We at Manhattan GMAT are happy to announce the launch of our first annual MGMAT Grant Program, designed to support organizations that prioritize the same standards and spirit as Manhattan GMAT.  Manhattan GMAT staff and instructors from around the country submitted applications to recommend worthy non-profit organizations to receive the grants. Winners were selected based on how closely the goals, standards, and values of the organizations match those of Manhattan GMAT.  We are pleased to award our 3 Instructor Grants for 2010 to the following non-profits:

2010 Instructor Silver Grant ($1,000):
Phoenix Collegiate Academy

2010 Instructor Gold Grant ($1,500):
North Oakland Community Charter School

2010 Instructor Platinum Grant ($2,500):
International Association For Human Values (Youth Empowerment Seminar)

We are excited to be supporting these impressive organizations and look forward to seeing all the great work they do this year!

We will also be awarding the first Manhattan GMAT Staff Grants “ totaling $10,000 “ to worthy organizations this year.  Stay tuned for an announcement of the recipients!

The GMAT is a necessary hurdle on your way to business school, but sometimes it’s hard to see why. What do these multiple choice questions really have to do with a masters in business administration? If this question plagues you, take a look at this recent post from the GMAC. It explains exactly how two types of questions”data sufficiency and critical reasoning”measure abilities required by business schools.

Data Sufficiency. This question type, which requires you to determine what’s necessary to solve the problem, is ultimately a test of your ability to weed through minutiae for the important details. And sorting through information is an essential skill set, given the data-rich nature of the modern business environment, says Booth School of Business professor Pradeep Chintagunta. To successfully manage in this environment requires translating the data into usable information, he says, adding, The skills tested by the Data Sufficiency part of the test are consequently critical to managerial decision making.

Critical Reasoning. These questions probe your ability to evaluate the relative strengths of arguments. If you can handle a critical reasoning question, you’re prepared for collaborative b-school projects requiring you to judge others’ ideas. And those projects, in turn, are designed to get you ready for the real world. MBA programs can provide students with decision-making processes, says Valter Lazarri, MBA director of the SDA Bocconi School of Management, Milan, but they need a raw ability to connect facts, to detect patterns, to discriminate true causation from spurious correlations.

Of course, it is easier to sort through information when you understand its substance”hence our content-based curriculum.  And don’t fret if you’re struggling in these areas. With diligent practice, you can develop your natural abilities.

The 12th Edition of the Official Guide for GMAT Review is an awesome resource, likely the best available, and we heartily recommend it to all of our students. Indeed, the Official Guide and its supplements are included with all of our courses and form the core of our curriculum.

However, if there is one weakness that students often cite, it is that the Official Guide’s explanations are sometimes confusing and/or unhelpful, particularly on some of the math problems.

To address this need, we are very proud to announce the imminent publication of the Official Guide Companion! This book includes thorough, step-by-step explanations to every math problem in the Official Guide, using the principles of our curriculum for consistency. Problems that customarily give students headaches are flagged as part of ‘Horacio’s Hotlist,’ named after ace Instructor Horacio Quiroga. There is also an online version of the OGC for easy reference.

Note that all of the referenced questions appear in the Official Guide itself, which is necessary to make use of the Official Guide Companion (hence the name).

All of our course students will begin receiving the book May 17th, as part of their course materials free of charge. The online version will be active one week earlier, on May 10th. It’s good to be one of our students!

Thanks to Chris, Dave, Carrie, Graham, and all of the other Instructors that worked so hard to make the Official Guide Companion possible! Many students are about to have a problem solved (pun intended). 🙂

Business school applications are a daunting prospect, and new questions pop up constantly. That’s why mbaMission founder Jeremy Shinewald will be holding regular Q&A sessions in our live online classroom, starting tomorrow at 6pm EST. Feel free to drop in at any point during the session”Jeremy will be available for the full hour.

If you can’t make it tomorrow, we’ll be holding another MBA Q&A in two weeks, on May 13. Stay tuned for future sessions as well.

Okay, not really. But ace Instructor Jen Dziura IS appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Network giving advice to her younger self on this link on WSJ.com (it makes sense when you watch it)!

Congratulations Jen! 🙂

What’s proper office etiquette? What type of drink do you order with what? Do I pay off my loans first or sock away some money for retirement?

We thought that these were excellent questions, and so were very excited when the guys from Gradspot.com came to our door saying that they were publishing a book about these and many other subjects, Gradspot.com’s Guide to Life after College. Basically, we wish that we had a book like this when we graduated from college (not THAT long ago . . . ).

If this sounds like a book you’d like too, pick up a copy or pass along one to your buddy/little sister/cousin/ex-girlfriend who’s graduating from college next month. They’ll thank you for it. 🙂

The GMAT just keeps expanding. GMAC reports that there are now more than 500 centers worldwide where you can take the test, up more than 25 percent since 2006.

A record 267,000 people took the test in 2009, and for the first time since its creation, there were more international than US test-takers (by just a single percentage point). A lot of the growth comes from China and India. The number of Chinese citizens taking the GMAT rose 35 percent in 2009, while 7 percent more Indians took it. The growth in the number of test-takers on the subcontinent has been explosive recently, increasing 128 percent in the last 5 years.

To meet the additional demand, the GMAC is opening an office in India, according to the Times of India. It will be the company’s third, after the US and UK. “I feel there’s great potential for growth in the country,” GMAC CEO David Wilson told the paper.

Thinking of going to school abroad?  You’re not alone! Applications are up sharply at European B-schools, according to Business Week. It’s part of an upward trend worldwide, but the increase is particularly high in Europe, where many institutions say apps are up 10 percent or more. The Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School in Belgium has doubled its class in the past year, while Switzerland’s St. Gallen has grown its part-time program 100 percent. The trend is also ramping up competition in many places–Westminster Business School, in the UK, has had to wait-list full-time MBA candidates for the first time in the school’s history.

The piece attributes the growth largely to career changers and young people looking for a recession safe haven that will bolster their resume. European schools are also increasingly attractive to international students who plan to return, thanks to easier visa requirements and widely dispersed alumni networks.

If you’re in the market for an international GMAT course, check out our new London offerings, as well as our Live Online classes. And if you just want to take a trip to Europe, the dollar’s getting stronger, so a Big Mac will only be $8 or so.

We’ve all heard various things about getting into business school. Is it true that only quant types get into Wharton and marketing types into Kellogg? Do alumni recommendations matter more than others? Is the third round really the dead zone in terms of getting into a selective school?

Well, if you want to know the real scoop on these and other issues, our admissions consulting partner mbaMission is holding Mythbusters events in Boston and Philadelphia next Thursday, March 18th, and online on March 23rd! All events are free and conducted by an experienced Admissions Consultant from mbaMission. Thanks to them for dispelling MBA Admissions myths everywhere!

If you have ever downloaded our popular free GMAT flash cards, you might have been one of the many individuals who requested that we make this resource available as an iPhone/iPod Touch app. You also probably heard us tell you that we were working on developing this very app and were excited over the prospects of a mobile version of our flash cards. That apparently wasn’t good enough for you guys because you flooded our phone lines with requests to get the app out faster and with more features such as flagging cards right or wrong and shuffling the deck. We added those features to the docket, but it still didn’t prevent you from following us out of our office, clamoring over this flash cards iPhone app. “Create an interface that is enabled for gestures so you can flick the cards!” “Create an iPhone-friendly version of the Manhattan GMAT website!” “Build in functionality to cast spells, like Harry Potter!”

While we were baffled by the spell request, we implemented the other two suggestions and produced a flaggable, gesture-realistic, and self-contained version of our flash cards that is now available in the iTunes app store for free!

We hope this is finally enough for you guys because our email server is about to explode from all your flash cards requests. However, we know this isn’t the case and in a few months from now, you’ll probably be asking us to make a new version for the iPad. Well, we hope that these flash cards keep you busy for at least a little while.

Also, please remember to rate the cards in the app store!