Articles published in GMAT Study Guide

How to Improve GMAT Reading Comprehension Skills

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - How to Improve GMAT Reading Comprehension Skills by Stacey Koprince

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.


I’ve had multiple conversations recently with different students about how to improve GMAT Reading Comprehension skills, and each person had a somewhat different angle or issue going on. I realized, though, that these students all had something in common—and, therefore, there was one particular thing that they all needed to do to get better at RC. Read more

Get the Most Out of Your GMAT Study Group (Part 2)

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - Get the Most Out of Your GMAT Study Group (Part 2) by Stacey Koprince

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.


Last time, we talked about how to set up a GMAT study group, as well as the first of two great reasons to have a study group in the first place: Your study group will help you to keep you motivated and on track.

Today, we’re going to talk about the second great reason: Your GMAT study group will help you learn more than you would learn on your own. Read more

Why Do We Care about Yes/No Data Sufficiency Questions?

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - Why Do We Care about Yes/No Data Sufficiency Questions? by Chelsey Cooley

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.


GMAT Data Sufficiency questions can seem a little mysterious. (If you’re just getting started, or if you need a refresher, here’s a great article on the basics of Data Sufficiency.) These problems are more like logic puzzles than math questions. That makes Data Sufficiency a good opportunity for those of us who want to score well on Quant, but don’t like doing math! However, you might have some questions about Data Sufficiency as you start to understand the problem type a little better. Here’s one of them: why do we categorize Data Sufficiency questions into “yes/no” and “value”? Read more

GMAT Sentence Correction: Modifiers and Meaning

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - GMAT Sentence Correction: Modifiers and Meaning by Reed Arnold

Guess what? You can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free—we’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.


Meaning. Important in life, important in GMAT Sentence Correction questions.

I realized recently just how much the GMAT loves switching between verbs and modifiers derived from verbs (we nerds know these as ‘participles’) in SC. For example: Read more

Know the GMAT Code: Work Fast on IR Table Problems

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - Know the GMAT Code: Work Fast on IR Table Problems by Stacey Koprince

Guess what? You can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free—we’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.


In today’s latest installment of our Know the Code series, we’re going to talk about the most efficient way to tackle Table problems in the Integrated Reasoning (IR) section of the GMAT.

First, try out this IR Table problem from the GMATPrep® free practice exams. A timing note: If you’re planning to guess on 3 questions in the IR section, then you can give yourself 3 minutes and 20 seconds to do this problem.

And a logistics note: On the real test, you’ll be able to sort by the different columns in the table. That’s not possible in a blog article, so just do your best as is, but note that a question like this one can be done in much less time than 3 minutes and 20 seconds if you’re taking advantage of the ability to sort the data. Read more

What Your Math Teacher Didn’t Tell You About PEMDAS

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - What Your Math Teacher Didn't Tell You About PEMDAS by Chelsey Cooley

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.


Here’s a phrase that might bring back some memories from middle school math class: Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally, or PEMDAS. (If you went to school outside of the U.S., you may have learned the acronym BEDMAS or BODMAS, instead.) You use this phrase to decide what order to do mathematical operations in: Parentheses first (from inside to outside), then Exponents, then Multiplication and Division (left to right), then Addition and Subtraction (also left to right).

PEMDAS isn’t terribly fancy stuff. It’s just a useful little tool that helps us communicate clearly—it’s what tells us, for instance, that “2x(3+4)” means something different from “2×3 + 4.” But if there’s one thing the GMAT loves, it’s making things look more complicated than they really are. Read more

Un-Educated Guessing on the GMAT

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - Un-Educated Guessing on the GMAT by James Brock

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.


As any good GMAT student knows, you can’t possibly answer every question correctly. In fact, if you get the first couple questions right, you will rapidly get into territory where most people can hardly figure out what the questions mean. And if you take extra time to dig into those questions and try to figure them out, it bites you in a big way when you run out of time toward the end. So we quickly learn that if you can’t figure out a good plan to solve a problem, you need to go ahead and take an educated guess.

Sounds great, but it’s not actually that simple, is it? Read more

My GMAT Class Just Ended—Now What?

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - My GMAT Class Just Ended—Now What? by Elaine Loh

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.


AKA – I don’t feel ready to take the GMAT, please help!

Let’s say you spent the last few months of your life enrolled in our GMAT class. You attended all the classes and you kept up with homework (mostly)—but you don’t feel ready to take the test yet. You’re starting to panic. What should you do? Read more

How Many GMAT Problems Do I Need to Solve?

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - How Many GMAT Problems Do I Need to Solve? by Chelsey Cooley

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.


That’s a good question! Do you really need to solve all the GMAT problems in the Official Guide to the GMAT in order to score a 700? What about the other side of the issue: is it possible that there aren’t enough problems in the Official Guide? How many GMAT problems should you solve before taking the official GMAT?  

Before I share my answer, let’s get some facts on the table. Read more

Tiny GMAT Critical Reasoning Mistakes You Might be Making (Part 1)

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - Tiny GMAT Critical Reasoning Mistakes You Might be Making (Part 1) by Reed ArnoldGuess what? You can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free—we’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.


Critical Reasoning. It’s not the easiest subject to teach, I tell ya. Or to study. On the one hand, it’s deceptively simple: ‘here are four sentences, answer a question about them.’ You might be glad there are no formulas, no little rules to memorize. Unlike geometry, in which you might not see a 5-12-13 triangle on the actual test but need to know about them just in case, GMAT Critical Reasoning is usually just a game of spotting a few parts of an argument and answering the question logically.

But while there are certain things that show up again and again—premise, conclusion, counterpoints, assumptions—there are a lot of different ways the GMAT can construct the logic, and a lot of different ways they can make wrong answers seem tempting. How many times have you been wrong but the answer just felt so right? Read more