking for a recession safe haven that will bolster their resume. European schools are also increasingly attractive to international students who plan to return, thanks to easier visa requirements and widely dispersed alumni networks.

If you’re in the market for an international GMAT course, check out our new London offerings, as well as our Live Online classes. And if you just want to take a trip to Europe, the dollar’s getting stronger, so a Big Mac will only be $8 or so.

Over time, our Instructors have written a number of articles about various GMAT-related substantive topics. Now, our Internet ace Michael Dinerstein has worked to transform several of those articles into online tutorials. For those of you who struggle with more than one continuous paragraph of text, your ship has come in!

In all seriousness, they’re a lot easier to make use of now. Kudos to Mike for bringing these awesome kernels of wisdom to students everwhere!

If you have ever downloaded our popular free GMAT flash cards, you might have been one of the many individuals who requested that we make this resource available as an iPhone/iPod Touch app. You also probably heard us tell you that we were working on developing this very app and were excited over the prospects of a mobile version of our flash cards. That apparently wasn’t good enough for you guys because you flooded our phone lines with requests to get the app out faster and with more features such as flagging cards right or wrong and shuffling the deck. We added those features to the docket, but it still didn’t prevent you from following us out of our office, clamoring over this flash cards iPhone app. “Create an interface that is enabled for gestures so you can flick the cards!” “Create an iPhone-friendly version of the Manhattan GMAT website!” “Build in functionality to cast spells, like Harry Potter!”

While we were baffled by the spell request, we implemented the other two suggestions and produced a flaggable, gesture-realistic, and self-contained version of our flash cards that is now available in the iTunes app store for free!

We hope this is finally enough for you guys because our email server is about to explode from all your flash cards requests. However, we know this isn’t the case and in a few months from now, you’ll probably be asking us to make a new version for the iPad. Well, we hope that these flash cards keep you busy for at least a little while.

Also, please remember to rate the cards in the app store!

Studying for the GMAT is a formidable undertaking. There are so many potential topics of study — and so much study time to be allocated — that it is often difficult, and may even seem impossible, to decide where to start or where to focus.

Still, there are some topics that are definitely less important than others — and, in the case of most students, simply not important at all. Probably the most prominent of these topics, in the minds of students, is “difficulty level”.

On the GMAT forums, I see many posts inquiring about the specific, numerical difficulty level of problems. While these numbers – if they can be nailed down at all – are an interesting curiosity, they are essentially irrelevant to students’ strategy; the only people who benefit from knowing specific difficulty levels are people who write the exams.
In other words: Do NOT worry excessively about the difficulty level of the problems.
You should NEVER bother trying to assign specific numbers to the difficulty of a problem; the only levels of difficulty that will ever affect you are “hard”, “easy”, and “just right”.

In fact, you should never give much thought to the difficulty level of the problems — no matter whether you are taking the actual exam or just studying. Here’s why.
When you study, an excessive focus on difficulty level will cause you to abandon the “big picture”, causing you to focus excessively on specifics. That’s not a good thing, because the only true purpose of studying is to discover general principles and techniques that will solve not only the problem at hand, but also OTHER problems — similar problems that may appear on future exams. (These general principles and techniques are what I have called “takeaways” on the forum and in classes.)

Here’s why “difficulty level” doesn’t really matter when you study: it’s quite possible to derive a takeaway from any easy problem, and then use it to solve a much more difficult problem in the future — or vice versa. Therefore, it is imperative that you study all problems within your grasp with the same intensity, without worrying about “difficulty level”; you never know which problems will give you the takeaways that you will need on your official test.

Then, there’s the matter of taking the actual exam. In this circumstance, it’s also not worthwhile to worry about the difficulty level of problems — because you will be completely unable to judge it with any accuracy. Therefore, if you even let your thoughts wander to “difficulty level”, not only will you be engaging in a completely unproductive thought process, but you will also be diverting mental energy away from the much more important task of answering the questions themselves!
Instead, your single most important mission during the official exam is to “MONOTASK” — i.e., to think about nothing other than the objective content of the problem in front of you, and the techniques that will solve that problem. Outside concepts — such as “difficulty level” — should not even enter your mind while you take the official test; they’ll do nothing but raise your stress level.

IS IT EVER APPROPRIATE TO THINK ABOUT DIFFICULTY LEVEL?

About specific difficulty level — trying to nail it down to the nearest hundred?
NO.
Never.

However, if you are studying from a source that is roughly ordered by “difficulty” — such as the Official Guide quant section — then it may be helpful to have a very general, very vague sense of the “difficulty” of the problems you’re working on. In particular, if everything in a given section just seems too hard, then move back a bit; if everything seems a bit too easy, then move forward.

This is pretty much the only situation in which the notion of “difficulty level” will help you. And note that it’s still not helping you solve the problems – it’s just helping you decide which problems to study in the first place. That’s not something that will transfer onto the official test.

Remember — monotask!

SO WHY DOES MGMAT TELL US SO MUCH ABOUT THE TESTING ALGORITHM?

Mainly, we give you this information in order to justify our advice about time management and overall planning.

When we tell our students things such as “NEVER spend too much time on one problem”, inquisitive students will sometimes want to know why — especially because this would be terrible advice on old-fashioned paper tests. This is the ONLY reason why we explain about “adaptive algorithms” and “difficulty levels” – because it’s the machinery behind our advice.

In this respect, we’re not unlike a mechanic who might explain the workings of an anti-lock brake system to a curious customer. Is the customer ever really going to need to know how anti-lock brakes work? Of course not – the customer just has to know how to use the anti-lock brakes, and in what ways they might differ from traditional brakes. The customer will never need any knowledge of the inner workings of the brake system (unless he/she plans to become a mechanic) – but it’s the foundation of the functional knowledge that the customer does need.

It’s the same with the “adaptive algorithm” and “difficulty levels”. Are you ever really going to need to know the nitty-gritty of how these work? Nope – you just have to know how to manage your time and how to proceed through the questions, and in what ways this test might differ from traditional paper-based tests. You will never need any knowledge of precise difficulty levels, or of the precise workings of the adaptive algorithm (unless you plan to write tests yourself) – but we present it to you, as full disclosure, because it’s the foundation of the functional knowledge that you will need.

Good luck!

Here at Manhattan GMAT, we spend a fair amount of time introducing our students to the ins and outs of the GMAT (e.g.  How are the essays weighed and scored?  What are the practical implications of the test being computer adaptive?).  The GMAT is a unique test that raises its own distinctive issues and challenges, and learning about the test (as opposed to simply practicing test questions) is itself a valuable component to achieving a high score.

In response to popular demand, we have compiled answers to many of the questions that most students have about the GMAT in this FREE guide – the GMAT Uncovered.  This guide is available electronically via download at our site.  We are confident that the GMAT Uncovered will address many of the questions you may have about the GMAT, including questions you didn’t even know you had!  It was written by Stacey Koprince, one of our extraordinary Instructors, so you know it’s good.  🙂

Happy reading!

Stress and anxiety, for many people, are integral components of their daily lives. In fact, anxiety is a necessary human response. In manageable doses, anxiety protects you from life’s dangers. You naturally feel anxious standing on a cliff and looking over the edge. In essence, your body is heightening your awareness of this potential threat and emphasizing that some action might be necessary to protect your well-being. The same is true with performance or test anxiety. When you are asked to perform, the tension produced from normal anxiety heightens your awareness of the situation and helps you to focus on the danger (i.e. task as hand). With this additional focus, you are more easily able to successfully complete your goal, whatever it may be.

For many people, however, this natural, beneficial anxiety response is superseded by an uncontrollable feeling of dread. When asked to prepare for and then take a test, individuals manufacture feelings of such importance about the test that they become overwhelmed by the anxiety associated with it. Symptoms of test anxiety affect both the body and the mind. Hearts race, hands become clammy, breathing grows labored, minds go blank. Worse still, test anxiety is a vicious cycle: worrying about the test causes increased anxiety, which causes increased worry about the test. As GMAT instructors, we have seen or heard of this response all-too-frequently with our students. Recently, a student who was consistently scoring between 35 and 40 on the quantitative section of her practice examinations score a 6 on her actual test. That’s right, she dropped from a score of approximately the 60th percentile to the 1st percentile. When asked what happened, she simply said, I panicked. She explained she just couldn’t understand the first problem, and from there her mind just went blank. For the remainder of the section, she was unable to organize her thoughts or regain her focus. Although this case is extreme, many students have allowed test anxiety to undermine their test taking abilities, resulting in scores that are well below their true abilities. This strategy series will focus on methods to control your test anxiety as you ready yourself for the test.

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