FAST Math for the GMAT (Part 3 of 5)
Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.
Welcome to the third installment of our Fast Math series. (Miss the earlier installments? Start here.)
Here’s the basic premise: I’m always on the lookout for ways to get out of doing tedious paper calculations on the GMAT.
The awesome part: The test writers actually set this up for me! They know we’re not going to have to do a bunch of paper math in b-school or the real world, so they construct problems that allow us to take advantage of all sorts of shortcuts…if we’re paying attention.
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FAST Math for the GMAT (Part 2 of 5)
Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.
Welcome to part 2 of our Fast Math series! In Part 1, I acquainted you with the fact that I’m a lazy math person: I don’t want to do any more than I have to in order to answer the question. And this series shows you how! ☺
Principle #2: Learn shortcuts for when you do have to do the math.
You already saw the first example of this in Principle #1:
Shortcut #1: When multiplying a string of numbers, pair off the 5’s and 2’s and multiply them first.
What if that last problem in part 1 hadn’t had a 20 in it? If you had to multiply 5 and 81…how would you do that? Read more
FAST Math for the GMAT (Part 1 of 5)
Guess what? You can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free—we’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.
I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty lazy when it comes to doing math on paper. Blame constant access to Excel and the calculator on my phone…but I’m completely over doing math on paper.
If you give me a problem that’s going to require half a page of calculations…well, I’m not going to want to do that problem. But on the GMAT Quant section, I don’t get a calculator, so how can I still get a 99th percentile score while staying true to my lazy-math desires?
Let’s do some Fast Math! Read more
What You Need To Know About The GMAT Focus Edition
The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) has revealed that the GMAT Focus Edition—a next-generation GMAT exam—will launch on November 7th, 2023. The classic version of the GMAT exam will continue to operate until “early 2024” (we’d guess it will be retired in the January to March 2024 timeframe).
The GMAT Focus has a tighter focus on business skills and executive decision-making—things you’ll actually use in business school and your career.
How Data Sufficiency Works
Data sufficiency problems are really weird—they were literally created for the GMAT, so if you’re new to the test, you’ve never seen math problems like this before. Even if you’ve been studying for a while, there’s a good chance you feel a little uncomfortable whenever a DS question pops up on the screen.
Why? Because you could completely mess up a DS question and still get to one of the 5 answer choices, having no idea that you messed something up. That’s a really uncomfortable feeling when taking a test! So let’s demystify the DS process.
I Took The GMAT Online. Here’s What Happened.
Considering taking the GMAT online? We have a lot to tell you!
Get the Most Out of Your GMAT Study Group
Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.
Recently, one of my fellow instructors, Jamie Nelson, got a great question from one of her students: What should I do to get the most out of my time with my GMAT study group? In the process of answering her student, Jamie checked with me to see whether we had anything on our blog that contained more formal recommendations or resources. We didn’t at the time, but now we do! Read on. Read more
The GMAT Online: How to Make the Most of BOTH Whiteboard Tools
The GMAT Online allows test-takers to use both a physical whiteboard and an online whiteboard—and there are great reasons to use both, actually. Learn when to use which in this post!
When you take the GMAT Online, you’ll have access to both a physical whiteboard and an online one. The key is going to be knowing when to use which and practicing ahead of time so that everything feels seamless on test day. (Math? Definitely the physical whiteboard. Time management strategy? Probably online whiteboard. We’ll figure it all out in this post.)
Should I take the GMAT? A Cost-Benefit Analysis
If you’re thinking about going to business school, you have multiple options in terms of which entrance exam to take, but nowadays, you may also have the option not to take any exam at all. That might seem like a no-brainer decision—after all, who wants* to take a standardized test? But it turns out that there are still good reasons for some people to choose to take the GMAT, even when their target schools don’t require them to do so. The question is just whether any of those reasons apply to you.
(*Cough. Besides me and my colleagues…)
First, do all of your target schools have either test waivers available or test-optional policies in place? If some of your schools do require an exam, and you don’t want to take those schools off of your list, then sharpen your pencil and get ready to study.
If, though, all of your desired schools really do allow you to make this choice, now we’ve got some analysis to do.
What’s a Good GMAT Score?
Applying to MBA programs would be simpler if there was just one “good GMAT score.” If you scored above that mark, you’d be done with the GMAT; if not, you’d know you needed to keep trying. As with most of life, though, it isn’t that simple. In this article, we’ll break down what counts as a good GMAT score and how to know whether you’ve achieved one.