Recently, we heard from GMAC that it has been testing meaning more often in sentence correction than it used to (this increase started years ago). In the last couple of days, I’ve gone through the first 100 problems in the Official Guide 12^th Edition (OG12) so that we can discuss some of these issues.

I’ve categorized these meaning issues into three broad categories; in this article, I’m going to call out some particular examples and discuss what’s going on with each. You can then use these examples to help you continue to study different problems. We’ve also put together a list of specific problems and answer choices that deal with these meaning issues. You can find that list here. Finally, pay attention to the explanation wording “ if it mentions that something changes the meaning or is ambiguous then you know a meaning issue is going on in that problem!

Before we dive in, I have to say that I was surprised while researching this “ turns out that there are even more meaning-based questions than I would have thought (which is why I’ve only gotten through the first 100 OG questions rather than all of them by deadline time). In the OG, a lot of the answer choices that test meaning also have other grammatical issues, so we can often get away with ignoring the meaning and focusing on the grammar.

My guess is that GMAC has been working hard to make us deal with the meaning more by not giving us a grammar out on so many answer choices (on the real test). If you’ve been ignoring the meaning aspect when you see that there’s a more pure grammar reason for getting rid of an answer stop doing that. When studying, pay attention to every possible reason for an elimination. Seek out these meaning issues and study them. Read more

This is an update on Stacey’s previous articles, posted earlier this week.

Two very important things:

(1) Larry just got back into the office and was able to check on some of these idiom issues (he was traveling earlier this week). He was able to clarify that American-centric idioms and expressions are the ones that they have dropped / been dropping. Idioms that are not American-centric are still in. That’s all he’s told me so far – he said “more to come” in his email. I’ll let you know when I have more.

This, of course, begs the question: which ones are American-centric and which ones aren’t? Unfortunately, there isn’t a definitive list of the idioms which do get tested (and there are thousands of idioms in the language), so we can’t just point and say “study this, don’t study that.” My guess is that the ones that we see in OG12 have probably already been mostly stripped of American-centric idioms, because they published that after they decided to start getting rid of the American-centric stuff.

So the lesson there is to study what you see in official questions (which, interestingly, was what we already said before because there are, as we’ve noted, so many idioms in the language).  Also – if you have learned non-American English (British English, for example) and see something where you think “really? I thought that was ” – then ignore that one.

(2) I want to reiterate something else: these aren’t major changes, though they are news and we do want to take action. In particular, meaning has always been there – it’s just that there are proportionally more questions now. If you have been studying meaning, then you should be okay whether you have to answer 3 or 5 or 8 questions that hinge on meaning. (Note – I’m making those numbers up – we don’t know how many questions will test meaning.) And meaning has been on GMATPrep CATs and other CATs as well, so you have been seeing meaning issues when you take CATs.

If you have been neglecting meaning… then you have some work to do. But that would’ve been the case even if they hadn’t said they’ve got more questions that revolve around meaning now. 🙂

And re: the idioms, see above.

This article is an update from Stacey Koprince’s Monday article.

I received a reply from Larry (Dr. Rudner – whom I quote in the article). He’s traveling right now, so can’t check specific details of problems and what is or isn’t included idiom-wise, but he did have this to say (quotes from him):

“I had no idea that students were studying idioms in preparation for the GMAT and that this is a big deal.”

–>So it’s good that we told him! I think this is a to-be-expected disconnect between the publicly-released – and by definition older – materials that we all see, such as the OG, and the new materials – but super-secret and not released – that he works with now. We have to go by the older stuff, of course, but he and his team are working exclusively with the newer stuff and don’t necessarily realize what we don’t know. Read more

by Stacey Koprince, Manhattan GMAT Instructor

I just got back from the biennial GMAC Test Prep Summit. (Quick: what does biennial mean? Just in case you see the word in a question!) We discussed a number of very interesting things. Don’t worry “ I won’t totally geek out on you “ but some of what we discussed will be useful for you even if you don’t make your career in test prep. 🙂

In this article, we’re going to discuss information from the conference that is relevant to everyone taking the test right now (or soon). Most of the key bits were gleaned from the presentations of Dr. Lawrence M. Rudner, Chief Psychometrician of GMAC. All quotes and statistics throughout this article are courtesy of Larry. Keep an eye out for a future article in which we’ll dive a bit more deeply into the Next Generation GMAT, which will launch in June of 2012. (Oh “ and biennial means every 2 years.) Read more

Yesterday was the 4th GMAC Test Prep Summit (GMAC is the organization that makes the GMAT) and we’ve got all sorts of interesting things to tell you. We’ll share a couple of highlights with you today; check back on Monday for a longer post.

Many students have been reporting that Sentence Correction on the real test has been feeling… different this year. We had some theories as to what was changing, and we were able to get confirmation yesterday from Dr. Larry Rudner, who is in charge of psychometrics for GMAC (or, in less fancy language, he’s the one who’s responsible for the overall development and construction of the test).

They’ve been writing more Sentence Corrections that emphasize issues surrounding meaning. There are more questions now in which two or more answers are grammatically correct, but only one maintains the meaning of the original question stem. There are already some examples of this in the existing, released materials (more about this on Monday), but these didn’t used to be as common. According to Larry, these are becoming more and more common – so those who are focusing primarily on grammar without paying much attention to meaning are going to find the real test a lot harder.

Larry also told us that they are moving towards completely phasing out idioms! They don’t want to penalize non-native speakers for things that don’t really interfere with comprehension and communication, so they are moving away from idioms entirely. When we asked how common idioms still are right now and when they would be gone completely, he said that “ideally” he hopes they’re all gone already, but there may still be some in the pool – it takes time to scrub the questions completely. So that’s big news – we really shouldn’t be worrying about idioms any longer!

We’re still poring through all of the material we heard and were given yesterday, so we’ll have more for you on Monday, but we wanted to get these tidbits out ASAP because they’ll definitely impact how we study going forward. Check back again on Monday for the rest of our news and analysis from the GMAC Summit.

For a more detailed article on this topic, check here.

Starting in June 2012, the GMAT will have a new section, called Integrated Reasoning. This section will take the place of one of the two essays at the beginning of the exam. As the date for this new section looms closer, the GMAC (the company that makes the exam) have slowly been releasing more information about it. One of the ways in which they have been doing so is via video, and we thought we would share their insight with you.

Here is a good overview of what the new section will include:

And here is a breakdown of the Graphics Interpretation Question Type — one of the four sections to be tested within the 12 Integrated Reasoning questions: Read more

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

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

Andrew Yang, our former President here at Manhattan GMAT, recently left us to pursue his own vision: creating a non-profit organization which aims to place college grads with start-ups across the country, following the model for Teach for America. Below is Andrew’s description of his new idea, Venture for America:

When a company has a serious problem, it sends its best people to solve it.

Right now our country has a serious problem – we need to create more jobs. And yet, our top college graduates are often not heading to innovative start-ups and early stage companies that will generate jobs and produce new industries. In 2010 over 50% of Harvard graduates went to work in financial services, management consulting, or to law school, with fewer than 15% going to industry, which includes companies big and small. The same picture holds true at other top college campuses.

Despite the numbers, many graduating seniors would have a strong interest in working for a start-up that had the potential to grow. It’s an ambition that’s commonly expressed among students. But there are significant obstacles for a senior looking to pursue this sort of opportunity: Read more

Recently, Chris Ryan, our GMAT instructor and Vice President of Academics, realized that helping our students through the GMAT just wasn’t enough. “When I had students come up to me and tell me their GMAT score, I was thrilled,” said Chris, “but I wanted to help them more.”

Although Chris considers the two years he spent at Duke Fuqua to be some of the most incredible of his life, he realized that, had he had a leg up when he had arrived, he would have immediately felt more comfortable. Many of his former GMAT students felt the same way.

That’s where Eric Caballero came in. After Chris and his co-writer Carrie Shuchart received great feedback and reviews for their book, Case Studies and Cocktails, Eric wanted to help Chris bring his lessons for pre-MBA students into the classroom.

And so, on Saturday and Sunday, July 23 and 24, Manhattan GMAT will be hosting its first ever pre-MBA Boot Camp. This two-day course will provide enrollees with a refersher of Economics, Statistics, Finance, Pricing and Accounting, all applied in the context of a B-School case study. The course takes place in New York.

In addition, the course will be free if students provide feedback about their experience.

Inetersted? If so, email ecaballero@manhattanprep.com/gmat/ or check out more info here.