Prep-1

[anoo.anand]

Last year a certain bond with a face value of $5000 yielded 8 percent of its face value in interest. If that interest was approx. 6.5 percent of the bond's selling price, approx. what was the bond's selling price?

A. $4,063
B. $5, 325
C. $5, 351
D. $6,000
E. $6,154

what should be the general approach to th APPROX questions, I can easily take out the exact answer .....but.... they need the wrong answer :)

[nitin_prakash_khanna]

I would say that if its doable in 1.5 min then why not just do it.
very interested to know if there are some tips around this question to save those 30 secs.

On a normal day...i would see this q and say that ok they want us to calculate
x= 400*100 / 6.5 = 800000/13 and once i start the calculation it will tell that it cant be 6000 so has to be E.

But again interested to see if more short cut exists.

[loshko]

it can be done in about 30 sec, as long as you remember to plug in the answers. You know you need to multiply something x 13 to get to 800,000.

Start with 6,000 because it's easier, as soon as you figure out that 13x6 is 78, you'll know that the answer must be higher - which leaves you with E.

[RonPurewal]

the 2 posts above this one are on the mark.

On a normal day...i would see this q and say that ok they want us to calculate
x= 400*100 / 6.5 = 800000/13 and once i start the calculation it will tell that it cant be 6000 so has to be E.

But again interested to see if more short cut exists.

seriously? all you have to do is ONE LONG DIVISION PROBLEM, and you're looking for shortcuts?

that is really, really not a good mindset to have on this test.
as soon as you find something that works, you should just do it, unless you can plainly see that it's going to take an absolutely outrageous amount of time.