When I was 30, I went surfing for the first time, and I fell in love. And, like many people in love, I made an impulsive commitment whose consequences I did not fully understand: I decided that I was going to learn to surf well. Read more

And what do they tell us about prepping for the GRE?

Students often ask me, “Where can I find the most difficult questions on the GRE?” In this blog entry, I’ll show you the top three hardest GRE Math problems, ranked by percent of students who got them wrong. Before we get there, I should say: you don’t need to correctly answer questions like these to get a very, very good score on the GRE. This is a test that favors accuracy and consistency on mid-range questions over the ability to get the very hard ones. One can nab a score in the 90th percentile or above without getting any of the very hardest GRE Math problems correct. In case you’re curious, though, this is what the hardest GRE Math problems look like. Each of these questions were correctly answered by fewer than 20 percent of GRE test takers.

Start the drum roll. Read more

Taking the GRE for your business school application? You’re in luck. Each month, we are featuring a series of admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.

Present Both Responsibilities and Results in Your MBA Resume

In your MBA resume, be sure to showcase your accomplishments, rather than merely stating the responsibilities of your position. When your responsibilities are presented with no accompanying results, the reader has no understanding of whether you were effective in the role you are describing. For example, consider the following entry, in which only responsibilities are offered: Read more

Studying for the GRE on your own? Load up your GRE study calendar right now—it’s time to get organized. Read more

When preparing personal statements that require significant information about career progress, many applicants choose to discuss their accomplishments in chronological order. Although the simplicity of this approach makes it an attractive one, we encourage you to consider an alternative to showcase your more recent and thus potentially stronger accomplishments first. By choosing this alternate approach, you may capture your reader’s imagination more quickly and reduce the risk of being lost amid similar candidates. Read more

Having a GRE problem log is like having a budget: sort of a pain sometimes, but much smarter than the alternative. Skeptical? Check out this article first—then come back here when you’re ready to roll. Read more

Here’s a quick cheat sheet on how, when, and why to use Smart Numbers to solve GRE Quant problems. Read more

The good and bad news about taking the GRE is that it’s not a skill that’s taught directly in school, though it does draw on skills that are. This is bad news, because it means that most of us have to do some work to adapt to the test. It’s also good news, because it means that anyone can master this skill, no matter how long they’ve been out of school. Read more

Who Needs the GRE Reading Comprehension Passage Anyway?

Let me be clear, if you want to maximize your GRE Reading Comprehension score, you should read each passage, thoroughly and entirely, before trying any of the questions about it. Strategies like skimming the passage or reading the questions first tend to result in sub-par performances. In the name of honing your Verbal skills, though, I’m going to suggest you do something seemingly ludicrous: practice answering some GRE Reading Comprehension questions without reading the passages. Read more

If you have a complicated relationship with math, you need to be especially careful about how you study. Some GRE Quant study techniques might seem to make perfect sense, but can actually leave you frustrated and demoralized in the long run. For painless studying, try these next few ideas instead. Read more