Exciting news! GMAC (the owners of the GMAT) announced on Friday that, starting immediately, we’ll get our unofficial IR scores as soon as the test is over. They already do this for our Quant, Verbal, and Total scores, so IR will be added to the mix.

As with the other scores, the IR score will be considered an “unofficial” score until you receive your official score report. You can consider these test-day scores essentially official, though, as it’s incredibly rare for something to change after that day. The folks over at GMAC are professionals; they’re not going to release scores if there’s even a small chance that something could change, upsetting students who thought they had earned a different score.

So now you won’t have to wait to find out how you did on IR. (You’ll still wait for the essay score, of course, but that’s not quite so nerve-wracking, is it?)

Need to practice IR? Try our new free GMAT Interact lessons for Integrated Reasoning.

Happy studying and good luck on test 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:

If a, c, d, x, and y are positive integers such that ay < x and  is the lowest-terms representation of the fraction , then c is how much greater than d? (If  is an integer, let d = 1.)

(1)  is an odd integer.

(2) a = 4

Read more

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

10/14/13– San Diego, CA – Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/14/13– Glendale, CA- Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/14/13– Arlington, VA- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/15/13–  Chicago, IL – Essay Writing Workshop presented by mbaMission– 7:00PM- 8:30PM

10/15/13– Online-Live Online GMAT Preview– 9:00PM- 10:30PM (EDT)

10/16/13– Bellaire, TX- Free Trial Class-  6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/16/13– Toronto, ON – Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/16/13– Online – Free Trial Class-  9:00PM- 12:00AM (EDT)

10/17/13– San Francisco- Free Trial Class – 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/17/13– Online – Free Trial Class-  8:00PM- 11:00PM (EDT)
Read more

For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been learning the 4-step SC Process. (If you haven’t read that two-part article yet, go do so now!) Also, grab your copy of The Official Guide 13^th Edition (OG13); you’re going to need it for the exercises in this article.

People often ask what they should check “first” in SC, or in what order they should check various potential grammar problems. It would take too long to check for a laundry list of error types every time, though, so what to do? You take a First Glance: a 2-3 second glance at the screen with the goal of picking up a clue or two about this problem before you even start reading it.

Open up your OG13 to the SC section right now—any page will do—and find a really long underline. Now find a really short one.

How would you react to each of these? Each one has its own hints. Think about this before you keep reading.

A really long underline increases the chances that “global” issues will be tested. These issues include Structure, Meaning, Modifiers, and Parallelism—it’s easier to test all of these issues when the underline contains a majority of the sentence.

A really short underline (around 5-6 words or fewer) should trigger a change in strategy. Instead of reading the original sentence first, compare the answers to see what the differences are. This won’t take long because there aren’t many words to compare! Those differences can give you ideas as to what the sentence is testing.

Either way, you’ve now got some ideas about what might be happening in the sentence before you even read it—and that is the goal of the First Glance.

Read a Couple of Words

Next, we’re going to do a drill.  Flip to page 672 (print edition) of OG13 but don’t read anything yet. Also, open up a notebook or a file on your computer to take notes. (Note: I’m starting us on the first page of SC problems because I want to increase the chances that you’ve already done some of these problems in the past. It’s okay if you haven’t done them all yet. You can also switch to a different page if you want, but I’m going to discuss some of these problems below, FYI.)

Start with the first problem on the page. Give yourself a maximum of 5 seconds to glance at that problem. Note the length of the underline. Read the word right before the underline and the first word of the underline, but that’s it! Don’t read the rest of the sentence. Also go and look at the first word of each answer choice. As you do this, takes notes on what you see.

For the next step, you can take all the time you want (but still do not go back and read the full sentence / problem). Ask yourself whether any of that provides any clues. 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 positive number a is q percent greater than the positive number b, which is p percent less than a itself.  If a is increased by p percent, and the result is then decreased by q percent to produce a positive number c, which of the following could be true?

I.    c > a
II.   c = a
III.  c < a

Read more

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

10/7/13– Online – Free Trial Class- 8:00PM- 11:00PM (EDT)

10/7/13– Los Angeles, CA- Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/7/13– Irvine, CA- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/7/13–  Online – Writing a Standout HBS Application Essay presented by mbaMission– 5:00PM- 6:30PM (EDT)

10/7/13– Seattle, WA –Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM (EDT)

10/8/13– West Hollywood, CA- Free Trial Class-  6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/8/13– New York, NY- MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed presented by mbaMission– 7:00PM- 8:30PM

10/8/13– San Francisco, CA – Free Trial Class-  6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/9/13– Chicago, IL-Free Trial Class – 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/9/13– Palo Alto, CA – Free Trial Class-  6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/9/13– London – Free Trial Class-  6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/10/13– Online -Choosing the Right B-School presented by mbaMission- 9:00AM-10:30AM

10/12/13– Santa Monica, CA – Free Trial Class-  10:00AM- 1:00PM

10/12/13– New York, NY – Free Trial Class-  10:00AM- 1:00PM

10/13/13– Atlanta, GA – Free Trial Class-  5:30PM- 8:30PM

10/13/13– San Francisco, CA – Free Trial Class-  5:30PM- 8:30PM

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listings Page.