Each week, we 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 two free Manhattan Prep GRE Strategy Guides.

Two different children are to be selected at random from a group of 12 students. If the probability that both students selected are girls is greater than , there must be at least how many girls among the 12 students?

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Are you feeling incredibly stressed out when you sit down to study for the GRE? (Or maybe I should ask, who isn’t?) Do you find it hard to concentrate on the task at hand?

Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara recently published the results of a study following 48 undergrads preparing for the GRE. Jan Hoffman details the research in a blog post over at The New York Times; here’s a summary:

The Motivation

We had already found that mind-wandering underlies performance on a variety of tests, including working memory capacity and intelligence, said Michael D. Mrazek, (quoted from the NYT blog post)

Ah, yes, mind-wandering. We’ve all had this experience. We’re taking a test, the clock is ticking, and we keep finding ourselves thinking about something other than the question we’re supposed to be answering right now. Maybe we’re stressing about our score. Maybe we’re thinking about applications. Maybe we’re even distracted by work, significant others, family, or other issues that have nothing to do with the test!

How do we stop fixating on other things and concentrate on the task at hand? This study tried to find out.

The Study

First, the students were given one verbal reasoning section from the GRE. They also completed a task that measured their working memory. These tests are the baseline results.

The students were split into two groups; let’s call them Group M and Group N.

Group M attended meditation classes four times a week; these students learned lessons on mindfulness, which focuses on breathing techniques and helps to minimize distracting thoughts.

Group N attended nutrition classes, designed to teach these students healthy eating habits.

Afterwards, the students were given another GRE verbal section and another task to measure working memory. The performance of students in group N stayed the same; the nutritional studies didn’t make a difference.

Group M students, however, improved their GRE scores by an average of 12 percentile points! Here’s the best part: the study took just two weeks. You read that correctly: these students improved their verbal scores by 12 percentile points in just two weeks.

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

5/13/13– Online –Mondays with Jen– 9:00- 10:30PM (EDT)

5/19/13– New York, NY- Free Trial Class– 2:00PM – 5:00PM

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

Anyone who’s taken my GRE class can tell you that I’m not a vocab girl. I never took Latin, I pretty much don’t know any roots, and I’m terrible at learning foreign languages. So how did I get a perfect score on the GRE? For vocab, the biggest skill for me is mnemonic devices.

All for the game

I think it’s great that some teachers want to use the GRE as a way to inspire a love of learning in students. You’ll use this vocab all your life! You’ll sound so smart! Start reading the Economist every day! I just really? You’re an adult. You have infinite things you could learn about, and infinite resources to learn about them, and finite time to do it in. If you were passionate about vocab and wanted to learn more of it, you already would be! And who is really ever going to care if you can use puerile or penumbra in a sentence?

For me, studying for the GRE is all about the game, and the game here is getting GRE points. That’s it. I don’t need to know this word for life. I need to know it to get it right on the exam. And I like that mindset, because I feel like it presents me with a defined challenge that I can win. And I like to win.

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Each week, we 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 two free Manhattan Prep GRE Strategy Guides.

Within rectangle ACDF, both ABGH and BCDE are squares, and 3x > y > 2x.

 

Quantity A

The ratio of the area of ACDF to the area of HGEF

Quantity B

5

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

5/6/13– New York, NY- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM – 9:30PM

5/6/13– Online – Free Trial Class– 2:00PM – 5:00PM

5/6/13– Online –Mondays with Jen– 9:00- 10:30PM (EDT)

5/8/13– Los Angeles, CA- Free Trial Class– 6:30 – 9:30PM

5/12/13– Berkeley, CA- Free Trial Class– 6:00 – 9:00PM

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

I have a GRE class that’s right now winding down to our couple final classes, and the first panicked email has just come in. This always happens in GRE (and GMAT and LSAT) classes as the end approaches. People start freaking out, because they’re studying, and they’re learning things, and they know more than they did before “ but the score isn’t budging. Or if it is budging, it’s not increasing enough! Or worst, it’s going down! And they start to lose hope. But they’re just in the dip.

The Studying Dip

When Seth Godin wrote about The Dip, he was talking about the time in a business where you feel like things will never improve, but they’re just about to get better. He was trying to quantify, or at least clarify, when you should stick with it despite the obstacles, versus when you are just on a steady downward streak.

When we talk about the dip, we’re talking about that time in studying for a standardized test when you’re working, and working, and working, and you wonder, Is this working?

The Bad News

Let’s start with the bad news first. The bad news is that if what you’re doing isn’t making your score go up, after a number of weeks, you have to change it. But this section is very short because that’s the only bad news.

The Good News

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I just read a really fascinating post on the New York Times’ Well blog. We’ve known for a long time that exercise has a whole host of good benefits, including benefits associated with memory. Two recent studies have delved even deeper into how this works.

How does exercise help memory?

In the blog post, New York Times journalist Gretchen Reynolds details the two new studies¾one conducted on humans and the other conducted on rats.

In the human study, elderly women who already had some mild cognitive impairment were split into three groups. One group lifted weights, the second group engaged in moderate aerobic exercise, and the third group did yoga-like activities.

The participants were tested at the beginning and end of the 6-month exercise period and the results were striking. First, bear in mind that, in general, we would expect elderly people who are already experiencing mental decline to continue down that path over time. Indeed, after 6 months, the yoga group (our control group) showed a mild decline in several aspects of verbal memory.

The weight-training and aerobic groups, by contrast, actually improved their performance on several tests (remember, this was 6 months later!). In particular, these groups were not losing as much of their older memories and they even became faster at some spatial memory tests involving memorizing the location of three items. In other words, the women were both better at making new memories and better at remembering / retrieving old ones!

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

4/22/13– Boston, MA- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM – 9:30PM

4/22/13– Online – Mondays with Jen– 7:00PM – 8:30PM

4/25/13– New York, NY – Free Trial Class- 6:30PM – 9:30PM

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

Set the GRE prep work aside for a moment to catch up on some of this week’s top grad school tips and news links:

How to Make the Final Grad School Enrollment Decision (U.S. News Education)

Former dean of admissions has some advice for how to focus your needs and desires when you make your final grad school enrollment decision.

Overcome Procrastination with the Pomodoro Technique (About.com Graduate School)

Looking for a way to overcome procrastination? The Pomodoro Technique is a formal timer-based time management technique”it’s simple and effective.

How to Choose a U.S. Graduate School (U.S. News Education)

Use these four tips to thoroughly research graduate programs and prospective career fields before becoming and international graduate student.

U.S. Graduate Schools Stung by Drop in Chinese Applications (Reuters)

Reuters reports that slowing grad school enrollments, including a 5 percent decline in applications from Chine for fall 2013, are hurting the revenues of many U.S. universities.

Did we miss your favorite article from the week? Let us know what you’ve been reading in the comments or tweet @ManhattanPrep