Each week, we post a new GRE Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for two free Manhattan Prep GRE Strategy Guides.

Submit your pick over on our Challenge Problem page.

Music can do a lot for us, but the word is still out on whether it can enhance our ability to stay focused and sharpen our memories during long study sessions. On the one hand, we have a report from the University of Toronto suggesting that fast and loud background music can hinder our performance on reading comprehension. On the other, there’s the recent
 research from the digital music service, Spotify, and Clinical Psychologist Dr. Emma Gray, which proclaims that pop hits from artists like Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry, and Miley Cyrus can actually enhance our cognitive abilities.

“Music has a positive effect on the mind, and listening to the right type of music can actually improve studying and learning,” says Dr. Gray. She even suggests that students who listen to music while studying can perform better than those who do not.

We also cannot leave out the so-called “Mozart Effect,” which alleges that listening to classical music provides short-term enhancement of mental tasks, like memorization. We’ve heard students swear by this tactic, while others say that silence is golden.
Read more

Each week, we post a new GRE Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for two free Manhattan Prep GRE Strategy Guides.

Submit your pick over on our Challenge Problem page.

Here are the free GRE events we’re holding this week (All times local unless otherwise specified):

10/22/13– Los Angeles, CA- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM – 9:30PM

10/22/13– New York, NY- Free Trial Class- 6:30PM – 9:30PM

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listing Page.

Each week, we post a new GRE Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for two free Manhattan Prep GRE Strategy Guides.

See the answer choices and submit your pick over on our Challenge Problem page.

Many business schools now accept either the GRE or the GMAT, so students now have a decision to make: which test should you take? We’ve written on the topic before but this discussion deserves an update now that some changes to the GMAT are gaining more traction.
Both tests made some significant changes in the past couple of years. These changes were designed to make the test results more attractive to their customers—not you, but the business schools.

The conventional wisdom has been that the math is easier on the GRE. Though many schools do accept the GRE, rumors abound that students who take this test are at a bit of a disadvantage because they are expected to do better on the (easier) quant section. Anecdotally, we have heard some admissions officers admit that they do think about this (strictly off the record, of course). Other admissions officers, though, have said this doesn’t matter to them at all.

Recently, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that Bain & Co, a well-respected management consulting firm, is considering using Integrated Reasoning scores in its hiring process. Most banks and consulting firms already ask for the “regular” GMAT score when recruiting MBA candidates (and sometimes they even ask for your SAT scores!). If these companies begin to require IR, then someone who took the GRE could find themselves at a disadvantage during the hiring process—or even scrambling to take the GMAT during the second year of b-school while going through recruiting. Yikes!

So this question of whether to take the GMAT or the GRE has become a much more complicated calculus of a decision. There is no one-size-fits-all answer, but here are some guidelines to consider as you figure out the right decision for you.

Your Performance

Do you actually exhibit a markedly different performance level on the two exams? Most people have pretty similar results.

To figure this out, you’re going to take two practice tests (one of each). Before you do that, learn about the different question formats on both exams.

GMAT

Quant: about half of the questions are your standard multiple choice. The other half are a weird type called Data Sufficiency. You’ll definitely want to learn how those work before you take a practice test (your next task).

Verbal: if you’ve ever taken a standardized test before, then you’ll be very familiar with Reading Comprehension questions. Critical Reasoning questions are similar, but much shorter, and the questions are more argument-based (how to strengthen or weaken a conclusion, for example). Sentence Correction questions require knowledge of grammar and meaning. You don’t need to study that yet, but you should just learn how the question type works.

In a nutshell, you’ll be given a sentence with a portion underlined. The first answer, (A), will repeat whatever was underlined. The other 4 answers will offer different variations for that underlined text. Only one is correct!

Essay: you don’t need to prep for this before your first practice test.

Integrated Reasoning: these questions combine math and verbal topics in four new question formats that you probably won’t have seen before. You’ll definitely want to investigate those a bit before your practice test, just to see how each one works. Here are some example problems: Read more

Each week, we post a new GRE Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for two free Manhattan Prep GRE Strategy Guides.

See the answer choices and submit your pick over on our Challenge Problem page.

Deciding whether to take a GRE prep course is tough. Prep courses can be expensive and take a lot of time. So the question is, is a GRE prep course worth it?

You might think that because I teach and GRE prep course and work for a GRE prep course company, my answer would be a certain “yes”. But in reality, it’s a resounding and certain “maybe”.

Helpful, right? Sorry. But I firmly believe that a prep course is incredibly valuable for some people but not for others. Here are the factors I usually encourage students to consider in deciding if a prep course will be worthwhile for them.

How much improvement do you really need?

It’s a good idea to take a reputable practice exam to see where your scores currently stand. Manhattan GRE offers a free practice test that you can use to see where you are right now. Then, check in with the programs to which you plan to apply and see what score would make you a competitive applicant there.

If you only need minimal improvement, or you only need improvement in one area, you might be able to do that on your own! Either way, you’ve got to know where you are starting and where you need to end up before you can make an informed plan.

How likely are you to stick to a schedule on your own? Read more

I’ve been on a story problem kick lately. People have a love / hate relationship with these. On the one hand, it’s a story! It should be easier than “pure” math! We should be able to figure it out!

On the other hand, we have to figure out what they’re talking about, and then we have to translate the words into math, and then we have to come up with an approach. That’s where story problems start to go off the rails.

You know what I mean, right? Those ones where you think it’ll be fine, and then you’re a minute or two in and you realize that everything you’ve written down so far doesn’t make sense, but you’re sure that you can set it up, so you try again, and you get an answer but it’s not in the answer choices, and now you’ve crossed the 3-minute mark…argh!

So let’s talk about how to make story problems REAL. They’re no longer going to be abstract math problems. You’re riding Train X as it approaches Train Y. You’re the store manager figuring out how many hours to give Sue so that she’ll still make the same amount of money now that her hourly wage has gone up.

Note: I’ve used GMAT problems in this article because the makers of the GRE don’t allow us to re-publish their problems. I’d rather work from actual problems written by standardized test-writers, just to show you how well this technique does work on real problems. I’ve chosen two problems that could just as easily be seen on the GRE.

Try this GMATPrep® problem:

* ” Six machines, each working at the same constant rate, together can complete a certain job in 12 days. How many additional machines, each working at the same constant rate, will be needed to complete the job in 8 days?

“(A) 2

“(B) 3

“(C) 4

“(D) 6

“(E) 8”

Yuck. A work problem.

Except… here’s the cool thing. The vast majority of rate and work problems have awesome shortcuts. This is so true that, nowadays, if I look at a rate or work problem and the only solution idea I have is that old, annoying RTD (or RTW) chart… I’m probably going to skip the problem entirely. It’s not worth my time or mental energy.

This problem is no exception—in fact, this one is an amazing example of a complicated problem with a 20-second solution. Seriously—20 seconds!

You own a factory now (lucky you!). Your factory has 6 machines in it. At the beginning of the first day, you turn on all 6 machines and they start pumping out their widgets. After 12 continuous days of this, the machines have produced all of the widgets you need, so you turn them off again.

Let’s say that, on day 1, you turned them all on, but then you turned them off at the end of that day. What proportion of the job did your machines finish that day? They did 1/12 of the job.

Now, here’s a key turning point. Most people will then try to figure out how much work one machine does on one day. (Many people will make the mistake of thinking that one machine does 1/12 of the job in one day.) But don’t go in that direction in the first place! If you were really the factory owner, you wouldn’t start writing equations at this point. You’d figure out what you need by testing some scenarios. Read more

Each week, we post a new GRE Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for two free Manhattan Prep GRE Strategy Guides.

See the answer choices and submit your pick over on our Challenge Problem page.