The Importance of Getting to No on the GMAT — Part 1
Recently, a colleague of mine shared this very interesting puzzle published by the New York Times. (Thanks, Ceilidh!)
Go ahead and try it. I’ll wait. After you’ve tried the puzzle, you can read the short article that goes with it.
What did you learn about how humans tend to think? More important, what did you learn about how you think?
That tendency to look for the no, or to try to disprove something, is a trait shared by scientists, devil’s advocates, and great standardized test takers. You can learn to make this your natural reaction, too!
How to Tackle Every Single GMAT Problem (Seriously!) – Part 1
Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have one common thread among every single GMAT problem you’ll ever do, something you do no matter what kind of problem or content area is being tested?
I’m here to answer your prayers. ? Read more
How to Get the Most out of the GMAT Official Guides
Now that the new 2016 GMAT Official Guide books are out, I’d like to talk about how to use these problems to get the most out of your study. I also want to talk about what not to do, as a lot of people end up essentially wasting these great study problems (not to mention valuable time!).
What should I NOT do?
Your goal is to learn from the GMAT Official Guide (OG) problems in such a way that, if you see something similar on the real test, you’ll recognize what to do on that new problem.
Keep some things in mind:
- Your goal is NOT to memorize how to do the problems that you’re studying. You won’t see these exact problems on the test! Can you tell me exactly how to do a particular problem? That’s great. But I care far more whether you can tell me how you know what to do and why you want to take the steps that you take. If you can, then you’ll know how to think your way through a new problem on the real test.
- Your goal is NOT to try to get everything (or even most problems) right. Sometimes, what you want to recognize fairly quickly is that you should guess immediately and move on. Other times, you want to recognize that your best strategy is to spend some time making an educated guess—and then move on. Still other times, you’ll have to be able to recognize that you initially thought you could do this one but it’s just not happening, so you’ll need to cut yourself off, guess, and move on.