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

3/25/13– Houston, TX – Free Trial Class – 6:30PM- 9:30PM

3/26/13– West Hollywood, CA- Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

3/26/13– Online- Free Trial Class- 8:00PM-11:00PM (EST)

3/28/13– London- Choosing the Right B-School presented by mbaMission [London Center]– 7:00PM- 8:30PM

3/29/13– Online- Choosing the Right B-School presented by mbaMission– 8:30PM-10:00PM (EST)

3/30/13– Boston, MA – Free Trial Class – 2:00PM- 5:00PM

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

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

Where Six-Figure MBA Pay is a Done Deal (Poets & Quants)

According to John Byrne at Poets & Quants, there are 39 business schools in the U.S. alone whose graduates make six-figure salaries and bonuses right out of the gate.

Striking Out: Five Ways MBA Applicants Go Wrong (Bloomber Businessweek Business Schools)

What happens if you don’t receive an acceptance letter from anywhere? Here are five common pitfalls that applicants experience in the application process.
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Note: This post is by Liza Weale, Senior Consultant at mbaMission

The news is out: as our friends at Poets & Quants shared this week, selectivity at top business schools dropped during the 2011“2012 application cycle, with a few exceptions.

While almost all the top-ranked MBA programs saw a decrease in selectivity, the biggest change was at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. Two years ago, Ross reported an acceptance rate of 32%, but for the most recent application cycle, the reported rate was 41%.

So, if you’ve been considering applying to business school, you may be thinking you’d be a shoo-in now, right? If only history could predict the future.

What exactly will the acceptance rate look like at Ross next year? Will the school see a flood of applicants hoping to benefit from the higher acceptance rate”therefore actually lowering the acceptance rate? Or will candidates choose to apply elsewhere? Will Ross see a higher yield (the percentage of admitted students who enroll at the school) and have to ask people to defer their offer, as the MIT Sloan School of Management was forced to do this past summer?

The reality is that you cannot possibly know how many people”or especially, how many qualified people”are applying to a particular program in a given application season.

Business school is a long-term investment; it’s not day trading. If you’re hoping to capitalize on short-term market fluctuations, you are likely going to be disappointed. So, instead, assume that the schools are going to be just as competitive as ever and put together the most compelling application possible. Here are some thoughts to help you get started.

1.  Get to know the schools in-depth to find the right fit for you”visit campuses, sit in on classes, talk to alumni, scour the information available online. Not only will this firsthand research help you better identify the proper programs for what you are seeking, but it will also come in handy when you are asked to explain in your essays and interviews why Yale/Ross/Anderson/Kelley/etc. is the best fit for you. And a side note: if the MBA programs are feeling pinched for applicants, their students will surely benefit in the end. Whether through new or improved facilities, added courses, star faculty, or other significant investments, the schools are eager to do what they must to attract the best and the brightest.
2. Invest in the GMAT”follow a plan that builds both skills and endurance over time. All too often, candidates assume that because they did well on the SAT, they’ll do well on the GMAT; as a result, they fail to study properly, are disappointed with their results and find themselves scrambling after their first attempt. Assume that you’ll be studying at least a half dozen hours a week for a few months, and realize that only 10% of test takers achieve that coveted 700 score.
3.  Be thoughtful about your candidacy. Are you, say, a consultant”as are so many other applicants? If so, think about the stories from your life that highlight your atypical qualities and achievements. Perhaps you traveled to China for two months to work on a start-up or helped your little sister rebound academically after some low grades. Do you come from a nontraditional background like education? If so, focus on showcasing experiences that illustrate your critical thinking skills”skills an admissions committee might not otherwise assume that you have.

Bottom line: do not stress (or relax!) too much about the numbers. Getting into business school is hard work, and it always will be. Gaming the system is impossible, so don’t waste your time wondering about questions you can’t answer and things you cannot control. Direct that energy instead to crafting the best application you can, and you will be fine. In fact, you may even enjoy the process.

Wait, is that a typo? Maybe I meant Confucius, the Chinese teacher and philosopher?

I actually do mean confusion. ? Journalist Annie Murphy Paul recently contributed a post to KQED’s Mind/Shift blog: Why Confusion Can Be a Good Thing.

Go ahead and read it “ I’ll wait. It won’t take you more than 5-10 minutes. Take particular note of item 2 on her 3-item list.

Why Is Confusion Good?

Ms. Murphy Paul supports her thesis with an important point: When we don’t know the right way to do something, we open up our minds to many potential paths “ and sometimes an alternate potential path is better than the official path.

We’ve all had the experience of reading an official solution and thinking, “Seriously? That’s how you have to do this?” only to find a better way on an online forum or via discussion with a teacher or fellow students.

Further, as far as a test like the GMAT is concerned, the discomfort inherent in figuring out that best path allows us to determine why a certain approach is preferable. That knowledge, in turn, helps us to know when we can re-use a certain line of thinking or solution process on a different (but similar) question in future.

How Can I Use Confusion To Help My Prep?

Murphy-Paul offers three suggestions (quotes below are from the article; the rest is just me):

(1) Expose yourself to confusing material
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Here are the free GMAT events we’re holding this week. All times are local unless otherwise specified.

3/18/13– Online- Free Trial Class- 12:30PM-3:30PM (EST)

3/21/13– Online- Free Trial Class-  9:00PM-12:00AM (EST)

3/23/13– Online- Free Trial Class– 10:30PM- 1:30PM (EST)

3/24/13– Online- Free Trial Class- 1:30PM-4:30PM (EST)

3/20/13– Online- MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed presented by mbaMission– 8:30PM-10:00PM (EST)

3/21/13– Online- Thursdays with Ron– 7:00PM-8:30PM

3/18/13– Glendale, CA- Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

3/21/13– Los Angeles, CA – Free Trial Class – 6:30PM- 9:30PM

3/21/13– Irvine, CA – Free Trial Class – 6:30PM- 9:30PM

3/23/13– San Francisco, CA – Free Trial Class – 10:00AM- 1:00PM

3/24/13– Santa Monica, CA – Free Trial Class –  5:30PM- 8:30PM
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Catch up on some business school news and tips with a few of this week’s top stories:

10 B-Schools That Lead to Jobs (U.S. News Education)

According to U.S. News, four MBA programs boast 100 percent employment rates for students three months after graduation. Read on for the top ten list.

MBA Admissions Decisions Coming Down to the Wire (Bloomberg Businessweek)

Bloomberg reports that many top schools expect to announce round-two admissions decisions by March 28, and many schools, including Virginia, Chicago, Stanford, Duke, Harvard, and Cornell, are still accepting applications for round 3.
Read more

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

It’s a funny thing—folks get good at doing OG problems at their desks.  Then they take a practice CAT, with the clock on the monitor running down, like sands in the hourglass.  Suddenly they are seized by amphetamine psychosis.  Like NFL rookies, the big adjustment is to the speed of the game.  When you’re taking the test, if you can’t do it* in two to three minutes, you can’t do it.*  However, timing problems are an effect, not a cause.  People have timing problems because their math foundation sucks.  People have timing problems because they don’t get a good rephrasing.  People have timing problems because they don’t compare SC choices vertically.  People have timing problems because they don’t have the discipline to guess.  And so on.  All of these problems are fixable.  Like most GMAT issues, timing problems are the result of either a poor foundation or bad behavior.

Take foundation work. . .please—that’s a joke from your grandparents’ day.  When I say 7 times 13, you say 91.  Think of it as a rap.  When you see .625, you say 5/8.  Woot.  All seriousness aside, people waste 30 seconds a question in the quant because they don’t know their times tables or squares or the fractional decimal percentage equivalencies.  Or their algebra isn’t smooth and silky.  Think about how much time that uses up during the section.  How do you fix that?  How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice, practice, practice.  That’s a New York joke—LA classes hate it.  You have to want it enough to do the work that you need to do.  That amount varies, person to person.

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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:

In the expression a $ b, the $ symbol represents one of the following arithmetic operations on a and b (in the order the variables are shown): addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Given that it is not true that a $ b = b $ a for all possible values of a and b, a pair of nonzero, non-identical values for a and b is chosen such that a $ b produces the same result, no matter which of the operations (under the given constraints) that $ represents. The nonzero value of b that cannot be chosen, no matter the value of a, is

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

3/13/13– Online- Free Trial Class– 8:00PM-11:00PM (EST)

3/17/13– Online- Free Trial Class-  7:00AM-10:00PM (EST)

3/14/13– Online- Live Online GMAT Preview– 8:00PM- 9:30PM (EST)

3/11/13– Ann Arbor, MI-  Free Trial Class- 6:30PM-9:30PM

3/11/13– Chicago, IL- Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM
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Catch up on some business school news and tips with a few of this week’s top stories:

Can You Get Into Harvard’s B-School? (Poets & Quants)

Find out what it takes to get into Harvard Business School”the best MBA program in the world”and how HBS’s average GMAT scores and GPA compare to those of other top b-schools.

2014 Best Graduate Schools Preview: Top 10 Business Schools (U.S. News Education)

U.S. News has plans to release their full list of graduate school rankings on March 12^th but here is a sneak peak of the top 10 highest-ranked business schools.

Business School Chart of the Week: Liberal Arts College Boasts Best GMAT Scores (mbaMission)

MbaMission’s chart of the week shows that test takers who score the highest overall on the GMAT apparently come from a school that does not even offer a business major. Can you guess which college made the top spot?
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