What have you been told about applying to business school? With the advent of chat rooms, blogs and forums, armchair “experts” often unintentionally propagate MBA admissions myths, which can linger and undermine an applicant’s confidence. Some applicants are led to believe that schools want a specific “type” of candidate and expect certain GMAT scores and GPAs, for example. Others are led to believe that they need to know alumni from their target schools and/or get a letter of reference from the CEO of their firm in order to get in. In this weekly series, mbaMission debunks these and other myths and strives to take the anxiety out of the admissions process.

Many MBA admissions officers will tell candidates that if they can complete their applications and submit them in Round 1, then they should do so. Most programs will also tell candidates that they should try to avoid Round 3, because the majority of the places in their classes will have been filled by then. So, what does that say about Round 2? Read more

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.

When you took tests in high school or college, your grade was based on the number of questions you got right. The only way to earn an A was by answering almost every question correctly. If you’ve been studying for a while, you’ve probably heard that the GMAT is different—but how different is it, really? You know that you’re supposed to miss questions on the test, but how many can you actually miss on the GMAT Quant section and still get a good score? Read more

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.

In the first installment of this series, we deconstructed a challenging Reading Comprehension passage from the GMATPrep free exams. Pull up that page, as I’m not going to repeat the full text of the passage here. (And if you’re just starting here, go through parts 1 and 2 first before you read this one!)

At the end of the second installment, I posted the second problem for the passage. Let’s figure it out!

Here it is again: Read more

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.

After a few years of working with GMAT students, I’ve noticed a couple of trends among the super-successful — those who increase their GMAT score by 100 points, 200 points, or even more. Take a page out of these students’ books to increase your own GMAT studying efficiency. Read more

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.

There’s a particular exercise I like to do with students who overthink Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning problems. (I initially got it from fellow instructor Ceilidh Erickson, who developed this exercise for her own GMAT classes.) It involves answering GMAT RC and CR problems without looking at the passage or the argument. With a little training, my students can often reach 50% accuracy or better! That might seem impossible — but keep reading to learn the secret. Read more

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.

Ready for the long awaited conclusion of how to tackle a quant problem in two minutes? We’ll finally get to the point where you can submit an answer! If you haven’t been keeping up, catch up here. Read more

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.

There’s a type of sentence known among linguists and grammar mavens as a “garden path” sentence. These sentences earned this name by leading readers “down the garden path” — you think the sentence is going in one direction, but halfway through, you suddenly realize that it’s saying something else entirely. Here’s the classic example: Read more

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.

Last time, we talked about the IR and Verbal sections of the new Executive Assessment (EA) exam for EMBA candidates. Today, we’re going to dive into Quant and also talk more about your overall study. Read more

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.

What does it take to be a GMAT expert? It’s not just content knowledge (although of course that’s necessary). A GMAT expert knows how to quickly identify patterns and choose quickly from a variety of strategies. In each of these segments, I’ll show you one of these expert moves and how to use it. Read more

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.

The Executive Assessment exam was launched in March 2016 to provide a more streamlined version of the GMAT for EMBA candidates at certain schools. Follow that link for logistics.

I’ve spoken with multiple students who are planning to take the exam and they all have the same question: How should I prepare for this test? Read more