Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog

How the GMAT Algorithm Works

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GMAT algorithm

On the GMAT, your score isn’t based on getting points for right answers. Instead, the GMAT lobs your way a series of questions of varying difficulty, working to figure out what your skill level is in each section, and then assigns you a corresponding point value based on where you end.

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“I’m Bad at Math” And Other Lies You Tell Yourself

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bad at GMAT math taking the GMAT

“I’m just not a math person” is probably the most common thing GMAT students tell me about themselves on the first day of class. I’m here to tell you the same thing I tell each of those students: Odds are, you’re totally wrong.

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Manhattan Prep Earns Top Spot in Recent GMAT Score Improvement Survey! Except…We Need To Talk…

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gmat score improvement

I was naturally very interested to hear that my company, Manhattan Prep, had earned the top spot for score improvement in the recent Poets & Quants survey of GMAT test prep companies. The excited part of me wants to dance around shouting, “Yay! Manhattan Prep is the best!” 

But the rational part of me is saying…hmm. Of course, I think we’re the best too, but I don’t think that average score improvement is a great metric to use (no disrespect to Poets & Quants, which I think is an excellent resource for aspiring business school students). I’d rather that you talk to friends, look at verified reviews from a source like Trustpilot, and attend any free sessions available to judge for yourself. (I’ve got a free session coming up soon—come say hi!)

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MBA Career Paths: What Are You Going to Do?

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mba career paths

This post was written by Harold Simansky, an mbaMission Senior Consultant.

A couple of contradictory truisms are floating around the business school admissions world: 1) the most successful applicants articulate a very clear career trajectory when they apply to business school; and 2) 80% of business school students go off and do something completely different from what they said they were going to do on their application.

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Know What to Do On Any GMAT Problem

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GMAT problems

You’ve studied, and studied, and studied, and studied. You can rattle off the first twenty perfect squares and the definition of a dependent clause. You know the four-step process for Critical Reasoning and the formula for the volume of a cylinder. So, why are you still missing GMAT problems?

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GMAT Quant Tips: Mental Math

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gmat quant tips

If your goal is to take some time pressure off of the quantitative section of the GMAT, you should ask yourself: what are the skills I will need over and over during that section, and what are the skills I will only need once or twice? Too often I see my own students spending hours to get incrementally faster at, for example, weighted averages; that’s an area where understanding the basic concept is probably sufficient. Instead, invest the most time in the thing you’ll be doing the most often: calculation! 

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Business School Application Requirements: An Overview

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business school application

This post was written by Kim Leb, an mbaMission Senior Consultant.

At first glance, applying to business school can seem overwhelming. But at the end of the day, this comprehensive process gives you a chance to show admissions officers who you really are and what differentiates you from other applicants. We will break down the requirements, but these are the basic components of the business school application:

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How to Study for the Executive Assessment (EA) – Part 3

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study for the executive assessment

Are you preparing for the Executive Assessment exam? In part 1 of this series, we talked about the major study materials you’ll want to use and some guidelines for planning the length of your studies. In part 2, we dove more deeply into the question types and content areas for the Integrated Reasoning and Verbal sections of the Executive Assessment (EA). 

Now, we’re going to do the same for the Quant section; we’re also going to talk a bit more about study planning.

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How to Study for the Executive Assessment (EA) – Part 1

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study for the executive assessment

Are you figuring out how to study for the Executive Assessment (EA) exam? The Executive Assessment was launched in March 2016 to provide a more streamlined version of the GMAT for Executive MBA (EMBA) candidates—but it has grown and is now used for some regular MBAs and other business Master’s programs.

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Inference Questions: The Black Sheep of the GMAT Critical Reasoning Family

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gmat critical reasoning

A quick note: this is a pretty deep dive into a single GMAT Critical Reasoning question type. If you’re just beginning to learn CR strategy, check out The GMAT Critical Reasoning Mindset or How to Master Every GMAT Critical Reasoning Question Type

Inference questions are not super common on GMAT Critical Reasoning, usually only accounting for 1 of your 10 CR questions. However, it tends to be a question type that students miss more frequently, in both CR and Reading Comprehension. Some of this stems from the inherent difficulty, but much of it can result from students’ possessing an incorrect or incomplete sense of what they’re supposed to be doing on these problems.

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