by Jonathan McEuen, guest blogger

Jonathan McEueun is a Manhattan GMAT grad who is off to Wharton this fall. We asked him to share his application process with us. What follows is Part 5 of 5 posts in a series about his experiences. You can read Part 4 here.

Decisions, decisions

I’ve written so far about my experience preparing for and taking the GMAT, writing and editing (and occasionally re-writing) essays and gaining confidence for the interview process, all of which led into the result “ in broad strokes, a yes or a no.   In this last post, I’m going to describe my experience after getting the yes I was hoping for and the process of confirming my enrollment in a full-time MBA program. Read more

What’s the optimal way to spend your last 14 days before the real test? There are two levels to this discussion: what and how to review, and building a game plan. We’ll discuss the latter topic in this article. Once you’ve read this article, you may want to check out How To Review.

What is a Game Plan?

In the last two weeks before your test, your focus needs to shift from trying to learn new things to acknowledging that your skills are what they are. They’re not going to change an enormous amount in the last two weeks; you can tweak some things, but now is not the time to change major strategies across an entire question type. Further, it would be a mistake to spend your last two weeks entirely focused on your weaknesses; if you do that, then you won’t be prepared to excel on your strengths.

Your Game Plan will help you to make certain decisions quickly during the test. When is it a good idea to spend an extra 20 or 30 seconds on a problem? When should you decide to make an educated guess? When should you cut yourself off completely, guess immediately, and move on? What should you do if you find yourself ahead or behind on your timing? (We’ll discuss the answers to these questions later in the article.) Read more

by Jonathan McEuen, guest blogger

Jonathan McEueun is a Manhattan GMAT grad who is off to Wharton this fall. We asked him to share his application process with us. What follows is Part 4 of 5 posts in a series about his experiences. You can read Part 3 here.

Be A Score With A Story

How do you tell a great story in a few essays or a few minutes of dialogue? How do you make it compelling but not desperate, informative but not pandering? How do you make sure that your reason for applying to an MBA program comes through clearly, with goals that are both realistic and inspired?

It’s a lot for a couple thousand words to accomplish.  But in sitting down to the essay-writing process, that’s the end goal (at least, it is by my opinion). Read more

This post orignally appeared on the mbaMission blog.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported on the shifting career balance of Harvard Business School’s incoming Class of 2013. Notably, the class will have a higher percentage of students with manufacturing and technology backgrounds, and fewer students with finance backgrounds. According to HBS managing director of MBA admissions and financial aid, Deirdre Leopold, the school does not run with quotas or targets. It is worth noting that this shift is not all that significant “ the finance industry still has the strongest representation in the class.

mbaMission Founder and President Jeremy Shinewald frequently comments on how candidates erroneously try to game the admissions system. The Journal quotes him as saying, You’re going to see guys who worked on one private-equity deal with an auto manufacturer try to play up their auto experience and look ridiculous. Candidates buy into stereotypes for their target schools and become things they think the school wants. As candidates examine the stats, they should keep in mind that they can only be who they are and that they cannot go back in time and change careers. So, they are best creating an authentic picture of themselves in an attempt to set themselves apart from all others (not just those in their fields).

Whether you are headed off to business school in the fall or just planning for the day when you will be, summer is the perfect time to beef up your knowledge with a little summer reading.  We spoke with Chris Ryan, Manhattan GMAT’s Vice President of Instructor and Product Development, and with Jason Arvanites, MGMAT Instructor and Yale School of Management 2^nd year, to ask them what books they thought should be added to the incoming MBA student’s summer library. (And if you’re looking for more books after reading the list below, be sure to check out last year’s summer reading list.)

Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert

What makes you happy?   Read more

by Jonathan McEuen, guest blogger

Jonathan McEueun is a Manhattan GMAT grad who is off to Wharton this fall. We asked him to share his application process with us. What follows is Part 3 of 5 posts in a series about his experiences. You can read Part 2 here.

Don’t Get Lost Before The First Step

The big question of How should I prepare for this test? quickly becomes a set of much more detailed, specific questions:  Do I enroll in a course? Should I buy books and study on my own?  What if I need to take the test multiple times?  All this tends to become a little overwhelming.

I tried to calm down and bring myself back to the first question.  I knew I needed structure and guidance.  I again turned to friends for recommendations.  It was word of mouth that Read more

It’s always disheartening when we have a score drop, whether it happens on a practice test or (worst case scenario) on the real test. If this happens to you, the most important thing to do next is figure out why this happened. If you can figure out why, then you may be able to do something to prevent a score drop from happening again.

This article contains the questions to ask yourself as you try to figure out why your score dropped.

Read more

by Jonathan McEuen, guest blogger

Jonathan McEueun is a Manhattan GMAT grad who is off to Wharton this fall. We asked him to share his application process with us. What follows is Part 2 of 5 posts in a series about his experiences. You can read Part 1 here.

Deciding to apply was the easy part.

Once you weigh the pros and cons (the bird “ or paycheck “ in the hand, the uncertainty but immense potential of an MBA program that is right for you and that suits your goals), you start to see the hurdles ahead.  Application season is an expensive and stressful marathon no matter what school you apply to.  My road was looking no different.

I was going into what felt at the time like a particularly hard journey, especially considering my work situation, slightly atypical background, the amount of change going on in my life, etc. etc. etc.  But at the end of the day, Read more

The long-awaited Foundations of Verbal Strategy Guide is finally here! We’re also launching an Advanced Quant book; click on the link to read about that one.

We published our first Foundations book, focused on quant, last year, and now Manhattan GMAT teacher extraordinaire Jen Dziura has gifted us with the equivalent verbal tome “ everything you ever wanted to know about parts of speech, sentence structure, reading comprehension, and all of the basics that most GMAT books (including Manhattan GMAT’s “regular” series of Strategy Guides) assume you already know.

Who should use this book? Great question. If you have taken a practice or real test and scored below the 50^th percentile, then this book may be for you. If you are a non-native English speaker (or even a native!) who didn’t learn much by way of formal grammar (what’s a noun and what different types of nouns are there?), or who never had much practice with reading comprehension tests in English, then this book may be for you.

To give you an idea of what to expect, excerpts from the new Foundations of Verbal are below. Read more

Exciting news “ our Advanced Quant Strategy Guide is finally ready for prime time! We’re also launching a Foundations of Verbal book; click on the link to read about that one.

Who should use this book? Great question. Are you already at the 70^th-plus percentile (minimum) on quant and you’re looking to push yourself well into the 90s? This book is for you. In addition, please note that this book assumes that you have already worked through our five regular Strategy Guides (or the equivalent material from another company).

To give you an idea of what to expect, excerpts from the new Advanced Quant guide are below. The main point I want to make is that this book covers both advanced concepts / mathematical material, and advanced problem solving processes. Both are critical for a 90th-plus percentile test-taker.

Okay, without further ado, here’s excerpt #1, an introduction to a methodical solving style inspired by mathematician George Polya. Read more