5 GMAT Grammar Mistakes We All Make
Music and the GMAT
Before we talk about grammar, let’s talk about music. Trust me. I’ll bring it back.
When I turned 30, I started taking piano lessons. Beyond a vague recollection of butchering “Hot Cross Buns” on a plastic recorder in third grade, I’d never had any musical training whatsoever. I quickly discovered that music isn’t just about pressing buttons at the right time to make the notes come out; it’s also about learning to listen for rhythms, harmonies, and intervals between notes. When you learn to notice these things, you start hearing them everywhere and wondering how you ever missed them. Better yet, you start to notice your own musical successes and mistakes before someone else points them out to you.
How to Enjoy Taking the GMAT
I know this is a totally unnecessary article, since I’m sure you enjoy taking the GMAT very much already. But do keep reading: at the very least, you’ll have a new way of explaining to your friends why you’re spending all your weeknights curled up with a gently used copy of the test’s Official Guide.
Top 3 Tips For Fitting GMAT Studying Into a Busy Schedule
The GMAT is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s not a given that you’ll be able to stay motivated to study without burning out, and many people find themselves studying for the GMAT for months longer than they meant to because they just needed a break. So let’s talk about how you can study without putting your life on pause.
What You Don’t Need to Know for the GMAT
There are a lot of rumors and misinformation about the topics that the GMAT tests. The test writers provide plenty of good info about what the GMAT does test (here’s a good place to start, as well as the Official Guide to the GMAT), but it’s much harder to find reassurance that certain topics won’t be tested. So, let’s look at some of the topics that students ask me about the most, and get the low-down on whether you have to study them.
How to Get a Perfect GMAT Quant Score
How can you get the elusive Q51 on the GMAT? To start, let’s be clear that this question is mostly a matter of curiosity. You don’t need a 51 on Quant to score a 700 on the GMAT: technically, with a perfect Verbal score, you would only need a 36! You don’t need a 51 on Quant to get into HBS: the median score last year was 48. You don’t even need a 51 to be a test prep teacher (although if you want to work for MPrep, you do need to be in the 99th percentile)!
And this is a good thing, because as you’re about to learn, getting a 51 on Quant involves at least a little bit of luck.
How the GMAT Algorithm Works
On the GMAT, your score isn’t based on getting points for right answers. Instead, the GMAT lobs your way a series of questions of varying difficulty, working to figure out what your skill level is in each section, and then assigns you a corresponding point value based on where you end.
“I’m Bad at Math” And Other Lies You Tell Yourself
“I’m just not a math person” is probably the most common thing GMAT students tell me about themselves on the first day of class. I’m here to tell you the same thing I tell each of those students: Odds are, you’re totally wrong.
Manhattan Prep Earns Top Spot in Recent GMAT Score Improvement Survey! Except…We Need To Talk…
I was naturally very interested to hear that my company, Manhattan Prep, had earned the top spot for score improvement in the recent Poets & Quants survey of GMAT test prep companies. The excited part of me wants to dance around shouting, “Yay! Manhattan Prep is the best!”
But the rational part of me is saying…hmm. Of course, I think we’re the best too, but I don’t think that average score improvement is a great metric to use (no disrespect to Poets & Quants, which I think is an excellent resource for aspiring business school students). I’d rather that you talk to friends, look at verified reviews from a source like Trustpilot, and attend any free sessions available to judge for yourself. (I’ve got a free session coming up soon—come say hi!)
Know What to Do On Any GMAT Problem
You’ve studied, and studied, and studied, and studied. You can rattle off the first twenty perfect squares and the definition of a dependent clause. You know the four-step process for Critical Reasoning and the formula for the volume of a cylinder. So, why are you still missing GMAT problems?
GMAT Quant Tips: Mental Math
If your goal is to take some time pressure off of the quantitative section of the GMAT, you should ask yourself: what are the skills I will need over and over during that section, and what are the skills I will only need once or twice? Too often I see my own students spending hours to get incrementally faster at, for example, weighted averages; that’s an area where understanding the basic concept is probably sufficient. Instead, invest the most time in the thing you’ll be doing the most often: calculation!