US News and World Report recently released its latest b-school rankings, and the folks over at admissions consulting firm MBA Mission gave their take on the news here.

(To echo something in the MBA Mission post, it is far more important to make sure a school is right for you than it is to make sure that the school has a high ranking. Please don’t get all caught up in artificial rankings and then find yourself at the wrong school for you.)

If you want to go straight for the US News report, follow this link.

Don’t worry. It isn’t launching until 2013(!), so if you’re planning to take the test before then, you don’t have to worry about any big changes the test writers decide to introduce.

If you are curious, though, click this link to a short mention of the news in The Economist. There isn’t much info – GMAC is obviously still in the early stages of developing their “Next Generation GMAT” – but there’s some interesting discussion on trends in business school admissions.

The GMAT, like many things in life, is a stressful experience. We arrive and we’re handed a bunch of legal information that we have to read and sign. We have to empty our pockets and put everything in a locker, evoking feelings similar to going through airport security. A digital photo and a digital fingerprint or palm scan are taken. Every time we enter or leave the testing room, the digital fingerprint or palm scan is repeated. Oh, and then, the outcome of the next four hours could have a major impact on the success (or not…) of our business school applications.

It’s no wonder that, by the time the exam begins, we’re seriously jittery. But is there really anything we can do about that?

Carrie Shuchart, ManhattanGMAT instructor extraordinaire, thinks so and she recently wrote the article “Managing GMAT Stress: 7 Useful Tips” to share her great strategies with us (click on the title to read the article).

You may also be interested in this older article, “Stress Management,” which discusses some physical relaxation techniques that can help to reduce stress.

That must be a typo, right? The GMAT isn’t anything like tennis. I don’t need to know the Pythagorean Theorem to play tennis. And when I take the GMAT, I’m not even allowed to stand up, let alone run around the room. So what is the title of this post talking about?

When I take the GMAT, I pretend that I’m playing tennis. I do not pretend that I’m taking a final exam.

When I was in college, I did as much work as I could on every problem to try to make sure that I got everything right. I could afford to spend that time because college exams didn’t have the kinds of time constraints that we have on standardized tests. I didn’t have to make any “tradeoff” decisions between problems. I also expected to be able to answer every question (or almost every question) correctly, and the professors expected that those students who had studied adequately would also be able to answer all or most of the questions.

But the GMAT doesn’t work that way. The more time I spend on the current problem, the less time I’m going to have on the remaining problems in this section, and there’s a penalty if I don’t finish or get a lot wrong in a row. Further, because of the way the test is scored, I am not going to get all or even almost all of the questions right. In fact, except at the highest and lowest scoring levels, people only get about 60% of the questions right – even for a 700!

So, rather than think of the GMAT as a school test, I think of it as a tennis match. Here’s how the two are similar:

* GT = GMAT Translation

In a tennis match, my goal is to win the last point, because that means I’ll also win the match. (GMAT Translation: I have to put myself into the best position to “win the last point” – though I won’t necessarily get that last question right. I might get it wrong. I just need to make sure I give myself a shot at getting it right.)

Now, I don’t want to imply that I should rush through the middle of the test just to make sure I can answer that last one. Clearly, if I lose too many points in the middle of the tennis match, well, that will be the end of the match right there. (GT: I need to move steadily through the test and address each question for an appropriate amount of time. I need to give myself a decent shot at every question.)

At the same time, I remember that I’m going to win some points and I’m going to lose some points. Hopefully, I win a few more than I lose, but I’m definitely not going to win all of the points. (GT: I’m going to get a lot of questions wrong… but I can still win the match!)

When my opponent takes control of the point and starts running me side to side, tiring me out (GT: I get a question that’s too hard for me), I make a strategic choice. I give myself one last shot to try to hit a winner (GT: I make an educated guess). If my opponent wins the point, I applaud (“Nice shot!”), forget about that point, and gear up for the next one. (GT: I let it go. I don’t want to get bogged down thinking about that one question because then I’m going to be too distracted to concentrate on the next one. Instead, I remind myself that I don’t need to win every point in order to win the match.)

If you’ve been struggling with timing, switch up your mindset and “play tennis” with the GMAT on your next practice test. This could be just the thing to help you get past the “I must get everything right” mindset!

Hi, all, and welcome to my inaugural post on the MGMAT blog. I’m really excited to join Andrew in talking about All Things GMAT. 🙂

As we gear up for the fall 2009 admissions frenzy (for admission in 2010), a lot of people have been asking how they should plan their GMAT prep. So I thought I’d post some ideas about how to get started. People prep in a variety of ways but there are three big categories in general: self study, private tutoring, and classes.

There is no one right way to prep, but there are some things to keep in mind while you decide which path is the best one for you.

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This is the latest in a series of How To Analyze articles that began with the general How To Analyze A Practice Problem article (click to read the original article). In this installment, we’re going to analyze a specific Sentence Correction question. Try it now (1 minute, 15 seconds):

Research has shown that when speaking, individuals who have been blind from birth and have thus never seen anyone gesture nonetheless make hand motions just as frequently and in the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.

A) have thus never seen anyone gesture nonetheless make hand motions just as frequently and in the same way as sighted people do, and that

B) have thus never seen anyone gesture but nonetheless make hand motions just as frequently and in the same way that sighted people do, and

C) have thus never seen anyone gesture, that they nonetheless make hand motions just as frequently and in the same way as sighted people do, and

D) thus they have never seen anyone gesture, but nonetheless they make hand motions just as frequently and in the same way that sighted people do, and that

E) thus they have never seen anyone gesture nonetheless make hand motions just as frequently and in the same way that sighted people do, and

After trying the problem, checking the answer, and reading and understanding the solution, I try to answer these questions:

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When we study practice problems, our overall goal is to master the problem we’re working on right now. What does mastery mean? It means that, when we see a future different problem that tests the same thing as this current problem, we will recognize that the future problem has certain things in common with this current problem, and we will know what steps to take as a result ” we will, literally, recognize what to do on the future different problem, a problem we’ve never actually seen before.

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