“Just tell us the answer!” a student demanded of me in a recent class. She wasn’t rude, but she definitely wasn’t happy. And I understand—I wasn’t being an easy teacher. I try not to be. I don’t want to be an explanation parrot, because my explanations don’t really transform into my students’ learning. Learning is harder than that. It requires active thought and wrestling with difficult concepts. So even when my students give a right answer, I ask them the often-feared question, “Why do you think that?” Read more

The GMAT will never lie to you. But, it doesn’t always tell you what you really want to know. The GMAT is a little bit like my friend in this exchange:

Me: “What do you think of this outfit?”

My friend: “Well, it’s very… creative.” Read more

GMAT Critical Reasoning is repetitive. The arguments in GMAT Critical Reasoning problems might be dressed up differently—one is about local politics, another is about business—but, under the surface, the arguments use the same tricks over and over again. If you learn to spot these tricks, you’ll also learn to spot the right answer. (You’ll also start poking holes in every argument you hear, which is a great way to make new friends.) Read more

Greetings, reader. I wish to determine whether you are a robot. To help me do so, I will show you a sentence, and then ask you a very simple question about the sentence. Just so you know, the sentence uses correct grammar and would be an acceptable answer choice were it to appear in a GMAT Sentence Correction question. Please don’t worry about correcting the sentence; instead, just read it and then answer the question. Ready? Read more

Grab your Official Guide as we walk through 3 GMAT Quant problems (Problem Solving), hoping to drink every drop of knowledge from the problem before we say, “Yo, that keg is kicked.”

In part 1, we discussed the process of maxing out the value of the GMAT Quant problems you do.

As you review them, classify your current level of mastery for that problem. Read more

Over the last two articles, I analyzed what we know about missing GMAT Quant questions and missing GMAT Verbal questions. As it turns out, you can miss a lot of questions on the GMAT. Getting a lot of wrong answers doesn’t guarantee you a bad score—and getting a lot of right answers doesn’t guarantee you a good score. Read more

No, this isn’t a post about test ethics, though you certainly should not cheat on the GMAT! Rather, this is about honesty with yourself as you get in the GMAT mindset while studying and especially in the middle of the test itself. Read more

Remember how you’d finish off a Capri Sun pouch by twisting it up, trying to get out every precious drop of those 6 ounces of happiness? Capri Sun always left you wanting more… something never said about a Judd Apatow movie.

Let’s do the same thing with OG GMAT Quant problems. In order to extract all the potential value from doing an OG problem, you’re going to need to deeply review it, and then (in the vast majority of cases), you’re going to need to redo it once or twice a later date. Why? Read more

Welcome to the second part of our series on learning the most that we can from official GMAT problems. Last time, we talked about how to use solutions as a series of hints from your own “private tutor.” This time, we’re going to talk about what to do when this process doesn’t actually help you to generate ideas about how to solve the problem.

Here’s where we left off: Read more

In this series of articles, we’re trying to answer an age-old question: “How many questions can I miss on the GMAT?” If you missed the introduction to this project, or the data on missing Quant questions, check out this article first! On the Quant section, you can miss a lot of questions and still get a fantastic score. But is that true for GMAT Verbal questions as well? Read on to find out. Read more