London School of Business Interview with Manhattan GMAT’s Robert Wilburn
The London Business School recently interviewed Manhattan GMAT instructor and Director of International Development Robert Wilburn. Below is an except.
Q: Are their any common misconceptions about the test you can provide clarity on?
There are a lot of misperceptions about the exam! Perhaps the most common one is that you should spend more time on the first 10 questions. This has floated around the Internet for years. GMAC, the organisation that produces the exam, explicitly discusses this in its Official Guide book, claiming that it is a myth that the first 10 questions are more important for your score. But, students still don’t buy it and want to spend more time on the first questions! The problem is that this leads students to run out of
time at the end of the exam, for which there is a severe penalty, in the words of the GMAC.There are some great sites out there on preparing for the GMAT, but even with the best sites, you have to be careful of the advice you get.
If you haven’t been a good test-taker in the past, you won’t score well on the exam. I’ve seen lots of students hit 700 through hard work, despite struggling at first with the exam. At the same time, I’ve seen many students who just try to rely on intuitive skill, and don’t score well because they never take the time to prepare for the exam.
The exam is biased towards native-English speakers. We work with a lot of students whose first language is not English, and actually, often these students know English grammar better than the native English speakers! The GMAT recently announced that over the past year it has been deemphasising idioms on the Sentence Correction part of the exam. This is good news for non-native English speakers (Note “ it doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be idioms on the exam anymore, just that they will be tested more infrequently). While you certainly need to have a strong written Englishlanguage capability, I’ve found that most students applying to top business schools have sufficient English skills that they are not at any noticeable disadvantage on the exam.
You can read the whole interview HERE.