Students sometimes tell me that studying GMAT Verbal feels a little pointless. After all, isn’t it true that you either “know it or you don’t”? As it turns out, that’s not really true—although the GMAT definitely tries to make it seem that way! Read more

GMAT Quant might be frustrating, but at least there are rules! Verbal, on the other hand… well, I’ve had some arguments with the GMAT over what the right answer to a GMAT Verbal problem should be. You probably have, too. Or, you’ve wondered what makes this Verbal answer choice “more right” than that Verbal answer choice. After a lot of years and a lot of GMAT Verbal problems, here are my thoughts. 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

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.

GIVEN THAT I’m awesome, HOW COME I’m not awesome at GMAT Critical Reasoning?

Do you know what cognitive dissonance is? It’s a concept that usually only comes up when someone is smugly implying that you’re a hypocrite: “So you believe that abortion is wrong because we don’t have the right to take away someone else’s right to life …but you believe in the death penalty?”

Wipe that look of “checkmate” off your face, bub: 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.

Today, I want to share with you one of the easiest and quickest ways I’ve ever found to improve your accuracy when doing GMAT Critical Reasoning questions. 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.

In our previous articles, we’ve talked about two big GMAT skills: reading specifically and stripping away your biases. Now we talk about another behemoth: being aware of possibility. 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.

Why do I have to take the GMAT? Who cares about the Pythagorean theorem? Or perfect grammar? Why do we need to know the rules of exponents? Or what the prime factors of a number tell us? Or how to read a passage about science we’ll never study? 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.

The hunt for tricky GMAT Critical Reasoning games continues. (Check up here and here for the first two parts on this series).

As before, I’ll present three types of GMAT Critical Reasoning mistakes I see students (and myself) make, and I’ll give some sample questions demonstrating the trick. Then I’ll give you a number for an actual CR problem in the 2017 OG that has this kind of thing going on in it. 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 basic rule of GMAT Find the Assumption problems on Critical Reasoning is this:

The right answer is the only one that’s necessary to the argument.

But what does that actually mean, and how can you apply it on test day? 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.

A bold claim to be sure! But as I’ve used this phrase with a number of tutoring students over the past several years, I’ve seen it pay huge dividends. And I’m a big fan of simple rules and phrases that you can easily remember and apply across many different questions and even different question types. So here it is: Read more