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 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 the Verbal questions in the big OG. 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.

I’ve had multiple conversations recently with different students about how to improve GMAT Reading Comprehension skills, and each person had a somewhat different angle or issue going on. I realized, though, that these students all had something in common—and, therefore, there was one particular thing that they all needed to do to get better at RC. 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.

Meaning. Important in life, important in GMAT Sentence Correction questions.

I realized recently just how much the GMAT loves switching between verbs and modifiers derived from verbs (we nerds know these as ‘participles’) in SC. For example: 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.

That’s a good question! Do you really need to solve all the GMAT problems in the Official Guide to the GMAT in order to score a 700? What about the other side of the issue: is it possible that there aren’t enough problems in the Official Guide? How many GMAT problems should you solve before taking the official GMAT?  

Before I share my answer, let’s get some facts on the table. 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.

Critical Reasoning. It’s not the easiest subject to teach, I tell ya. Or to study. On the one hand, it’s deceptively simple: ‘here are four sentences, answer a question about them.’ You might be glad there are no formulas, no little rules to memorize. Unlike geometry, in which you might not see a 5-12-13 triangle on the actual test but need to know about them just in case, GMAT Critical Reasoning is usually just a game of spotting a few parts of an argument and answering the question logically.

But while there are certain things that show up again and again—premise, conclusion, counterpoints, assumptions—there are a lot of different ways the GMAT can construct the logic, and a lot of different ways they can make wrong answers seem tempting. How many times have you been wrong but the answer just felt so right? 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.

This is not hyperbole. I truly believe that the number one way to raise your score is to have a thorough error log. I have had a number of students who come to me after having gone through most of the Official Guide but who are still struggling to get the scores they want. When I ask, “What do you have to show for doing ALL of these problems?” the answer is often something along the lines of “I’m not sure.” That drives me bonkers! I want you to work smart, not hard. 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.

This is the first in what I hope will be many student-question inspired posts. Allyson from Philadelphia was wondering whether “nor” had to be paired with “neither” or whether it could be used on its own. The answer was far more complex than expected, so here it is. If you have an idea for a GMAT grammar blog post, or just have a question that you want answered, email me at emadan@manhattanprep.com.

To begin, you’ll need to understand the essentials of parallelism. You can get in-depth coverage of parallelism in our Sentence Correction Strategy Guide, but here are the basics. Two (or more) things in a list have to be both structural and logically parallel. Let’s start with the positive form: either/or. 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.

Welcome to part 3 of our series! If you haven’t seen the earlier installments yet, please start with part 1 and work your way back to me here.

We’ve talked about how to create sets of GMAT problems and how to set your time limit. We haven’t yet discussed what you need to learn from one of these sets before you try another one. 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.

After working with thousands of students, I’ll admit: Reading Comprehension is my least favorite subject to teach. Why? Because unlike Quant or grammar, it doesn’t have concrete rules to apply, so it can be harder to find ways to help when students are struggling.

I have found, though, that many students who struggle with GMAT Reading Comprehension aren’t actually struggling with the “reading” or the “comprehension” part (unless they struggle with English skills generally). No, the passages – though dense and often boring – are mostly ok. It’s answering the questions that’s a struggle!

RC questions can seem vague, and the answer choices can feel like a sphinx’s riddle. Often 2 or 3 answers choices may seem equally right, or maybe none of them seem right! So what should you do? 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.

Last time, we talked about all of the basics of creating practice problem sets. Today, we’re going to talk about how to create larger sets that really mimic the GMAT testing experience. (If you haven’t read the first part yet, do start there.)

What are my goals for these larger sets of GMAT problems?

When you’ve made it through your primary review of all study materials (all question types and content areas), you’re ready to start doing larger problem sets: 8, 12, 16. (I’ll tell you later why these are all multiples of 4.)

Your goal is two-fold:

—Test (and continue to build) your skills on all this stuff you’ve been studying.

—Practice your overall business-decision-making skills (in other words, practice under conditions that mimic the real GMAT as closely as possible). Read more