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.

The problem we’re going to talk about today is a work of art. (Yes, I’m a geek. Did you not know that already? )

But I’m serious: it’s a thing of beauty. It looks super easy. It’s not—there are traps all over the place. The GMAT test writers have a genius for tying us into knots! Read more

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.

It’s become a bit of a running joke in my classes that I say, “The GMAT is a game of [a thing].” Every time I say it, I make it sound like I’ve revealed the hidden key to GMAT mastery: Read more

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.

In the previous three installments of this series, I summarized some of the big messages and discussed some of the interesting problems I spotted in the GMAT Official Guide 2018. (If you’d like, you can start with the first installment and work your way back here.)

Today, I’ve got lists for you—the problems that are new to the GMAT Official Guide 2018 (by chapter and problem number). Read more

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.

The new GMAT Official Guide 2018 books have landed and I’ve got the scoop for you! (If you’d like, you can start with the first installment of this article series.) Today’s post focuses on Data Sufficiency. Read more

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.

Do you remember that feeling of being in math class and the teacher asks a question that you really should know, but you don’t, and then you hear your name called to answer the question? Maybe your heart starts racing, your mind blanks even more, and in an attempt to avoid embarrassment, you just start talking, desperately hoping you land somewhere close to the answer.

As a high school teacher, I saw this all the time from the teacher side. And I would smile and thank the student for trying, but usually while thinking “just go ahead and admit that you don’t know!” Read more

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

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

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.

Welcome to the fifth and final installment of our Fast Math series. (Miss any earlier ones? Start here.)

Make your life easier on the GMAT: do less Math. (Yes, with a capital-M. ☺) I use Math-with-a-capital-M to mean formal, textbook math.

Sure, you’re going to have to do some textbook math on the GMAT, but it’s really not a math test. Business schools don’t expect you to have to do paper math in b-school or the real world. Rather, they’re testing how you think about math. And thinking about math in the real world is a lot different than textbook, school-based math.

For one thing, the correct answer on the GMAT is never actually a number or a math term. The correct answer is just (A), (B), (C), (D), or (E). How you get to that correct letter doesn’t matter in the slightest.

Okay let’s dive into our 5th Principle for Fast Math! Read more

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

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.

We’re up to part 4 of our series on Fast Math for the GMAT. If you’re seeing this for the first time, start with part 1 and work your way back here.

Let’s dive right in.

Principle #4: Estimate…and not just when they tell you to.

Read more