Businessweek recently hosted a chat with admissions officers from Kellogg, one of the most popular business schools for our students. We thought we’d pass the link along, as it’s always great to get insight directly from the people who will be reading applications. (Also, they mention that they just care about your highest GMAT score, so don’t fret if you didn’t knock it out of the park the first time!)

Here at Manhattan GMAT, we spend a fair amount of time introducing our students to the ins and outs of the GMAT (e.g.  How are the essays weighed and scored?  What are the practical implications of the test being computer adaptive?).  The GMAT is a unique test that raises its own distinctive issues and challenges, and learning about the test (as opposed to simply practicing test questions) is itself a valuable component to achieving a high score.

In response to popular demand, we have compiled answers to many of the questions that most students have about the GMAT in this FREE guide – the GMAT Uncovered.  This guide is available electronically via download at our site.  We are confident that the GMAT Uncovered will address many of the questions you may have about the GMAT, including questions you didn’t even know you had!  It was written by Stacey Koprince, one of our extraordinary Instructors, so you know it’s good.  🙂

Happy reading!

From the Wall Street Journal, Bschool tuition apparently was tax-deductible for at least one MBA student.  Whether this changes the scenario for MBA students everywhere is still open to question.

The New York Times recently published a very widely read article about how some business schools (Stanford among them) are looking to provide more broad-based training concerning how to synthesize and address complex issues as opposed to more functional skills such as finance or accounting (the University of Chicago is presented as representing more of a traditional MBA program).  Yet another reason to home in on what sort of business education you want for yourself, as prominent business schools are beginning to diverge in terms of educational philosophy and curricula.

The New York Times has a very interesting discussion up of whether MBA students should be considered ‘customers’ (i.e. have their input/feedback taken as gospel) as opposed to students.  The debate is based upon a recent Chicago Tribune article about the same topic.

It might be a good idea to decide yourself how you feel about this, and perhaps apply to schools that agree with you!

Our good friends at mbaMission, one of the top Admissions Consulting firms anywhere, are generously hosting a free online event on Thursday night, December 10th, at 8:30 EST.  Jeremy Shinewald, the Founder and President of mbaMission, will discuss what you can do to help yourself if you’re applying for Business School next year.  After all, you have 10 months or so.  What should you prioritize?  What should you do first? For answers to these questions and others, go ahead and register.

Thanks to Jeremy for hosting the event!

Manhattan GMAT was featured prominently in a Forbes story on growing companies this past week.  The article focuses on how picky we are about Instructors, which is certainly true!  The article did, however, mistakenly confer credit to Andrew for founding the Company, which we all know properly goes to Zeke Vanderhoek.  It also mistakes a ‘700’ for a ‘760’ as our score requirement, which is a pretty big gap/typo.  All in all though, it’s great to get some recognition!  🙂

Our 8 Strategy Guides, organized by topic, have been around for several years.  However, we were seeing some students who hadn’t looked at math in a LONG time and wanted a refresher.

So, after months of development, we are very happy and proud to announce the publication of our brand new Strategy Supplement, the Foundations of GMAT Math!  This book starts from the basics to give students those “Oh yeah, NOW I remember how to FOIL” moments.  We start with Order of Operations/PEMDAS and algebra, and go from there to fractions, geometry, exponents, divisibility and other flashback-inducing topics.  If you’re confident in your math skills, you may not need this book at all.  But otherwise, you may like it a great deal.  You know who you are . . .

All Manhattan GMAT Course Students will receive this book for free as part of their course materials.  If you’ve already started your course and want this book, contact studentservices@manhattanprep.com/gmat/ and they’ll hook you up (you may have to pay shipping depending on your location, but the book will be free).

Kudos to our curriculum wizards for their latest contribution to the best in GMAT Prep!

We generally stick to the GMAT over here and leave admissions stuff to the experts, but this transcript of a chat with a Columbia Admissions Officer on Businessweek.com seemed like it would be of interest to many of our students.  And we’re flexible and aim to please here at MGMAT!  🙂

Many people have heard that the early questions on the GMAT are crucially important because of the test’s adaptive nature; they have the (incorrect) sense that how you answer the first questions will determine the sort of questions you get for the rest of your test.

This belief is exaggerated and mistaken, as we have heard straight from GMAC.  But here’s another wrinkle – could the very first questions on the GMAT be experimental, and thus not count at all toward your score?

We recently heard second-hand from GMAC that every experimental item has been tested ‘in every position’ on the test.  That is, an experimental question will have appeared as Item #1, Item #2, . . . all the way up to Item #37 (on the math, or #41 on the verbal) before being added to the active item pool.  From this, it seems almost certain that yes, the very first questions you see may very well be experimental and not count toward your score.

What’s the concrete takeaway from this?  Among other things, it’s one more reason NOT to obsess too much about the early questions and maintain the correct pace throughout.  You don’t want to be spending extra time on a question that doesn’t count, and this applies as much to the first question as it does to one in the middle!  It also suggests the difficulty of trying to ‘read’ how you’re doing, as experimental items can appear at any time randomly, making it near impossible to gauge your own performance (though if you feel like you’re struggling with accuracy while keeping the right pace, it’s a good sign!).