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No, The GMAT Didn’t Trick You

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - No, The GMAT Didn't Trick You by Reed Arnold

Guess what? 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.


A few quick questions:

1) Is ‘8x’ even?

2) Is y^2 positive?

3) What is √x + √y if x + y = 36?

4) What is the perimeter of triangle ABC below? Read more

Tiny GMAT Critical Reasoning Mistakes You Might be Making (Part 3)

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - Tiny GMAT Critical Reasoning Mistakes You Might be Making (Part 3) by Reed Arnold

Guess what? 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 hunt for tricky GMAT Critical Reasoning games continues. (Check up here and here for the first two parts on this series).

As before, I’ll present three types of GMAT Critical Reasoning mistakes I see students (and myself) make, and I’ll give some sample questions demonstrating the trick. Then I’ll give you a number for an actual CR problem in the 2017 OG that has this kind of thing going on in it. Read more

What Really Matters on GMAT Reading Comp

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - What Really Matters on GMAT Reading Comp by Reed Arnold

Guess what? 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.


How are you supposed to get better at GMAT Reading Comp? You’re already pretty good at reading, we must admit. After all, you’re doing it now. When you see a word, your brain recognizes it without you even trying. Seriously, try not to read this word: slurp. You can’t not read it. Read more

The Remainder Cycle

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - The Remainder Cycle by Reed Arnold

Guess what? 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.


One common complaint I hear from my students is that they ‘haven’t done math like this since high school.’ And they’re pretty much right: the concepts in the Quant section are by and large wrapped up by Algebra II. But for some subjects, my students drastically underestimate how long it has been since they’ve thought about them. One such subject: remainders on the GMAT. Read more

Advanced Error Log: Tie Your Hands Behind Your Back

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - Advanced Error Log: Tie Your Hands Behind Your Back by Reed Arnold

Guess what? 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.


It’s been said that “a mistake is only a mistake if you don’t learn from it,” which probably explains the shambles of my dating life. Read more

Tiny GMAT Critical Reasoning Mistakes You Might be Making (Part 2)

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - Tiny GMAT Critical Reasoning Mistakes You Might be Making (Part 2) by Reed Arnold

Guess what? 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.


As Hemingway did for lions on the Savannah, I have continued my hunt in GMAT Critical Reasoning problems for little mistakes in logic, the tiny tempting answer choices that could trap even the most rational of minds. I have also been consuming as much whiskey as he would have, so plese forgive any typps cos Im perty drnk rite now… Read more

The GMAT Testing Cases Process: Specified, Demystified, & Put into a Flowchart

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - The GMAT Testing Cases Process: Specified, Demystified, & Put into a Flowchart by Reed Arnold

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.


It’s become a bit of a running joke in my classes that I say, “The GMAT is a game of [a thing].” Every time I say it, I make it sound like I’ve revealed the hidden key to GMAT mastery: Read more

GMAT Sentence Correction: Modifiers and Meaning

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - GMAT Sentence Correction: Modifiers and Meaning by Reed Arnold

Guess what? 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.


Meaning. Important in life, important in GMAT Sentence Correction questions.

I realized recently just how much the GMAT loves switching between verbs and modifiers derived from verbs (we nerds know these as ‘participles’) in SC. For example: Read more

Tiny GMAT Critical Reasoning Mistakes You Might be Making (Part 1)

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - Tiny GMAT Critical Reasoning Mistakes You Might be Making (Part 1) by Reed ArnoldGuess what? 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.


Critical Reasoning. It’s not the easiest subject to teach, I tell ya. Or to study. On the one hand, it’s deceptively simple: ‘here are four sentences, answer a question about them.’ You might be glad there are no formulas, no little rules to memorize. Unlike geometry, in which you might not see a 5-12-13 triangle on the actual test but need to know about them just in case, GMAT Critical Reasoning is usually just a game of spotting a few parts of an argument and answering the question logically.

But while there are certain things that show up again and again—premise, conclusion, counterpoints, assumptions—there are a lot of different ways the GMAT can construct the logic, and a lot of different ways they can make wrong answers seem tempting. How many times have you been wrong but the answer just felt so right? Read more

How to Handle 3-Group Overlapping Sets on the GMAT

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - How to Handle 3-Group Overlapping Sets on the GMAT by Reed Arnold

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.


Most overlapping sets on the GMAT have two distinct groups. Students take French and/or Spanish (or neither), pianists play either classical and/or jazz (or neither), people like either QDoba and/or Baja Fresh (definitely neither. Chipotle, please)—and for these situations, the familiar, double-set matrix approach works best. Read more