Consider the following two sentences, adapted from a GMAT Sentence Correction example I use in my classes: Read more

Greetings, reader. I wish to determine whether you are a robot. To help me do so, I will show you a sentence, and then ask you a very simple question about the sentence. Just so you know, the sentence uses correct grammar and would be an acceptable answer choice were it to appear in a GMAT Sentence Correction question. Please don’t worry about correcting the sentence; instead, just read it and then answer the question. Ready? Read more

One of the most popular questions I get asked by my students: “Can you tell me where to find 700 level GMAT questions I can practice?” To which I have a reply ready: “I’d love to help you! But what’s a 700 level GMAT question?” 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.

Today, I want to share with you one of the easiest and quickest ways I’ve ever found to improve your accuracy when doing GMAT Critical Reasoning questions. 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.

Did you watch any of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang? If not, you missed out not only on some curling action that brought the house down*, but also on the most spectacular hockey shootout goal I’ve ever seen. If you saw it, you know the one I’m talking about! But there’s one other important thing you may have missed: an important lesson about GMAT timing. 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.

Before I was a GMAT teacher, I was a piano teacher. At my first job out of college, I would go house to house giving piano lessons to kids. The most important lesson I had for them was always the same: practice slowly, correctly, and in small, manageable pieces. Read more

I recently tutored a student “ let’s call her Jane “ who came to me two weeks before her test. Here’s the discussion we had:

Jane: Right now, I’m doing well on the verbal section, consistently scoring in the 80^th to 90^th percentile on my practice tests. However, my math isn’t as good “ the highest I’ve scored is 48^th percentile. I got a 630 on my most recent practice test, but I’d really like to score a 720. My GMAT date is two weeks from today.

Ryan: Why a 720?

Jane: I don’t know, I just heard that’s what you need to get into a top school.

Ryan: Well, let’s assume that you score in the 85^th percentile on the verbal section, an average performance for you. To get a 720, you’d need to hit the 90^th percentile on the quant section. Did you know that?

Jane: OH MY GOD NO! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?

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In my 9-session courses, all students are invited to try the first session for free. At the end of that trial session, one or more students invariably ask me, do I need to take this course to get a good score on the GMAT?

In a word, no. In fact, I scored a 760 on my first attempt, and I didn’t take a prep course. But then again, I devoted my lunch hour to studying for more than two months straight. Every. Single. Workday.

I’d like to think I’m a smart guy, but even so, there’s no way I could have scored a 760 without putting in significant study time. That is true for 99.99% of the GMAT-taking population, prep course or no. If you want to get the most out of my class, be prepared for an hour of homework every day for the duration of the course.

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The last blog post I wrote showed how modifiers can fool people on quant problems “ here’s the link.

Several of my students who got the baseball problem from that post correct dismissed the issue entirely and scoffed at me for showing them such an easy problem, then inevitably missed a variant of the problem I’m about to show you. Try it for yourself, and watch out for the modifiers!

The town of Malmo, Sweden has only two late-night food options: Pizza and Kebab. All sellers of late-night food have either a street permit or a permanent store permit. 60% of all the late-night food sellers in Malmo are street vendors that serve Kebab; 20% of all the late-night food sellers who have a permanent store serve Pizza. If Malmo’s ratio of total street permits to total permanent store permits is exactly 7 to 3, what percentage of all late-night food sellers in Malmo serve pizza?

 

(A)  10%

(B)  16%

(C)  24%

(D) 30%

(E)  70%

(If you’re not sure how to approach this problem, try brushing up on overlapping sets, covered in the Manhattan GMAT Word Problems strategy guide. Then come back and give it a shot.)

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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 was hanging out with a friend of mine the other day. She is a graduate student, and she asked me a question that she had come across during her research: Read more