We are excited to announce the release of our new 5th Edition GMAT Strategy Guides! Months of intensive work by our 99th percentile instructors has resulted in what we believe are the finest GMAT prep books money can buy. The 10 5th Edition books (which amount to nearly 1,900 pages!) were designed with our content-based approach to prepare students for the most recent changes to the GMAT, including Integrated Reasoning. The 5th Edition Strategy Guides come with access to 6 free online practice exams as well as access to over 200 additional free practice questions in 9 subject-specific question banks.

Interested in learning more? Check out the individual book pages in our MGMAT Store. We’re also going to have a lot of great content and giveaways relating to the new 5th Edition guides on the blog this week so make sure you check back every day!

We invite you to test your GMAT knowledge for a chance to win! Each week, we will post a new Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for a free Manhattan GMAT Prep item. Tell your friends to get out their scrap paper and start solving!
Here is this week’s problem:

Ror positive integer m, the m-th heptagonal number is given by the formula 5m² “ 3m)/2. For positive integer n, the n-th triangular number is the sum of the first n positive integers. Which of the following is true for k, the smallest triangular number that is also heptagonal?

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We’ve talked a lot about meaning in sentence correction recently and I’ve got another problem along that same theme for you. The problem I chose comes from the new GMATPrep 2.0 (warning: you may not want to read the explanation until after you’ve used the new software yourself, just in case you see the same problem!). This one actually did also show up in the old version of GMATPrep, but I saw it years ago and forgot about it. When I saw it during my 2.0 test last week, I had the same reaction that I did when I first saw the problem about 5 years ago: I can’t believe they actually did that!

Here’s the problem. Set your timer for 1 minute 15 seconds and go for it!

* As the former chair of the planning board for 18 consecutive years and a board member for 28 years, Joan Philkill attended more than 400 meetings and reviewed more than 700 rezoning applications.

(A) As the former
(B) The former
(C) Former
(D) She was
(E) As the

Short underline “ should be easy right? I received this question as #14 on my test and I got the first 13 questions right. That should give you an idea of the difficulty level. : )
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Editor’s Note: This is the first post by Manhattan GMAT instructor Avi Gutman. Toronto-based, England-born (to Scottish and Moldovan parents), and Israel-raised, Avi likes to consider himself an international man of mystery. The publication of this post was delayed a week due to Avi’s wedding! Welcome him to our blog and send him your congratulation in the comment section below!

Raise your hand if you cringe whenever you think of word problems from 8th grade. Raise your hand again if you feel queasy when you see a question involving Train A and Train B.

If your hand is getting tired this blog post is for you. Most of us already know that GMAT problems involving moving objects (people, cars, trains, etc.) are just one particular form of a WRT (Work Rate Time) problem, where the work is simply the distance traveled. When dealing with just one moving object we can apply the DRT formula as usual (Distance=Rate*Time), but the test writers know that by throwing two moving objects at us (figuratively!) they raise the level of the problem by some 200 points.

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Manhattan Prep is pleased to announce its Complete Crash Course, an intensive 9-day sprint through the complete GMAT curriculum.

Do you have a GMAT test date booked before the exam changes on June 5th?

Would you benefit from exposure to Manhattan GMAT’s full curriculum beforehand?

If so, this course may be just the structure you need to organize your next couple weeks of studying.

This course is not for the faint of heart or for those expecting miraculous, 150-point score improvements in two weeks. If you learn very quickly and have the GMAT basics already mastered, then allow Manhattan GMAT a chance to take your studying to the next level.

Learn more here.

On February 3rd, the team at Manhattan Prep joined together and wore red for the National Wear Red Day. This annual event is sponsored by the American Heart Association. Additionally, Manhattan Prep held its first Give A Heart drive. Throughout the month of February, Instructors and staff donated money towards the purchase of paper hearts. All funds were donated to the America Heart Association.

Manhattan Prep is a proud supporter of heart health, in addition to overall wellness. The company promotes an active and healthy life-style, encouraging employees to participate in company exercise initiatives and organizing healthy lunch programs each month. We are proud to support such a wonderful cause. Thanks to all that were involved!

We invite you to test your GMAT knowledge for a chance to win! Each week, we will post a new Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for a free Manhattan GMAT Prep item. Tell your friends to get out their scrap paper and start solving!
Here is this week’s problem:

The positive value of x that satisfies the equation (1 + 2x)⁵ = (1 + 3x)⁴ is between

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Editor’s Note: This is the first post by Manhattan GMAT instructor Joe Lucero. Give Joe a warm welcome in the comments section!

Talking to students and instructors over the years, I’ve heard my fair share of horror stories about the GMAT. The I ran out of time students are a dime a dozen, but there are several I was exhausted and couldn’t concentrate at the end of the test and even a few I didn’t realize how short the bathroom breaks are and had to run back to my computer which had already started the next section tales. But my favorites come from students who decided to drastically alter their routines the day of the test, from the student who decided a 5 mile run was going to be good for his nerves (but not for his tired legs, lungs, and brain) to the decaf drinker who decided a few five hour energies would help him stay focused (it didn’t).

Back when I used to coach middle school basketball, our team had a slogan- you play like you practice. When our kids would be goofing around, not paying attention, or being sluggish, they’d hear those words over and over again. And while it’s cliché in the gym, working with students who aren’t performing as high as they would like on the GMAT, I find myself repeating the same pieces of advice.
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You may have already heard that GMATPrep 2.0 has been released. I’m pretty excited that we finally have a mac-compatible program “ after all, what better way to spend a random Friday night when I’m bored? : ) Seriously, though, I just tried my first CAT yesterday and I’ve got an IR question that I want to share with you.

Note: IR is not adaptive; in other words, we’re all going to see the same questions when we take the two practice CATs. So, if you haven’t taken your first GMATPrep 2.0 CAT yet, you might just want to bookmark this article right now and wait. Once you’ve taken the test, you can come back and read the rest of the article. Read more

After spending much of this past weekend trying the new GMATPrep, I have better insights on the new IR section. Here is what I found:

• There are 12 questions and 10 prompts in the IR section
• There is a timing recommendation of 2:30 per question that is pretty reasonable, although you will need more time to read some prompts than to read others
• Scoring is 1 to 8, with no halfbased primarily on the number right, with no partial credit, although there seems to be some forgiveness at the top, because 0,1, 2, or 3 wrong led to a score of 8

There are also a number of significant changes to the test that aren’t specific to the IR section. Here is my summary, including my takes, on the changes:

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