Welcome back! If you haven’t already, start with Part 1 of this series, where we performed a global executive reasoning and timing review for your GMAT practice tests. Let’s continue with a deeper dive of the per-question timing data from your problem list. (And grab pen and paper to take note—this is going to be…geeky.) Read more

How many GMAT practice tests have you taken so far? Are you satisfied—or frustrated—with your progress? Read more

“Life hacks” is a weird term that’s only been around for the last decade, brought to us by purveyors of clickbait. Most life hacks involve some resourceful repurposing of something (e.g. Got a tomato? Hollow it out and now you have a perfect ashtray!) The term itself mystifies me—how are these clever, janky solutions anything like hacking into a computer? I’ve never tried to penetrate the NSA’s mainframe, but I’m assuming it doesn’t involve saving up all your bottle tops in order to make a lower water usage toilet. Read more

Welcome to the third installment of Fast Math for the Executive Assessment! If you’re just joining us now, you might want to go back to the first part and work your way back here. Read more

Consider the following two sentences, adapted from a GMAT Sentence Correction example I use in my classes: Read more

“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

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

Last time, I gave you a couple of questions to try and then we discussed how to minimize your work on the first one. (If you haven’t read the first installment yet, go do that now.) Today, we’re going to review the second problem. Read more