Challenge Problem Showdown – July 30th, 2012
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:
In the country of Celebria, the Q-score of a politician is computed from the following formula:
Q = 41ab2c3/d2, in which the variables a, b, c, and d represent various perceived attributes of the politician, all of which are measured with positive numbers. Mayor Flower’s Q-score is 150% higher than that of Councilor Plant; moreover, the values of a, b, and c are 60% higher, 40% higher, and 20% lower, respectively, for Mayor Flower than for Councilor Plant. By approximately what percent higher or lower than the value of d for Councilor Plant is the corresponding value for Mayor Flower?
Challenge Problem Showdown – July 23rd, 2012
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:
X is a three-digit positive integer in which each digit is either 1 or 2. Y has the same digits as X, but in reverse order. What is the remainder when X is divided by 3?
(1) The hundreds digit of XY is 6.
(2) The tens digit of XY is 4.
Are You Taking Too Many Practice GMATs?
My GMAT students are often surprised when I advise them not to take a practice test.
I don’t advise this for every student on every occasion; there are some legitimate uses for practice tests. In general though, I find that my students take too many practice tests at the expense of other more beneficial forms of study for a given circumstance.
Think of the GMAT like a Mozart sonata. Let’s say you are a pianist, and you want to learn the sonata. Would you begin by playing the whole piece from start to finish? No, instead you would work in small sections. You would identify the sections that are easy, and you would work on those sections just enough to maintain your ability. Mainly, you would be concerned with the difficult sections of the piece, which you would practice slowly and intently. Not until you had mastered those sections would you move on.
After you have put in all that practice time, you want to make sure that you can maintain your ability within the context of the larger piece. That’s when you want to play the whole piece: when you want to check to see whether your prior work is ingrained or whether you forget it when you are distracted by the other demands of the piece.
Flaw Questions on GMAT Critical Reasoning
We’ve talked about various types of Assumption Family questions in the past (find the assumption, strengthen, weaken, and evaluate the conclusion), but we haven’t yet tackled a Flaw question. This is the least frequently tested of the 5 Assumption Family question types, so you can ignore this type if you aren’t looking for an extra-high score. If you do want an 85th+ percentile verbal score, though, then you have to make sure you know how to tackle Flaw questions.
If you haven’t yet, read this article before we try our GMATPrep problem. Then set your timer for 2 minutes and go!
GMAT Lessons from Detective Shows
When not providing insight into the fascinating world of the GMAT, I enjoy watching detective shows on television. In many episodes, one of the detectives must delve into the mind of the perpetrator “ actually try to think as the perpetrator does. In so doing, the seemingly random clues come together (often via a slow motion or black and white flashback scene) leading to an insight that breaks the case.
I am going to advocate taking on this television detective mentality in approaching GMAT problems. Perhaps there is a further parallel as the mind of the GMAT question writer may seem to be just as scary a place as the mind of a criminal. But the ability to think like a GMAT test writer can provide multiple benefits including enabling you to get more questions right and allowing you to have more confidence in your answers.
So let’s try think about three lessons we can take from our favorite crime dramas and apply to the GMAT.
Challenge Problem Showdown – July 16th, 2012
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:
A decade is defined as a complete set of consecutive nonnegative integers that have identical digits in identical places, except for their units digits, with the first decade consisting of the smallest integers that meet the criteria, the second decade consisting of the next smallest integers, etc. A decade in which the prime numbers contain the same set of units digits as do the prime numbers in the second decade is the
The Most Important GMAT Question I Ever Studied
Every Manhattan instructor is probably able to fondly recall the Official Guide book that they used to ace their GMAT. Or at least that’s what I would have used to say. Now I know that every Manhattan instructor is probably able to fondly recall the Official Guide book that he or she used to ace his or her GMAT. For me it was the school bus-yellow 11th edition that included the most important question I ever studied. If you have the 12th edition of the Official Guide, it’s question #124. The answer choices on this question began with the following split:
sloths hang from trees…
vs
the sloth hangs from trees…
Decoding the Prime Disguise
How can the GMAT disguise a prime number (or any other) problem? I asked this question a couple of years ago at the start of a very important article entitled Disguising “ and Decoding “ Quant Problems. Go read that article right now, if you haven’t already. I’ll wait.
Towards the end of that article, I referenced two Official Guide problems. I was very excited today to see that one of these problems is part of the free practice problem set that now comes with the new GMATPrep 2.0 software “ so I can actually reproduce it here and we can try it out!
Disclaimer: this is a seriously challenging problem. Set your timer for 2 minutes, but practice your 1 minute timing here. If you don’t have a pretty good idea of what’s going on by the halfway mark, try to figure out how to make a guess. Pick an answer by the 2 minute mark (all right, I’ll let you go to 2 minutes 30 seconds if necessary “ but that’s all!).
Does the integer k have a factor p such that 1 < p < k?
(1) k > 4!
(2) 13! + 2 < k < 13! + 13
Challenge Problem Showdown – July 9th, 2012
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:
If a, b, and c are nonzero integers and z = bc, is az negative?
(1) abc is an odd positive number.
(2) | b + c | < | b | + | c |
mbaMission 2012 Essay Analyses: Columbia, Stanford, Wharton, Stern, Yale, Ross
Our good friends at mbaMission have released their 2012 Essay Analyses for Columbia Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Wharton, Stern School of Business, Yale School of Management, and the Ross School of Business. We’ve compiled these six analyses into one handy 2012 Essay Analysis Resource for you. Enjoy!
Columbia Business School Essay Analysis, 2012-2013
Applicants to Columbia Business School (CBS) this year must complete one short-answer question and two essays. Perhaps CBS is returning to the mind-set that less is more by getting rid of the third full essay from last year and adding a 200-character, career goal mini essay instead.
Stanford Graduate School of Business Essay Analysis, 2012-2013
The Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) has tweaked its essay questions and word limits this year, moving from an 1,800 word count across four essays to a 1,600 word count across three. Some quick math will reveal that you have more words per essay now”maybe the admissions committee felt it was not getting the true depth of candidate experiences previously? The most important broad advice we can give you is to be sure that you keep the reader learning. Keep your audience in mind”your admissions reader will be going through hundreds of essays this application season. If he/she gets to your essay three and has to read about the same theme yet again, he/she will be bored or frustrated or both. So as you write, be sure that you are introducing new experiences and dimensions of your profile. This will greatly improve the likelihood that you will be able to hold your reader’s attention throughout.