Many a true word is said in jest.—I don’t know, but I heard it from my mother.

I think that Critical Reasoning is my favorite part of the exam because it is the purest of the pure.  I’ve written before that the GMAT is an aptitude test rather than a knowledge test.  On the simplest level, in both the quant and the verbal, the exam tests a logic system: be specific, don’t assume, and don’t rationalize.  Nowhere is this more true than in Critical Reasoning—there is no mathematical foundation work nor are there grammar rules.  As Gertrude Stein used to say, There is no there, there.  Of course, she was talking about Oakland. . .fill in your own joke.  When I’m being* mean to students, I say, If you know what all the words mean, you should get them all right.

But students don’t get them all right.  Even those who know what all the words mean.  Why is that?  Because people think.  They assume, they rationalize, and they inject opinions.  Why is this bad?  Because it’s a game.  Critical Reasoning doesn’t take place in reality.  Here’s an analogy I thought up all by myself, so it isn’t in the Strategy Guide: Critical Reasoning bears the same relationship to reality that Monopoly does.  When you play Monopoly, you don’t think about how reasonable free parking or building hotels is, you exploit the rules.  It’s the same thing.  A lot of OG arguments involve medical issues, but you hardly ever care whether people live or die because that’s usually not the conclusion.   Play the game.

As a by the way, if students struggle with the CR, it’s often half of their trouble in the quant.  Folks are not specific; they read the question or the given incorrectly.  And they don’t recognize the types and patterns.  In other words, they don’t play that game.  However, folks fail to notice these mistakes because they are too consumed with worry about their math foundations.  Conversely, engineers with strong foundations also suffer here, especially in the DS because they try to use brute mathematical force instead of playing the game.  It is a behavioral problem.  People don’t do; they think.  Don’t think—much like in life, it only gets you into trouble.
Read more

I just read a really fascinating post on the New York Times’ Well blog. We’ve known for a long time that exercise has a whole host of good benefits, including benefits associated with memory. Two recent studies have delved even deeper into how this works.

How does exercise help memory?

In the blog post, New York Times journalist Gretchen Reynolds details the two new studies “ one conducted on humans and the other conducted on rats.

In the human study, elderly women who already had some mild cognitive impairment were split into three groups. One group lifted weights, the second group engaged in moderate aerobic exercise, and the third group did yoga-like activities.

The participants were tested at the beginning and end of the 6-month exercise period and the results were striking. First, bear in mind that, in general, we would expect elderly people who are already experiencing mental decline to continue down that path over time. Indeed, after 6 months, the yoga group (our control group) showed a mild decline in several aspects of verbal memory.

The weight-training and aerobic groups, by contrast, actually improved their performance on several tests (remember, this was 6 months later!). In particular, these groups were not losing as much of their older memories and they even became faster at some spatial memory tests involving memorizing the location of three items. In other words, the women were both better at making new memories and better at remembering / retrieving old ones!

Another group of researchers conducted a similar study, only this time rats were getting some cardio in or lifting weights. (The rats ran on wheels for the cardio exercise and, get this, for the weight lifting, the researchers tied little weights to the rats tails and had them climb tiny ladders!)

Read more

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 value of investment Q increased by q percent from the beginning of a particular year through June 30 of that year, and then experienced no net change from June 30 to the end of the year. The value of investment P increased by p percent from the beginning of that year to June 30, and the new value increased again by p percent from June 30 to the end of the year. If the percent increase in value from the beginning to the end of the year was the same for both investments, which of the following expressions gives the value of p in terms of q?

Read more

Here are the free GMAT events we’re holding this week. All times are local unless otherwise specified.

4/15/13– Silicon Valley, CA – Free Trial Class – 6:30PM- 9:30PM

4/15/13– Bellevue, WA – Free Trial Class – 6:30PM- 9:30PM

4/15/13– Austin, TX – Free Trial Class- 6:30PM-9:30PM

4/16/13– Irvine, CA – Free Trial Class-  6:30PM-9:30PM

4/16/13– Online- Free Trial Class- 9:00PM- 12:00AM (EDT)

4/16/13– Toronto, ON – Free Trial Class – 6:30PM- 9:30PM

4/17/13– Boston, MA – Free Trial Class – 6:30PM- 9:30PM

4/17/13– Glendale, CZ – Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

4/17/13– Washington, DC – Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

Read more

Catch up on some business school news and tips with a few of this week’s top stories:

10 B-Schools Where Full-Time Students Have the Highest GMAT Scores (U.S. News Education)

This week U.S. News shares its short list of the top business schools where full-time students average the highest GMAT scores.

The Exorbitant Cost of An MBA Has to Go Down (Business Insider)

According to NYU Stern School of Business professor Larry Zicklin, the days when getting an MBA costs well north of $100,000 are coming to an end.

U.S. Business Schools See Slower Growth From Foreign Applicants (Bloomberg)

According to Bloomberg News, international applications to U.S. graduate business programs are taking an unexpected plunge in the number of potential candidates from China.

Old-School Business Practices Worth Bringing Back (Harvard Business Review)

Harvard Business Review shares four elements of mid-twentieth-century business  culture that may be worth preserving.

Did we miss your favorite article from the week? Let us know what you have been reading in the comments below or tweet @ManhattanGMAT

Need to convert your Official Guide 12 problems to OG13 problems? Or visa versa? Check out our hand-dandy conversion guide for Quant problems, below. You can find our conversion guide for Quant problems here.

Need to convert your Official Guide 12 problems to OG13 problems? Or visa versa? Check out our hand-dandy conversion guide for Quant problems, below. You can find our conversion guide for Verbal problems here.

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:

If a, b, and c are integers such that 0 < a < b < c < 10, is the product abc divisible by 3?

(1) If   is expressed as a single fraction reduced to lowest terms, the denominator is 200.

(2) c “ b < b “ a?

Read more

Here are the free GMAT events we’re holding this week. All times are local unless otherwise specified.

4/8/13– San Francisco, CA – Free Trial Class – 6:30PM- 9:30PM

4/8/13– Online- Assessing Your MBA Profile presented by mbaMission– 12:00PM- 1:30PM

4/8/13– Santa Monica– Free Trial Class- 6:30PM-9:30AM

4/8/13– Online– Free Trial Class- 8:00PM- 11:00PM (EDT)

4/9/13– Salt Lake City, UT- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM-9:30PM

4/9/13– Chicago, IL – Free Trial Class – 6:30PM- 9:30PM

4/9/13– San Diego, CA – Free Trial Class – 6:30PM- 9:30PM

4/10/13– Phoenix, AZ – Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

4/10/13– Bellaire, TX – Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

4/10/13– Ann Arbor, MI – Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM
Read more

Catch up on some business school news and tips with a few of this week’s top stories:

Who’s Smarter? Law or Biz Students? (Poets & Quants)

Poets & Quants explores the provocative and tongue-in-check question of whether business students are smarter than law students or vice versa.

Business School Tuition: An Overview of Business School Tuition Costs (About.com Business School)

While the cost of business school is notoriously expensive, it is important to remember that there are many different ways to lower and pay your business school tuition.

Should Entrepreneurs Get an MBA? An Inside Perspective From an MBA Entrepreneur (Forbes)

An entrepreneur interested in startups shares how the majority of successful entrepreneurs and investors that she admires hold an MBA.
Read more