The GMAT is a necessary hurdle on your way to business school, but sometimes it’s hard to see why. What do these multiple choice questions really have to do with a masters in business administration? If this question plagues you, take a look at this recent post from the GMAC. It explains exactly how two types of questions”data sufficiency and critical reasoning”measure abilities required by business schools.

Data Sufficiency. This question type, which requires you to determine what’s necessary to solve the problem, is ultimately a test of your ability to weed through minutiae for the important details. And sorting through information is an essential skill set, given the data-rich nature of the modern business environment, says Booth School of Business professor Pradeep Chintagunta. To successfully manage in this environment requires translating the data into usable information, he says, adding, The skills tested by the Data Sufficiency part of the test are consequently critical to managerial decision making.

Critical Reasoning. These questions probe your ability to evaluate the relative strengths of arguments. If you can handle a critical reasoning question, you’re prepared for collaborative b-school projects requiring you to judge others’ ideas. And those projects, in turn, are designed to get you ready for the real world. MBA programs can provide students with decision-making processes, says Valter Lazarri, MBA director of the SDA Bocconi School of Management, Milan, but they need a raw ability to connect facts, to detect patterns, to discriminate true causation from spurious correlations.

Of course, it is easier to sort through information when you understand its substance”hence our content-based curriculum.  And don’t fret if you’re struggling in these areas. With diligent practice, you can develop your natural abilities.

This week, we have a follow-on article from Chris Ryan, Manhattan GMAT’s Director of Instructor and Product Development. Chris introduced the concept of layering to us in this article on Sentence Correction. Layering is a technique used by a test writer to make a question more difficult. Today, Chris is going to show us how layering works in data sufficiency questions.

Note: I’ve repeated the introduction from the first article below, in case some of you haven’t read that one. If you did read the first one, the first few paragraphs will be review for you.

We all know that the GMAT is a computer adaptive test, and computer adaptive tests give us questions based on the difficulty level that we earn as we take the test. How do the test writers at ACT (the organization that writes the GMAT) determine which questions are harder than others?

First, ACT engages in a process called “normalization,” wherein all freshly written questions are tested by actual test takers to determine what percentage answer the questions correctly (we know these questions as experimental questions). If too many people answer correctly, the question may need to be toughened up. If too few people answer correctly, the question may need to be dumbed down. ACT is looking to assemble a pool of questions that covers a range of difficulty, from cakewalk to mind-bending, and the test takers help them do so.

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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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[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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Our 8 Strategy Guides, organized by topic, have been around for several years.  However, we were seeing some students who hadn’t looked at math in a LONG time and wanted a refresher.

So, after months of development, we are very happy and proud to announce the publication of our brand new Strategy Supplement, the Foundations of GMAT Math!  This book starts from the basics to give students those “Oh yeah, NOW I remember how to FOIL” moments.  We start with Order of Operations/PEMDAS and algebra, and go from there to fractions, geometry, exponents, divisibility and other flashback-inducing topics.  If you’re confident in your math skills, you may not need this book at all.  But otherwise, you may like it a great deal.  You know who you are . . .

All Manhattan GMAT Course Students will receive this book for free as part of their course materials.  If you’ve already started your course and want this book, contact studentservices@manhattanprep.com/gmat/ and they’ll hook you up (you may have to pay shipping depending on your location, but the book will be free).

Kudos to our curriculum wizards for their latest contribution to the best in GMAT Prep!

The GMAT is the Graduate Management Admission Test, a standardized test required by the vast majority of business schools because it provides a measure of an applicant’s academic ability. The GMAT test does not include any questions that gauge your business knowledge. The GMAT test is computerized and administered six days each week, 52 weeks per year. While the exam can be taken at virtually any time, it can only be taken once per 31 days and 5 times per year.

What is a Computer Adaptive Test?

The GMAT test is computer adaptive, meaning that instead of determining your score using a fixed set of questions, the exam provides you with questions of variable difficulty based on your answers to previous questions. GMAT test questions are not pre-set in advance. The GMAT begins with a question of average difficulty and if you answer it correctly, you will receive a slightly harder second question. If you answer it wrong, you will receive a slightly easier second question. Your third question, in turn, is based on your response to the second question, and so on. In this way, the GMAT test zeroes in on your ability level and assigns you a corresponding score. Because your real-time performance on the exam is essential to a final computation of your score, the way you take the GMAT test will differ greatly from your experience with other exams. Specifically:

• You will see only one question on the screen at a time. You cannot move onto another question until you answer the current one. Once you answer a question, you cannot return to it or review any questions that you have already answered.
• Correct responses to difficult questions are worth more than correct responses to easy questions. The raw number of correct questions answered is not indicative of your final score.

Despite these variables, the GMAT test will always present you with a fair mix of questions with regards to content areas for a given section. For instance, any test-taker will receive the same rough mix of arithmetic, algebra, and geometry questions on the quant portion of the test.

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We have completed our analysis of the GMAT Official Guide Quant Review 2nd Edition.  Of the 300 questions, 74 (25%) are new to the 2nd edition.

These 74 problems did not break dramatic new ground in terms of tested material.  The bottom line is that the 2nd Edition is a nice add-on, but you should still feel fine about studying from the original Quant Review Guide if that’s what you’ve got handy.  For a complete list of the new problems and a detailed breakdown by topic, click here.

Following up on the release of the 12th Edition of the Official Guide for GMAT Review, GMAC is now releasing the 2nd editions of both the Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review (released this week) and the Official Guide for GMAT Quantitative Review (to be released in the next couple of weeks).

As was the case with the 12th Edition, we will be breaking down the new guides in detail.  As a preview, 81 of the 300 verbal questions in the 2nd edition of the Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review are new, in that they didn’t appear in the 1st edition or the Official Guides.  That means that 219 of the 300, or 73%, appeared in the 1st Edition of the Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review.  We’ll be analyzing the 81 newbies in detail later in the week.

About 2 years ago, one of our L.A. Instructors, Mike Kim, suggested that we provide a math curriculum  for students who want a refresher on fundamental math topics (e.g.  fractions, algebra, etc.).  We thought it was a fantastic idea.  Being an extraordinarily productive guy, Mike went on to author the Foundations of GMAT Math Workshops I and II which take place online (it turns out there are too many fundamental math topics to teach in one sitting).

Now, the Foundations of Math Workshops will be available for free to any Manhattan GMAT course student.  If you are a course student, you can simply go to the website and add the Foundations workshops to your account.  You will immediately receive access to dozens of practice problems in your student center as well as class recordings, and you can attend the next scheduled Foundations workshops live.

For non-students, the Foundations of Math Workshops will each be available for only $95.  Additionally, if you end up signing up for a course after taking the Workshops, we’ll credit you whatever you spent on the workshops, so they’ll essentially wind up being free for you too.

Remember, these workshops review foundational math topics such as algebra, basic geometry, fractions, etc.  They’re very useful if you need a refresher because you haven’t seen the math in a long while, but if you’re comfortable with the math already you can feel free to go straight to the Official Guides, Strategy Guides, etc.

P.S.  The Foundations of GMAT Math Book is due out this Fall, as Mike’s original idea is taking multiple forms to reach as many people as possible.

Application season is starting to heat up again! For those of you just getting started, here’s an overview of “what’s what” with the GMAT.

What Is The GMAT?

The Graduate Management Admissions Test is a standardized test that many English-speaking business schools require applicants to take. The test is called a CAT, or Computer Adaptive Test, both because it is administered on a computer and because the test actually changes based upon how we answer the questions. The computer chooses what test questions to give us based upon our performance up until that point in the test. In a sense, we all take a different test, because the specific mix of questions any one person sees is based on that person’s performance during the test.

To register for the test or learn more information straight from the testwriters, go to www.mba.com.

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