Most people tend to think of business school as a step en route to a corporate job and a higher salary. While for many MBAs that is the elected life path, a recent article in Business Week would suggest that more and more MBAs are making use of their degrees in other ways.
Read more

This week marks the release of our Foundations of GMAT Math Strategy Guide Supplement! This book is one of the first of our Fifth Edition guides to be released, and we are excited for the updates and improvements it represents. Our instructors have been working overtime to make the book more comprehensive and accessible to students on every level, and at 10 chapters and over 500 pages, the new Foundations of GMAT Math is a significant upgrade from the previous edition.

Covering algebra, geometry, number properties, and more, Foundations of GMAT Math was revised to focus not only on foundational knowledge, but on computation in general.  The book now covers all of the basic computation that is tested on the GMAT, teaching students the material through easy-to-follow explanations and cementing understanding with over 700 practice problems.

One of our favorite additions to the book is a series of “If you… Then you…” tables that are designed to make understanding fundamental math principles a snap. We’ve included an example below:

Other improvements include an expanded section on word problems, a clearer problem solving process, and an emphasis on more focused questions.  Additionally, Foundations of GMAT Math now includes more difficult content, including a greater number of questions in the 500-600 range.

With a new cover, a new layout, and an abundance of new content, the Fifth Edition Foundations of GMAT Math is better than ever!  Check it out for yourself by visiting our store.

Also released today was the GMAT Roadmap! Read about it here.

We are excited to announce the release of our newest Strategy Guide, the GMAT Roadmap! Consisting of articles and essays written by our 99th percentile instructors, this book was created to help students navigate the complex and often frustrating waters of GMAT prep. Unlike our other strategy guides, the GMAT Roadmap is not designed to teach you content. Instead, we wrote it to address a need not often met.

Many a time we have seen students dive into their GMAT preparations headlong, without pausing to consider what and how they should study so as to best improve their scores. Yes, you can study everything from start to finish, but do you need to? Sure, you can review every day for ten hours a day, but will that improve your comprehension and retention? The GMAT Roadmap answers these questions by offering the guidance and structure you need to maximize your GMAT preparations.

Start with the first few chapters to learn about the GMAT, organize your study plan, and gauge your current skill level before diving into your preparations. Then, as you progress in your studies, dip back into the Roadmap when needed for strategy advice on the Quant and Verbal sections, tips on how to improve your time management, guidance on how to manage test anxiety, and a run-down on what to do before test day.

Success on the GMAT requires far more than content knowledge, and we want all GMAT students to achieve the score they’ve been working towards.  If you are looking for that extra boost to get you to the score you are looking for, or maybe just a little guidance along the way, the GMAT Roadmap is for you!

Interested in learning more? We’ve been posting samples of the GMAT Roadmap to our blog for the past few weeks, so check out the articles listed below for samples of the content covered in the GMAT Roadmap.

Determining Your Trajectory Up the GMAT Mountain: Developing a GMAT Study Plan
Determining Your Trajectory Up the GMAT Mountain: Working Within Your Timeline
How to Use Your Strategy Guides
Breaking Down Two Minutes: Time Management Within a GMAT Problem

Ready to dive right in? We are giving away the first two chapters of the book for free! Just click here.

Looking for a little extra? Sign up for our free GMAT Roadmap Webinar!

A few months ago, we shared an article with MBA-Social.com about how to avoid becoming That Guy at business school. It was an excerpt from the recently published book Case Studies & Cocktails: The Now What? Guide to Surviving Business School, and we found it to be a witty overview of how to keep one’s ego in check in b-school. There can be no denying that prospective MBAs are remarkable people: they’ve attended prestigious undergrad programs, earned good grades, launched companies, excelled in business, and stopped just short of saving the world.  For all of this, we applaud them “ we just don’t need to be reminded of it constantly.

Enter Mike Moradian.  Read more

By Shahid Hussain

If you are studying or applying for an MBA in your native land, skip this post, go home and make love to your passport.

I’m a limey by birth, and was lucky to get into Kellogg’s class of 2009. I was excited, but I had no inkling of how the visa process and dreaded words administrative processing would affect me over the coming years.

Home of the brave

We had people from all over the world at Kellogg “ Brazil, France, Japan, Indonesia “ you name it. Why did we all come to the U.S.? Read more

A few months ago, an article on the academic gender gap at Harvard Business School sparked us to write our own piece  on gender inequality in business (and in school).  We looked at information from numerous sources on how women perform in school, in the boardroom, and in academia, and we found that, in all cases, there was something holding them back. Recent research highlighted in the Financial Times sheds some light on the subtle discrimination that may or may not still be taking place. While our brief investigation left no doubt in our minds that gender inequalities exist, we were still unsure as to what could be done to change them.

This week, an article in The Economist described the steps European nations are taking to give women in business a better fighting change. Read more

Whether you are headed off to business school in the fall or just planning for the day when you will be, summer is the perfect time to beef up your knowledge with a little summer reading.  We spoke with Chris Ryan, Manhattan GMAT’s Vice President of Instructor and Product Development, and with Jason Arvanites, MGMAT Instructor and Yale School of Management 2^nd year, to ask them what books they thought should be added to the incoming MBA student’s summer library. (And if you’re looking for more books after reading the list below, be sure to check out last year’s summer reading list.)

Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert

What makes you happy?   Read more

Last week, in one of the government’s biggest insider trading cases ever, Raj Rajaratnam was found guilty on fourteen counts of securities fraud and conspiracy.  His conviction has stirred up even more conversation on what has been a hotbed topic since the financial crisis in 2008-09: business ethics.  Now, with 36 unrelated insider trading convictions in the past 18 months and several major b-schools attempting to refocus their curriculums, we thought we would share with you some of the articles we have been reading on the matter.

In an article on Poets & Quants, Joel Schectman discusses the hypersensitivity of Wharton graduates following the conviction of Raj Rajaratnam, a member of the Wharton ’83 class, just days before the business school’s May 15^th graduation.  The piece, which is filled with quotes from the students and staff, conveys the Wharton community’s mixed feelings about the trial.  Some of our favorite reactions include: We are all ethical; We can prepare them for the temptations, but we can’t inoculate them completely; and We hope we can do better. Read more

Historically, business has always been a boys club – picture spiffy suits, cigar clubs, and golf course negotiations. That was back in the day, of course, and recently women have become much greater players (think Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo).  Even so, gender equality – or inequality –  remains a hot-button issue, and some recent press has us taking a second look at women’s status in the business world.

When The Harbus reported recently on the academic gender gap at Harvard Business School, it stated that women were shocked by a marked historical difference between men and women’s academic performance at business school. The article goes on to detail how the women (the article’s authors in particular) combated their surprise by researching the causes of the achievement gap, looking to understand how personal, social, and demographic characteristics affect the academic experience.

After reviewing several possibilities, the researchers found that the most substantiated cause for women’s underperformance at HBS was their feeling of discomfort towards speaking in class.  The women reported feeling less comfortable participating due to their perceived difference in academic and professional backgrounds.  They also found themselves self-editing in class in order to manage their image outside the classroom.

Read more

An article on Fortune.com last week pointed out that the debt burden for MBA students at top business schools has seen an increase as of late.  This rise has largely been attributed to the recent recession. B-school financial aid officers have noted that the resultant pay freezes at pre-MBA jobs have caused more and more applicants to dip into their personal savings to finance their degrees. With applicants making less money as they enter school, and tuition costs growing steadily, the higher debt load seems almost inevitable.
Read more