Articles published in Taking the GMAT

Want to do better on GMAT Quant? Put your pen down!

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - Want to Do Better on GMAT Quant? Put the Pen Down by Ceilidh EricksonDid 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.


Let’s do an experiment. This is one I do with all of my GMAT classes and tutoring students. Grab a piece of paper, a pen, and a stopwatch (or use the stopwatch function on your mobile device). Read more

The 7 Reasons You’re Struggling with Timing on GMAT Quant

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blog-struggleDid 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.


A lot of my GMAT students struggle to nail down their timing on the Quant section. If you’re in this situation, you can’t just tell yourself that you’ll work faster next time. Instead, with the help of this post, figure out where your timing problem is coming from. Then you’ll know exactly how to fix it. Read more

Two Minutes of GMAT Quant: A Breakdown – Part 2

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - Here's How to Use Your Two Minutes on GMAT Quant Part 2Did 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.


If you read the first post in this series, then you already know how to get the most you can out of the first 5 seconds of a GMAT Quant problem. But what about the other 1:55? Let’s continue to delve. Read more

Two Minutes of GMAT Quant: A Breakdown – Part 1

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blog-minutes-pt1Did 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.


Two minutes is not a huge amount of time. Yet if you want to finish the entire GMAT Quant section in 75 minutes, two minutes is about all you have to solve each problem. Don’t interpret that to mean you just have to go quickly or skip important steps like checking your work. Instead, seek out a more efficient process for dealing with GMAT problems.

Better yet, read along as I detail an efficient process for dealing with your two minutes. Read more

Here’s What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do on the GMAT

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blog-what-to-doYou’re staring at a GMAT problem that you just don’t understand. There’s a minute left on the clock. What do you do? Read more

Should I take advantage of the GMAT Select Section Order Pilot?

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Note: The pilot project has now gone live as “Select Section Order”—however, the details are a bit different. Read this post for all the info you need on the new Select Section Order feature.

You may have heard that, on Monday, some GMAT students started receiving emails inviting them to take part in a Select Section Order Pilot program that GMAC (the organization that makes the GMAT) is holding in late February/early March.

This pilot is to test an awesome potential new feature: the ability to select the order in which you do the various sections of the GMAT!

Below, I’ve laid out all of the important details and I also talk about how to decide whether to join, if you were one of the lucky students invited to take part.

How does the pilot work? What are they testing?

Read more

Here’s Why You Should Interleave Your GMAT Studies (and What that Means)

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Blog-InterleaveRecently, I wrote a post about how to get the most out of Official Guide (OG) problems during your studies. In that article, I discussed how to interleave your GMAT studies and I’ve got more to say on this strategy that’s of crucial importance to your studies.


What is Interleaving?

In a nutshell, interleaving is a way of mixing up your studies. For example, let’s say that you’re about to start studying the Fractions chapter of our Fractions, Decimals, & Percents (FDP) Strategy Guide. It’s only 8 pages long, so you should just read the whole thing straight through, right? (Note: if you actually have this guide,  pull it out right now and follow along below.) Read more

Here’s how to use the holidays for GMAT prep (Part 2)

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Blog-Holidays2Last time, we talked about how to use holiday downtime to get ready for round 2 GMAT admissions. This time, we’re going to talk about what to do if you aren’t applying for round 2 this year.

We have two broad scenarios to talk about: Read more

Here’s how to use the holidays for GMAT prep (Part 1)

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Blog-HolidaysThe holidays are fast approaching and all of my students are asking me how best to use their extra downtime over the next few weeks. I have some different recommendations, depending upon your circumstances.

In this installment, we’ll talk about what to do if you’re aiming for the second round (in other words, your applications are due in January 2016—soon!). In the next installment, we’ll talk about what to do if this circumstance does not apply to you. Read more

Here’s why you might be missing GMAT Data Sufficiency problems – Part 2

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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 our previous article, we divided the logical errors that test-takers make on Data Sufficiency questions into two types:

Type 1: You thought that something was sufficient, but it was actually insufficient.

Type 2: You thought that something was insufficient, but it was actually sufficient.

We already covered the most common reasons for Type 1 errors to occur and a few good ways to avoid them; now, let’s cover Type 2 errors. Read more