You can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free. Crazy, right? Check out our upcoming courses here.

“When I See This, I Will Do This”: A GRE Study Tool

“I know all of the rules, but I’m nowhere close to my goal score.”

“When I study, I understand everything right away. But when I took the actual GRE, I couldn’t make it happen.”

“I never know what to do when I see a Quant problem for the first time. If somebody tells me how to set the problem up, I can do it perfectly, but I can’t get started on my own.”

“I get overwhelmed by Verbal questions. I’ll think that my answer makes sense, but then I’ll review the problem and realize that there were a dozen different things I didn’t notice.” Read more

You can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free. Crazy, right? Check out our upcoming courses here.

When you take the test, you need a strategy for GRE percentage problems that works every time. Here’s that strategy, in four easy steps.
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GRE high-scorers might not be smarter than everyone else, but they do think about the test differently. One key difference is in how high-scorers do algebra. They make far fewer algebraic mistakes, because, either consciously or subconsciously, they use mathematical rules to check their work as they simplify. Here’s how to develop that habit yourself. Read more

Imagine that you asked a friend of yours what she got on the Quant section of the GRE. Instead of answering you directly, she said “let’s just say that 4 times my score is a multiple of 44, and 3 times my score is a multiple of 45.”

Could you tell what score she got? If not… you may need to work on your GRE translation skills!  Read more

We hope everyone had a happy Halloween! Yesterday we asked our friends on our Manhattan GRE Facebook page to attempt this Trick-or-Treat Halloween Challenge Problem. As promised, today we are sharing the answer and explanation to the problem:

Let’s use x for the number of bags produced by the original recipe, and y for the weight of each of the bags. Given those variables, our first equation is simply xy = 600. We also need to create an equation that represents the new recipe. Since the number of bags produced has increased by 30, and the weight of each bag has decreased by 1, the new equation is (x + 30)(y – 1) = 600. Remember, the total weight is still 600 ounces. Foiling this equation yields xy – x + 30y – 30 = 600.

We now have two equations with two variables. There are several different paths we can go down here, but all involve substitution of one of the variables, and all will yield a quadratic. The simplest path is to recognize that since xy = 600, we can substitute for xy in the second equation to get 600 – x + 30y – 30 = 600. Subtracting the 600 from both sides, and adding an x to each side gives us 30y – 30 = x. We can now substitute for x in the first equation.

 
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Many word problems seem to require us to write formulas in order to solve. Certain problems, though, qualify for a neat technique: Smart Numbers. We can actually pick our own real numbers and use them to solve!

Set your timer for 2 minutes for this Fill-In problem and GO! (© ManhattanPrep)

* Lisa spends 3/8 of her monthly paycheck on rent and 5/12 on food. Her roommate, Carrie, who earns twice as much as Lisa, spends ¼ of her monthly paycheck on rent and ½ on food. If the two women decide to donate the remainder of their money to charity each month, what fraction of their combined monthly income will they donate? (Assume all income in question is after taxes.)

 

(No answer choices given; this is a fill-in-the-blank)

 

We’ve got two women, Lisa and Carrie, and they each spend a certain proportion of income on rent and on food. Annoyingly, the fractions don’t have the same denominators; even more annoyingly, the two women don’t make the same amount of money. All of that will make an algebraic solution challenging.

Here’s what an algebraic solution would look like. Let’s call Lisa’s income x. She spends (3/8)x on rent and (5/12)x on food. Add these together:

(3x/8) + (5x/12) = (9x/24) + (10x/24) = 19x/24

Subtract from 100%, or x:

24x/24 “ 19x/24 = 5x/24

Lisa donates 5/24 of x, her income, to charity. What about Carrie?

Carrie’s income is equal to 2x (because she makes twice as much as Lisa). How much does she spend on rent and food?
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