Recently, I published an article challenging those going for a 750+ to answer a certain Quant question in 30 seconds. I received a lot of positive feedback about that article—and requests for more of the same.

I’m happy to oblige: here’s a GMATPrep CR problem. The normal timeframe is about 2 minutes—but if you’re going for a 750+, you’d need to be able to answer something like this much more quickly. 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:

At noon, Adam begins painting a house. Two hours later, Clara begins painting the same house and one hour after that, Wong begins painting the house. Each works without stopping at his or her respective constant rate. In the end, each paints 1/3 of the house. Working together and starting at the same time, Adam and Wong could paint the entire house in half the time it would take Clara to paint the house by herself. How long would it take Adam to paint the house entirely by himself?

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Lately, I’ve been speaking with a few different students who are aiming for a 750+ score—in other words, stratospheric! I’ve tried (and hope I’ve succeeded!) to impress upon these folks that getting such a score involves a lot more than studying the hardest questions.

What’s another crucial component? Finding faster/easier ways to answer questions that you can already answer now.

Why? The questions that you can do right now in the 650 or 700 range will need to turn into very easy-for-you questions in order to hit 750+. It isn’t enough that you can do them now in relatively normal time. You’ll actually need to turn these into I can answer this very quickly without making a mistake so that you can knock these out and have a little bit more time and mental energy to spend on the even-harder questions you’ll need to answer to hit 750+.

Try this GMATPrep question: Read more

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

3/04/13– Online- Free Trial Class– 9:00PM-12:00AM (EST)

3/10/13– Online- Free Trial Class-  10:00AM-1:00PM (EST)

3/07/13– Online- Thursdays with Ron–  7:00PM-8:30PM (EST)

3/04/13– Durham, NC-  Free Trial Class- 6:30AM-9:30PM

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

3/05/13– Washington, DC – Free Trial Class – 6:30AM- 9:30PM

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:

GMAC ˜Jazzed’ By Early IR Section Results (Poets & Quants)

Nine months after rolling out the newest section of the GMAT, representatives from GMAC talk about how test-takers are handling Integrated Reasoning.

Spring into a New Habit (Grad Hacker)

Struggling to keep a daily routine this semester? Grad Hacker shares five great tips to help you establish good habits over spring break.

The Rise of Social Entrepreneurship in Three Charts (Harvard Business Review)

HBR shares some interesting data about the rise of social entrepreneurship at some of the nation’s top business schools.
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Students ask this all the time “ they’ve heard that the scoring penalizes us for getting a lot of questions wrong in a row.

That’s true, to some extent “ there is something of a penalty built in if we get 4+ questions wrong in a row. The test writers don’t want us to spend, for example, 65 minutes doing the first 2/3 of the questions really carefully (in hopes of boosting our score very high) and then blowing the remaining questions. They prioritize steady performance over the length of the entire test, so they’ve built safeguards into the algorithm to ensure that we can’t game the test, essentially.

So how do I avoid getting a bunch of questions wrong in a row?

Here’s the thing. You can’t avoid that “ not in the way that you mean.

The only real way to avoid getting a bunch of questions wrong in a row is to make sure you don’t mess up your timing so badly that you get other questions wrong just because you’re rushing.

But that’s not what people mean when they ask me about this. Instead, they mean something like, I’m pretty sure I got the last two wrong “ I just outright guessed on the last one. Now, how do I make sure I get the next one right?

You can’t. You can never make sure that you get any particular question right. If you could well, then you wouldn’t need any help, right? : ) Nobody on the planet, not even the best test takers, can guarantee that they’re going to answer any particular question correctly.

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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:

If x^3.5 > y^2.5 > z^1.5, then which of the following cannot be true?

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

2/28/13– Online- Free Trial Class– 8:00PM-11:00PM (EST)

3/02/13– Online- Free Trial Class- 1:00PM-4:00PM (EST)

3/03/13– Online- Free Trial Class– 7:00PM-10:00PM (EST)

2/28/13– Online- Long-Term MBA Planning presented by mbaMission– 8:00AM-9:30AM (EST)

2/26/13– Austin, TX- Free Trial Class– 6:30AM-9:30PM

3/03/13– Boston, MA- Free Trial Class– 10:00AM-1:00PM

Read more

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

Bouncing Back From the Great Recession (Poets & Quants)

Poets & Quants examines data through 2011 to see which business schools have been able to recover the losses from the Great Recession and which schools have actually gained ground.

Harvard Business School Splits $50K Between 10 Student Startups Dedicated to Going Lean (BostInno)

Harvard Business School’s Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship recently announced the 10 student groups who will receive $5,000 each to fund their startup ventures.

What Harvard, Haas and Other Top Business Schools Want to Learn About You (Forbes)

Former Executive Director of Admissions for the full-time program at Berkeley-Haas shares what business school admissions committees are really looking for in their applicants.

Why MBA? How an MBA Can Boost your Employability (The Telegraph)

The Telegraph discusses how MBA graduates”particularly those from top-tier schools”are still in demand from leading employers despite the tight job market.

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

The first time I read the original sentence in the below SC problem, I thought to myself: wait, what? What are you actually trying to say? I knew immediately that this would be a good one to discuss with all of you. 🙂

Let’s try it out (1 minute 15 seconds) and then we’ll dive in. This question is from the free problem set included in the new GMATPrep 2.0 version of the software.

*  Displays of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, can heat the atmosphere over the arctic enough to affect the trajectories of ballistic missiles, induce electric currents that can cause blackouts in some areas and corrosion in north-south pipelines.

 

(A) to affect the trajectories of ballistic missiles, induce

(B) that the trajectories of ballistic missiles are affected, induce

(C) that it affects the trajectories of ballistic missiles, induces

(D) that the trajectories of ballistic missiles are affected and induces

(E) to affect the trajectories of ballistic missiles and induce

This was my thought process as I read that first sentence:

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