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.

Have you ever heard the saying “measure twice, cut once”? Read more

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.

What is the GMAT Really Testing? Read more

What have you been told about applying to business school? With the advent of chat rooms, blogs and forums, armchair “experts” often unintentionally propagate MBA admissions myths, which can linger and undermine an applicant’s confidence. Some applicants are led to believe that schools want a specific “type” of candidate and expect certain GMAT scores and GPAs, for example. Others are led to believe that they need to know alumni from their target schools and/or get a letter of reference from the CEO of their firm in order to get in. In this weekly series, mbaMission debunks these and other myths and strives to take the anxiety out of the admissions process.

We often hear MBA applicants ask some form of the following question: “Do I need a 750 to get into a top MBA program?” Although a 750 on the GMAT can only help, it is definitely not a prerequisite. We wanted to dispel this myth and put some who believe it at ease. Here are a few simple reasons why this is just not the case:

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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.

In short; passive voice is acceptable on the GMAT.

If only it were that easy. Read more

What have you been told about applying to business school? With the advent of chat rooms, blogs and forums, armchair “experts” often unintentionally propagate MBA admissions myths, which can linger and undermine an applicant’s confidence. Some applicants are led to believe that schools want a specific “type” of candidate and expect certain GMAT scores and GPAs, for example. Others are led to believe that they need to know alumni from their target schools and/or get a letter of reference from the CEO of their firm in order to get in. In this weekly series, mbaMission debunks these and other myths and strives to take the anxiety out of the admissions process.

As you head into application season, what kind of strategy do you have in mind? More than a few candidates, having likely read about the supposed advantages of applying in Round 1 on various Web sites and discussion boards, plan to submit all their applications in that first round, with the idea that if no acceptances are forthcoming, they will just submit another set of applications in Round 2. If this is your plan, we ask that you step away from your stack of applications for a moment while we explain why this is probably not your best course of action. Read more

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.

On a traditional exam, everybody takes the same test, but gets a different number of questions correct. The GMAT is the opposite. Everyone takes a different test, but everyone misses about the same number of questions. For instance, if you take the Manhattan Prep free practice GMAT, you’re almost certain to get between 40% and 60% of the Quant questions right. But if you get 50% of the questions right on a very tough GMAT, you’ll get a much higher score than someone who gets 50% of the questions right on a very easy GMAT. Read more

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.

I had a student recently whose Data Sufficiency (DS) accuracy was generally very high, and whose knowledge of geometry rules was solid. And yet, she was getting almost every geometry DS question wrong on practice tests!

This is actually very common: students who are otherwise good at geometry and/or DS struggle when the two things are put together.

Here are the 3 main reasons that students miss geometry DS problems: Read more

What have you been told about applying to business school? With the advent of chat rooms, blogs and forums, armchair “experts” often unintentionally propagate MBA admissions myths, which can linger and undermine an applicant’s confidence. Some applicants are led to believe that schools want a specific “type” of candidate and expect certain GMAT scores and GPAs, for example. Others are led to believe that they need to know alumni from their target schools and/or get a letter of reference from the CEO of their firm in order to get in. In this weekly series, mbaMission debunks these and other myths and strives to take the anxiety out of the admissions process.

Many MBA admissions officers will tell candidates that if they can complete their applications and submit them in Round 1, then they should do so. Most programs will also tell candidates that they should try to avoid Round 3, because the majority of the places in their classes will have been filled by then. So, what does that say about Round 2? Read more

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.

When you took tests in high school or college, your grade was based on the number of questions you got right. The only way to earn an A was by answering almost every question correctly. If you’ve been studying for a while, you’ve probably heard that the GMAT is different—but how different is it, really? You know that you’re supposed to miss questions on the test, but how many can you actually miss on the GMAT Quant section and still get a good score? Read more

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.

In the first installment of this series, we deconstructed a challenging Reading Comprehension passage from the GMATPrep free exams. Pull up that page, as I’m not going to repeat the full text of the passage here. (And if you’re just starting here, go through parts 1 and 2 first before you read this one!)

At the end of the second installment, I posted the second problem for the passage. Let’s figure it out!

Here it is again: Read more