We have an update today on former Manhattan GMAT President Andrew Yang. Andrew left us a year ago to start Venture for America, which has put him in the news recently.

We at Manhattan GMAT are incredibly proud of what Andrew has done with Venture for America and we wanted to pass along an opportunity for you to help support that great organization. On Tuesday, June 12th, Venture for America is having their 2012 Summer Celebration fundraiser in New York City with featured speaker Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. Tickets are $250 (or $500 for VIP) and can be purchased here. Additional details can be found via the image below. We’ll all be there and we would love to see you there too.

If you’re unable to attend the fundraiser but would still like to support VFA, you can make a contribution to their Summer Celebration fundraising campaign

We invite you to test your GMAT knowledge for a chance to win! Each week, we will post a new Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for a free Manhattan GMAT Prep item. Tell your friends to get out their scrap paper and start solving!
Here is this week’s problem:

For any numbers a and b, min(a, b) and max(a, b) represent the minimum and the maximum of a and b, respectively. If c > a, is a < b < c?

(1) min(max(a, b), c) = max(min(b, c), a)

(2) max(max(a, b), c) “ min(min(b, c), a) > c “ a

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I’ve got a really interesting GMATPrep problem for you today. Try it out (1 minute 15 seconds) and then we’ll talk about it!

* The striking differences between the semantic organization of Native American languages and that of European languages, in both grammar and vocabulary, have led scholars to think about the degree to which differences in language may be correlated with nonlinguistic differences.

(A) that of European languages, in both grammar and vocabulary, have

(B) that of European languages, including grammar and vocabulary, has

(C) those of European languages, which include grammar and vocabulary, have

(D) those of European languages, in grammar as well as vocabulary, has

(E) those of European languages, both in grammar and vocabulary, has

I chose this problem because I wanted to remind myself (and you!) of something that I’ve been forgetting lately. We’ve been focusing a lot on meaning and very long underlines “ sentences in which it’s not so easy to find splits or differences among the answer choices. I wanted to remind myself that sometimes they do give us some easier clues to figure out what’s going on as long as we’re paying attention to the right things.

The process that we’re going to discuss below is my first, ideal process “ if I can use this method, I will. On the more convoluted sentences “ in particular, those with serious meaning issues, which often tend to have large chunks of the sentence changing “ well, okay, I’ll use the techniques that we’ve discussed in other articles. But those techniques are harder to execute and tend to take longer, so I want to use the most streamlined process whenever I can. Read more

My friend Zev Lowe (ESADE MBA ’09) took this photo in Kumasi, Ghana.

Did the sign make you laugh? Why would many speakers of English find it amusing?

Probably because it violates the principle of grammatical parallelism, thus creating unintentional hilarity.

We learn about parallelism in class 3 of our 9-session GMAT class. In short, parallelism is (or should be) present in any construction that puts two or more things the same way.

CORRECT: The company balanced its budget, hired a new janitor, and laid off two executives who wouldn’t stop stealing staplers.

In this sentence, balanced, hired, and laid off are all past tense verbs, nicely arranged in a list with an “and” before the last item. (Note that the comma before the “and” is somewhat controversial in American English. The GMAT tends to use a comma before the last item in a list, but you are not tested on this issue.)

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Do you have a crazy story about what you had to do in order to take the GMAT before it changes this weekend? Did you have to fly to Puerto Rico to find an opening at a testing center (We know somebody who did this when the GRE changed!)? Did you delay your honeymoon in order to take the test?

Share your crazy, funny, extreme, or otherwise amusing story with us as a comment on this Facebook post. Most “liked” story by Friday afternoon will win a free copy of our Case Studies and Cocktails book. 2nd most “liked” story will win a free Manhattan GMAT t-shirt. And, as an added bonus, your story might appear in a major news publication (pending your approval, details to follow)!

Our partners and friends over at mbaMission have posted their annual Harvard Business School Essay Analysis. Here is is what they had to say…

Harvard Business School (HBS) kicks off the MBA application season again, and this time it is doing so with a significant overhaul of its entire application. HBS has shrunk its written requirements from four mandatory essays of 400 to 600 words to two essays of 400 words each, but has added a new post-interview 400-word write-up (for the approximately 25% of applicants who are selected to interview), giving interviewees a mere 24 hours to submit their last word to the school.

Managing Director of MBA Admissions Dee Leopold has long held that essays play too prominent a role in the business school admissions process, but does giving candidates just two essays (analyzed later in this post) truly reduce the emphasis? We suspect that having only 800 words with which to make a lasting impression on the admissions committee, candidates will worry that they do not have enough space to successfully convey a full picture of themselves. We therefore expect that applicants will fret even more than usual over their essays, debating whether the two stories they have chosen to share will be sufficiently powerful and compelling, and giving their essays an incredible amount of attention. Meanwhile, to make up for this lack of space”and thus allay their fears that they have not shared enough information about themselves in their essays to persuade the admissions committee to admit them”they will likely stuff their resumes, interview sessions and recommendations with as much crucial information as they can squeeze in. In some ways, then, HBS is just forcing candidates to play a game of whack-a-mole”the school is trying to push information out of the essays, but the information will undoubtedly pop up elsewhere!  As long as the admissions process is competitive and requires that applicants submit qualitative data, candidates will seek to gain an edge any way they can.

Here is our analysis of HBS’s essay questions for this year”we hope it will give you that edge.

To read the complete analysis, please visit mbaMission’s blog.

We haven’t tried one of these yet: multi-source reasoning. These questions will consist of 2 or 3 tabs of information with accompanying questions. MSRs tend to have 2 or 3 associated questions, though it’s possible to have just 1 or more than 3. The one we’re going to try has been released as a sample question on the mba.com website and contains just one accompanying question.

Try the problem

Let’s try out the question: here it is. Just in case that link changes, you can also click on this link to go to the next-gen GMAT website, and then, toward the bottom of the page, click on the Multi-Source Reasoning link. We’re going to try the very first problem (with the text beginning Yesterday was the deadline).

Note: when you are done, do NOT click the next button. Just leave it up on the screen and come back here.

Set your timer for 2.5 minutes and go! (Note: we have an average of 2 minutes and 30 seconds for each IR question in the section, but some question types are more complicated than others. I recommend trying this one for 2.5 minutes, but you can spend 3 to 3.5 if needed. Normally, we would have at least 2 questions and a total of at least 5 minutes to spend on an MSR prompt, but we’re answering only 1 question here.)

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As a GMAT instructor, I’m always in the right frame of mind to notice grammatical errors in the world around us.

(One might also say that, as a GMAT instructor, I’m also the sort of nerd who takes iPhone pictures of these grammatical errors.)

What’s wrong with this sign?

If you don’t see the problem, take a step back and imagine that you are a Martian with little knowledge of human culture. Might you misunderstand this sign?

The problem is related to the modifier “that endangers workers.” (We cover Modifiers extensively in session 6 of our nine-week course.)

What noun is “that endangers workers” supposed to be modifying? Unsafe conditions. What noun is it actually modifying? Work site.

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Last week, we talked about what to do if you’re rushing to finish the test before it changes. As promised, this week, we’re going to talk about how to add integrated reasoning to your list of tasks if you’re planning to take the Next Generation GMAT.

First of all, the quant and verbal sections are not changing at all, nor is the one essay (analysis of an argument). You can still prepare for these sections in the same way that everyone has been preparing for years.

What does Integrated Reasoning test?

GMAC (the organization that makes the GMAT) says that the Integrated Reasoning (IR) section tests our ability to apply, evaluate, infer, recognize, and strategize. But how are they actually going to do this? They have developed four new question types that test us on a combination of quant and verbal skills together. If you’re worried about IR because quant is your weakness and you like verbal much more, it won’t be as bad as you think: a decent percentage of your IR questions will be based on verbal skills such as inferring information, articulating strengths or weaknesses, and so on. If, on the other hand, that sounds scary to you because quant is your big strength, the same applies: a decent percentage of the IR questions will be based on calculating averages, probabilities and percentages, reading graphs and interpreting the data, and so on.

In other words, whether quant or verbal is your strength, you’ll be able to carry over some of your skills into IR. And that’s good because, at first, you’re going to look at these new question types and feel a little bit of panic: they’re so long! They’re so weird-looking! They’re so different from what we’re used to! That’s true, but you can still learn how they work and how to handle them. I promise. : )

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We invite you to test your GMAT knowledge for a chance to win! Each week, we will post a new Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for a free Manhattan GMAT Prep item. Tell your friends to get out their scrap paper and start solving!

Here is this week’s problem:

For positive integers n, the integer part of the nth term of sequence A equals n, while the infinite decimal part of the nth term is constructed in order out of the consecutive positive multiples of n, beginning with 2n. For instance, A₁ = 1.2345678…, while A₂ = 2.4681012… The sum of the first seven terms of sequence A is between

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