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 MBA admissions process.

We at mbaMission know of a now 70-year-old man who graduated from a virtually unknown Canadian undergraduate school in 1963 and who, with no work experience at all, applied to Harvard Business School (HBS), Wharton, and the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), earning acceptance at all three (though the GSB deferred his entry for one year so he could earn a little more experience first). He ultimately studied at HBS and now runs a small grain-trading business. You could not meet a nicer man, and although he is certainly wise in many respects, one thing he knows nothing about is MBA admissions. “I attended so long ago, things must have changed since then,” he says. “I did not have any work experience at all. I had studied four years of commerce, and that was it!” Read more

I. Roman numeral Quant problems aren’t a whole lot of fun.

II. A lot of my students choose to skip them entirely, which is much smarter than wasting five minutes wondering what to do!

III. However, it’s possible to turn this rare and tricky problem type into an opportunity.

Read on, and learn why many GMAT high-scorers love Roman numeral problems. Read more

Whenever I see a story problem, I immediately make myself think, “How would I solve this in the real world?” I don’t want to get sucked into doing a bunch of annoying textbook math. In the real world, we lay things out on paper very differently than when we’re in “I’m taking a math test” mode.

Want to see what I mean? Try this GMATPrep® problem from the free exams and then we’ll talk! Read more

Last time, we talked about how to use holiday downtime to get ready for round 2 GMAT admissions. This time, we’re going to talk about what to do if you aren’t applying for round 2 this year.

We have two broad scenarios to talk about: Read more

The holidays are fast approaching and all of my students are asking me how best to use their extra downtime over the next few weeks. I have some different recommendations, depending upon your circumstances.

In this installment, we’ll talk about what to do if you’re aiming for the second round (in other words, your applications are due in January 2016—soon!). In the next installment, we’ll talk about what to do if this circumstance does not apply to you. 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 our previous article, we divided the logical errors that test-takers make on Data Sufficiency questions into two types:

Type 1: You thought that something was sufficient, but it was actually insufficient.

Type 2: You thought that something was insufficient, but it was actually sufficient.

We already covered the most common reasons for Type 1 errors to occur and a few good ways to avoid them; now, let’s cover Type 2 errors. Read more

In the first part of this series, we talked about how to analyze your strengths and weaknesses and in which categories of “low hanging fruit” to concentrate your studies.

We left off talking about timing; let’s talk about how to make better decisions as you take the test. Read more

Recently, we took a look at a story problem dealing with ratios, and I finished up by giving you a second problem to test your skills. How did you do?

If you haven’t already, try the GMATPrep® problem below and then we’ll talk about it. Give yourself about 2 minutes. Go! Read more

How are you with story problems? Most math concepts can be presented in story form on the test and the GMAT test writers do like to get wordy with us. You’ve got a double task: you have to translate the words into math and then you still have to do the math! How can we get through these as efficiently as possible?

Try the GMATPrep® problem below and then we’ll talk about it. Give yourself about 2 minutes. Go!

Read more

Last time, we talked about how crucial it is to develop the instinct to go for the “No” when taking the GMAT. If you haven’t read the first installment, do so right now, then come back here to learn more.

I left you with this GMATPrep® problem from the free exams.

“*If 0 <r< 1 <s< 2, which of the following must be less than 1? “I. 

“II. rs

“III. s – r

“(A) I only

“(B) II only

“(C) III only

“(D) I and II

“(E) I and III”

Let’s talk about it now!

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