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.

Studying for the GMAT is likely one of the hardest things that you’ll ever do. Many of my former students tell me that studying for the GMAT was way harder than business school classes! 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 working with thousands of students, I’ll admit: Reading Comprehension is my least favorite subject to teach. Why? Because unlike Quant or grammar, it doesn’t have concrete rules to apply, so it can be harder to find ways to help when students are struggling.

I have found, though, that many students who struggle with GMAT Reading Comprehension aren’t actually struggling with the “reading” or the “comprehension” part (unless they struggle with English skills generally). No, the passages – though dense and often boring – are mostly ok. It’s answering the questions that’s a struggle!

RC questions can seem vague, and the answer choices can feel like a sphinx’s riddle. Often 2 or 3 answers choices may seem equally right, or maybe none of them seem right! So what should you do? 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.

I had a student recently whose Data Sufficiency (DS) accuracy was generally very high, and whose knowledge of geometry rules was solid. And yet, she was getting almost every geometry DS question wrong on practice tests!

This is actually very common: students who are otherwise good at geometry and/or DS struggle when the two things are put together.

Here are the 3 main reasons that students miss geometry DS problems: 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.

Let’s do an experiment. This is one I do with all of my GMAT classes and tutoring students. Grab a piece of paper, a pen, and a stopwatch (or use the stopwatch function on your mobile device). 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.

If you’re anything like me, you read books and articles avidly (although maybe less often than you did in college), and you’ve been told that you’re a good writer (although you definitely write less than you did in college). The Sentence Correction portion of GMAT Verbal seems like it should be easy for you: fix anything that sounds like bad writing, and you’ll do well here.

Unfortunately, that assumption is wrong. Read more

Here’s a scenario that might seem familiar to many of you: you take your first GMAT practice test, then you see the score. Ouch! Probably lower than you were hoping for, right? Read more

A student of mine once emailed me after he took the GMAT. Instead of telling me his score, he wrote, “let’s just say that 4 times my score is a multiple of 88, and 5 times my score is a multiple of 35.”

Can you tell what he got? If not…you may need to work on your GMAT translation skills! Read more

If you have two equations, you can solve for two variables.

This rule is a cornerstone of algebra. It’s how we solve for values when we’re given a relationship between two unknowns:

If I can buy 2 kumquats and 3 rutabagas for $16, and 3 kumquats and 1 rutabaga for $9, how much does 1 kumquat cost?

We set up two equations:

2k + 4r = 16

3k + r = 9

Then we can use either substitution or elimination to solve. (Try it out yourself; answer* below).

On the GMAT, you’ll be using the “2 equations à 2 variables” rule to solve for a lot of word problems like the one above, especially in Problem Solving. Be careful, though! On the GMAT this rule doesn’t always apply, especially in Data Sufficiency. Here are some sneaky exceptions to the rule…

2 Equations aren’t always 2 equations
Read more

Distractions are bad. Routine, concentration, and hard work are good. These all seem like common-sense rules for studying, right? Surprisingly (for many people, at least), learning science tells us that these “good GMAT study habits” may actually be hurting your learning process! Read more