Tag Archives: GMAT tutor

Are last-minute MBA applications hopeless?

Posted on May 4, 2010 | Leave a comment

It’s spring in New York, which means that the sun is shining, the pigeons are frisky, and New Yorkers are much less cranky than usual. Springtime also means that the GMAT and MBA crowds have thinned out a little bit. Everybody knows that peak MBA application season is in the fall and early winter; if you’re calling a GMAT tutor in April or May, you’re probably a forward-looking planner with an eye on first-round MBA deadlines in October. And your GMAT tutor loves you for that.

But then there are the last-minute scramblers who defy conventional wisdom and take the GMAT in the spring. They then undergo a frenzied, abbreviated process of applying for MBA programs’ final deadlines in April or May. You would think that this approach is completely hopeless, right? An application sent within a few hours of a fourth-round deadline on May 15 couldn’t possibly succeed… right?

Here’s the odd thing: over the past few years, a certain subset of my last-second applicants have been extremely successful. Last year, I spent the morning of May 15 frantically helping two former GMAT students edit their MBA application essays–just in time for 5:00 pm deadlines on May 15. I thought that neither of them had much of a chance with last-second applications, but both students were admitted to their first-choice programs. This year, one of my favorite students submitted a third-round “express” application to a solid program, and managed to receive a substantial scholarship—after being waitlisted by a number of schools of comparable quality during the first two rounds.

And my all-time favorite procrastinator—Mr. L, a former actor who has been mentioned in this space before—submitted an application last Monday for a one-year accelerated MBA program. Here’s the thing: he submitted the application two weeks AFTER the final deadline… and just one week before the start of classes in early May. And guess what? Of course, he was admitted. He was accepted to the MBA program on Friday, boarded a plane on Sunday, and started classes on Monday.

So how did these applicants do it? First of all, none of the aforementioned applicants were targeting top-10 programs. We’re talking about solid programs at the fringes of the top 30 or 50—think George Washington University or University of Florida or University of Iowa, not HBS or Columbia or MIT. MBA programs that are strong but not super-elite often face a great deal of unpredictability during the spring—they simply don’t know how many admitted students will actually choose to attend their school, which means that these programs may (or may not) have a bunch of empty slots at the end of admissions season.

In some circumstances, MBA programs can get pretty desperate in May. MBA programs often have high fixed costs, and nobody wants to have an empty chair in the classroom. So if a particular program has several unexpected empty chairs, they might be forced into “warm body mode.” Basically, they’ll admit nearly any (reasonably qualified) warm body who can provide a tuition check—even if the very same applicant would have been rejected (or waitlisted) by the very same program during earlier application rounds.

So there’s reason to have some hope if you’re submitting a last-second application to a non-elite program. If the MBA program has already filled (or nearly filled) their class, you’re probably screwed. But if the program is in “warm body mode,” you might be in luck, even if your GMAT score is below the MBA program’s average—as was the case for all four of the MBA applicants mentioned above.

Once you decide to submit a late application, be friendly but persistent with your calls to the admissions office. Try to make a connection with the person who answers the phone, since he or she might able to quickly get your case in front of a key decision-maker, even if the application deadline has already passed.

Whatever you do, don’t let the adcom think that you applied on a whim. In your phone calls, emails, and essays, do everything you can to make it clear that the MBA program is actually a top choice for you; as with any MBA application, be sure to clearly explain why you’ve chosen that particular program, and make sure that your essays are polished and error-free. If you have to, hire an editor or an admissions consultant to ensure that your work looks professional and convincing.

If you get a little bit lucky and you play your cards right, you might be among the blessed few who receives an acceptance in the spring… giving you the right to gloat in the general direction of your friends who are just starting to study for the GMAT.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in All, GMAT, MBA Admissions

Tagged , , , , ,

GMAT percentile rankings, part II

Posted on April 21, 2010 | 2 Comments

As a GMAT tutor, I regularly receive calls from students (or potential students) who are nervous about some sort of “imbalance” between their verbal and quant scores on the GMAT.  In many cases, those worries are absolutely reasonable–if you have, say, a 51Q/30V, you clearly have an issue.

In many cases, however, the imbalance might not be quite as bad as it seems, especially if you’re (overly) focused on percentile rankings.  Over the years, I’ve met quite a few people with wonderful GMAT scores (48Q/48V, 44Q/42V, 44Q/49V) who worried that they have an imbalance because their quant percentile rankings are much, much lower than their verbal percentile score.  In many of these cases, I don’t think that the test-taker has much to worry about.

In a previous post about percentile rankings, I mentioned that a large percentage of GMAT test-takers do extremely well (raw score of 47 and above) on the quantitative section, but not so well on the verbal.  I admiringly call this the “Asian effect,” since I’m convinced that the bulk of these GMAT quant studs come from math-intensive education systems.  (The United States, of course, is one of the world’s worst wealthy nations when it comes to teaching K-12 mathematics.  You should never hire an American GMAT tutor… crap, wait a minute… scratch that last part.)

Anyway, I clumsily punched some GMAT data into an excel spreadsheet, and made a little chart out of it.  The chart shows the rough shape of the GMAT verbal score distribution (approximately normal or bell-curved), the composite GMAT score distribution (also approximately normal or bell-curved), and the GMAT math score distribution (not so normal).

Please keep the following disclaimers in mind:

Disclaimer #1:  This data is extrapolated from a GMAT score report.  It is definitely NOT very precise data.  I also tinkered with a few numbers to smooth out the curves, so take all of this with a grain of salt.

Disclaimer #2:  GMAT section scores and GMAT composite scores don’t really belong on the same axis, since you can’t easily convert from raw scores (0-60 scale) to a composite scale (200-800) unless you know the GMAT algorithm… and even then, they still wouldn’t really belong on the same axis.  Again, this is just a rough visual representation.

Okay, enough prefaces–I think you’ll get my point as soon as you see the graph.  Here it is.  Enjoy.

→ 2 Comments

Posted in All, GMAT

Tagged , , , ,

GMAT Guessing Strategy

Posted on April 1, 2010 | Leave a comment

Conventional wisdom says that you should always finish every question on the GMAT, and that the computer will thrash you silly if you don’t. It even says so on page 17 the 12th edition of the GMAT Official Guide:

F[act] — There is a severe penalty for not completing the GMAT test.

If you are stumped by a question, give it your best guess and move on…. If you don’t finish the test, your score will be reduced greatly.

Thanks to this particular part of the official guide, a lot of GMAT students seem to think that they’ll face imminent GMAT doom if they don’t finish every single question. As a GMAT tutor, I often field anguished calls from students, who swear that their scores would have been much higher if they hadn’t accidentally ran out of time before they had a chance to answer question #37 on the quant section.

And guess what? A random guess on question #37 doesn’t seem to matter all that much. This little fact comes straight from the (tragically underused) official GMAT blog, which rarely receives more than one new post per month.

I strongly encourage you to read the blog post, or you could go straight to the pdf of the entire study if you’re feeling ambitious. And if you’re not feeling all that ambitious, here are the highlights:

  • the last question or two never really matters much — so don’t freak out if you don’t have time to guess
  • if you have five or fewer questions left on the verbal, it doesn’t really matter if you omit questions at the end
  • if you are of below-average ability on quant, it might actually be better to omit questions at the end
  • if you are of relatively high ability on quant, you are better off guessing on the last few questions… but again, it doesn’t make a big difference if you omit just one or two questions at the end

Pretty crazy stuff, right?  All of this information apparently comes from actual GMAT test data, and it definitely represents a departure from standard GMAT test-prep advice.

The bottom line is that a few random guesses or a few “skipped” questions at the end of the test won’t ruin your life, one way or the other. Remember that you have a huge margin for error on the GMAT, and you can miss a crapload of questions and still get an absolutely wonderful score on the test.

So relax a little bit. Whatever you do, don’t stress if you can’t answer the last quant question—it certainly isn’t worth causing the sort of anxiety that may inspire unnecessary verbal underperformance or a tearful call to your GMAT tutor.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in All

Tagged , , , ,

GMAT Focus Stinks

Posted on March 11, 2010 | Leave a comment

In a previous post , I gave a qualified endorsement of GMAT Focus, which is a series of 24-question quant tests sold by the makers of the GMAT.  GMAT Focus consists of retired test questions, and I was pretty convinced that the test is a useful product, since so many real GMAT test questions seem to (very, very strongly) resemble questions seen on GMAT Focus.

The only trouble is that the tests are too short, overpriced (in my opinion), oddly timed (24 questions in 45 minutes?  huh?), and a little bit of a rip-off, since some of the questions also appear in the GMAT official guide and quantitative review.  If you don’t believe me, click here to see a brief discussion of this in a Manhattan GMAT forum.

Over the past year, I’ve strongly encouraged my students do use GMAT Focus, but I think it’s time to advise everybody to stay away from it.  Believe it or not, one of my students just took a GMAT Focus test that had 14 questions that overlapped with the official guide (12th edition) or the quant review book (2nd edition).  That means that only 10 of them were fresh questions.  Dude, my poor GMAT student totally got ripped off.

(Luckily, my student didn’t recognize all of the questions, and still missed 6 of the 14 repeats.  It’s safe to say that he still got a good math workout; it’s also safe to say that his GMAT tutor needs to kick his butt a little bit harder.)

Here’s the complete list of questions that appeared on this particular GMAT Focus test:

  • official guide DS #33, 45, 48 (though I found it interesting that they removed the reference to the year 1989 in that question), 66, 70, 75, and 76
  • official guide PS #48, 81, and 89
  • quantitative review DS #33
  • quantitative review PS #142, 146, and 147

And if you’re curious, here’s the complete list of GMAT Focus repeats that I’ve marked over past few months:

  • official guide DS:  #44, 45, 52, 53, 62, 66, 68, 70, 75, 76, 79, 82, 87, 90, 94, 110, 121, 123
  • official guide PS:  #73, 74, 81, 89, 107, 117, 148, 163
  • quantitative review DS: #11, 33, 122
  • quantitative review PS:  #142, 146, 147

I’m sure that I haven’t caught everything, but this should be enough to convince you that GMAT Focus probably isn’t worth $25 per test.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in All, GMAT

Tagged , , , ,

GMAT verbal underperformance

Posted on March 3, 2010 | 1 Comment

I recently received an email from a lovely mother of three who has done an absolutely heroic job of raising her GMAT quantitative score from 18 to 36 in just a few months. That’s an amazing jump, and her math tutor deserves a cookie. Unfortunately, the poor woman has seen her GMAT verbal score move in the opposite direction in the past few months: she’s gone from a 33 to a 26 to a 24.

If you were her, you’d probably be pretty upset, too.

Believe it or not, she’s absolutely not alone. I think that about 20-30% of the people I meet have experienced some sort of inexplicable verbal calamity on the GMAT. By “calamity,” I just mean that their official GMAT scores don’t match their practice test scores—and unfortunately, the scores sometimes aren’t even close. This seems to happen much more often on the verbal than on the math section, and it took me quite a few years to figure out why that might be the case.

First of all, I really don’t think that the GMAT official guides necessarily give you a good sense of what “real” verbal questions feel like. Very few of the reading comprehension and critical reasoning questions in the official guide seem to be much tougher than, say, 650-level questions. I’ve seen plenty of actual GMAT passages that are nearly incomprehensible, but there are very few such passages in the official guides. (Many of my students–especially those who scored above a 35 on the verbal–seem to share my opinion on this.) The bottom line is that students who rely primarily on the GMAT OGs might be thrown off by the surprisingly difficult critical reasoning and reading comprehension passages on the real test.

Worse yet, some students rely far too heavily on “knockoff” test-prep material, and you know how I feel about that. It’s outrageously difficult for test-prep companies to accurately copy the nuanced style of the verbal section of the GMAT, and non-official practice questions are inevitably very different from the real thing. In a lot of cases, using these materials can actually do more harm than good, unfortunately. Students grow accustomed to the question-writing style of their chosen test-prep firm, and then feel suffer mightily when they take the real test. The best test-prep firms offer some good techniques for tackling the verbal, but I think it’s a mistake to rely too heavily on their practice tests. There is no replacement for official GMAT and LSAT materials, and most students will do best if they use “knockoff” tests sparingly.

But I think the most important reason for verbal underperformance has nothing to do with study habits: many test-takers are simply way too “amped” when they start the verbal section. For pretty much everybody, the quant section of GMAT is an intense experience–you’re racing against the clock, the adrenaline starts to flow, and you push yourself as hard as you possibly can. You take your little eight-minute break, and then you go back in to the testing room, foaming at the mouth, ready to rip the verbal to shreds.

And in your haste to power your way through the verbal, you get a little bit too intense, and maybe you skip a word here or there. You finish with a few minutes to spare, or maybe more. And then your score sucks. Why? If you’re not reading very, very carefully, you’ll get GMATed by every verbal question type. Even if you miss just one key word on every other question, you’ll do massive, massive damage to your score.

Case in point: an unusually brilliant JD/MBA applicant hired me for two weeks of fast-paced, balls-to-the-wall GMAT lessons. This guy is at an Ivy League law school, and he’s ridiculously smart, even when compared to other Ivy League lawyer types. He hired a GMAT tutor just to help him to shake off some math rust, and needed basically no help on verbal. On the GMATPrep test that he took before his first tutoring session with me, Mr. Ivy League Law scored a 37 on math, and somewhere in the mid-to-high 40s on verbal. So we focused on math, and brought his actual GMAT quant score up to a 47 after just a couple of weeks.

Awesome, right? But hold on: Mr. Ivy League Law was so amped after the math that he raced through the verbal at breakneck speed, and finished with 20 minutes (!!) to spare. His verbal score dropped to a 41. That’s still enough for a 710 composite, but if he’d taken a few more deep breaths, he could have easily gotten a 750. (Not that it really matters–a 710 is high enough, and Mr. Ivy League Law will soon be Mr. Ivy League JD/MBA. But he’s a great illustration of how an overaggressive approach to verbal can sabotage your score.)

So I’m convinced that stress, exhaustion, and haste are the biggest culprit for almost everybody whose real GMAT verbal score doesn’t seem to match their practice test scores. If you have a tendency to race too much on the verbal, taking a few deep breaths might be more important than any studying you could possibly do. When you finish the quant, use your eight-minute break to re-orient yourself. Grab a snack or a drink or a smoke or whatever makes you happy, and relax a little bit. Focus on being precise and thorough and alert on the verbal. Even if you’re a slow reader, you’ll gain much more from being calm, focused, and accurate than you’ll lose from having to guess on a small handful of the 41 verbal questions.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in All, GMAT

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

tell your partner to take the GMAT

Posted on February 18, 2010 | Leave a comment

During a break in my GMAT tutoring festivities today, I felt like reading some MBA applicant blogs, and I stumbled upon a blog written by the wife of a Booth MBA student. And now I’m incredibly jealous.

Let me explain: I came to NYC last summer because my girlfriend was starting law school in White Plains, about 45 minutes north of NYC. I now consider myself a law school widow. If I’m lucky, Amber will pull her nose out of the law textbooks once or twice a week. The rest of the time, she spends a solid 12-16 hours per day either in class, applying for internships, or studying. Not fun.

One of my good friends even suggested that I adopt a “stunt double” girlfriend for the next three years. There would be no conjugal rights involved, but I at least would have a reliable date on the weekends. My friend even found a suitable, willing, recently-divorced faux girlfriend for me… but she moved out of NYC before we started faux-dating.

Anyway, I got a big kick out of reading Elizabeth Dark’s b-school partner blog–she actually seems to see her husband more than she did before b-school. Quite the opposite of law school partner life. Case in point: Amber allowed me to take her out on Valentine’s Day, but we had to spend the entire afternoon and part of the evening in coffeehouses so that she could study.

I know that plenty of people (my girlfriend included) give some thought to both business school and law school before settling on one or the other. If you’re in doubt, take the GMAT and go to business school. And if your wife/husband/bf/gf is thinking about taking the LSAT, do whatever you have to do to make him/her take the GMAT instead. You’ll spend far fewer lonely nights crying your eyes out because you miss your partner.

OK, I’m completely kidding about that last part. But seriously, b-school doesn’t have to be torturous for your partner. So if you’re on the fence, hire a GMAT tutor and get to work.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in All, MBA Admissions, Miscellaneous

Tagged , , , , ,

how to scare your GMAT tutor

Posted on November 19, 2009 | Leave a comment

I have no idea whether other GMAT tutors are the same way, but I usually watch my phone like a hawk when one of my students is taking the GMAT. I get pretty excited about the prospect of seeing somebody succeed after weeks or months (or years) of hard work. Unfortunately, the other side of it is that I’m always battling that nagging little worry that my student might not do as well as I’d hoped or expected.

Today, one of my favorite students here in NYC left me a very cryptic voicemail after his test, which made me worry a little bit. I was tied up with other GMAT students all afternoon, and didn’t have a chance to call back. A few hours later, I received an email from him. The subject line just said “GMATTED”. If you’ve read my blog in the past, you know that I use the term “GMATed” pretty often. It means “the GMAT f**ked me over.”

So yeah, he scared me. This guy definitely put in his work, and seemed like one of the most consistent, steady performers I’d ever taught. Some students’ scores bounce around wildly from day to day, and I pray for luck when they take the actual test; this guy, though, was rock-solid in all of his prep, and I was shocked that he got GMATed.

He didn’t get GMATed at all. He got a 690 (44Q/40V) on his first try, which is enough to keep him in the conversation at pretty much any b-school out there. Very, very good stuff. By “GMATTED,” he just meant that he was exhausted and could barely form a sentence.

Dude.  Please, don’t scare me like that again.

Fortunately, I’ve had a very gratifying run of great results from my GMAT students over the past couple of months. My magic number this fall seems to be 710–before Mr. GMATTED, three of my last four students managed to get 710s, and that’s always fun to see. Two of them were taking the GMAT for the very first time, and both did three-week “crash courses” with me. In one case, a student had already taken a Veritas course, and I just helped her fill in some holes. The other crash-course guy managed to make huge leaps on quant–he scored 37 on his first mba.com test, and a 47 on the real thing. Can’t beat that. Both of these students were extremely talented, so I’m not going to claim that three-week GMAT crash courses are generally a good idea… but it can work, when the stars align properly.

My absolute favorite success of the season–and possibly of all-time–was a guy that I’ll call Mr. P. Mr. P called me when I first moved to NYC last summer, and he’d already taken the GMAT three times over the course of about six months. He had done craploads of self-study, and had already worked his way through pretty much everything Manhattan GMAT has to offer.

Here’s the crazy thing: despite all of his hard work, Mr. P’s scores were flat as a pancake. Exam 1: 640/40Q/37V/6.0. Exam 2: 630/39Q/38V/6.0. Exam 3: 630/38Q/38V/6.0. I complimented him on his remarkable consistency, then threw the proverbial kitchen sink at him in an effort to shake things up. As with the venerable Mr. V, it was tough to find material that Mr. P hadn’t seen before, and that always makes life challenging and interesting if you’re a GMAT tutor looking for (relatively) painless ways to help a student gain points.

And guess what? Mr. P managed to scare me a few months later with a depressed-sounding voicemail. We’d shaken things up, all right: he jumped to a 44 on verbal, but his quant actually went down, leaving him with an unsatisfying score of 660. Ooops. Time to fire the GMAT tutor?

Here’s the good part: one month later, he rolled back in to Pearson for his fifth attempt at GMAT glory, and got his 710. There’s a guy who deserved every damned point of that 710, and it was a lot of fun to see him get it.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in All, GMAT

Tagged , , , , , ,

how high can you go?

Posted on October 3, 2009 | 1 Comment

I received an interesting email a week or two ago, and thought that I should share it with everybody, since I regularly receive similar questions:

I took the GMAT this week and scored 640 (Q44, V33).

I did about 3 or 4 practice tests, one from the downloadable MBA.com, and others from old editions of Kaplan and Princeton. I spent about $0 on prep (they were old CD’s and books from my friend) and about 1 week’s worth of time studying.

After reading your blog, somehow I’m dying to know…IF I were to work hard at it, do you think it be possible for me to reach, say 750 within a year?

This email came from a (very polite!) complete stranger who is nowhere near NYC. So without knowing anything else about her, I gave her a nice, honest answer. In her case, I think it’s fair to say that she has some quantitative talent, since she got a 44 on quant without much effort. I’m pretty convinced that she’d be able to raise her GMAT quantitative score at least into the high 40s, and nearly anybody who works hard enough can pull his or her verbal score up by at least a few points. A 700 would be a reasonable goal for her, and it might not be crazy to think that she could achieve that without the help of a GMAT tutor.

Beyond that? A 750? I have absolutely no idea. I would have to spend at least a few hours tutoring her before figuring out how high she could go.

Here’s the way I see it: almost any fluent speaker of English is capable of getting a 650, unless they have some extenuating circumstances such as learning disabilities or debilitating test anxiety (both of which are far more common than most people think–I have all sorts of thoughts about both, and will share them on this blog at some point). I’m not saying that it’s easy to get a 650 on the GMAT. I’m just saying that a truly, deeply dedicated student could work like a lunatic and–on her best day–get a 650. I’ve seen plenty of people start at a very low level (say, 380-420) and ultimately crack 600. For them, 650 is doable.

After that? No guarantees, at all. It isn’t fair, but I would argue that you need to have some sort of particular talent for “the GMAT way of thinking” if you want to crack 650. This “talent” might not be correlated to other forms of intelligence. You could be absolutely brilliant, and never have any shot at beating a 650 on the GMAT. Sorry, but that’s just reality. Once you get beyond 650-level questions, you have to have a knack for “seeing” something in the question, or “making a connection” in ways that can’t always be taught easily. We can increase the odds that you’ll get the tough questions right, but some people really, really struggle to make much headway on those.

(Random example of a GMAT “hard gainer”: one of my all-time favorite students started with a 420. She worked hard, but was bizarrely erratic in her practice tests, scoring everywhere from 380 to 540. On the real test, she stunned us both by scoring a 570, and got into her first-choice MBA program with a fourth-round application. She has zero GMAT talent, but she has been wildly successful in business school, and I swear that she will be CEO of something huge someday. She’s intelligent, motivated, and awesome, and will be an outstanding business leader. Screw the GMAT, right?)

So whenever somebody contacts me–from NYC or from afar–and says that their goal is a 700 or a 750, and that they’ll do anything to achieve that goal… I always try to tell them to chill the f*** out, as politely as I can. For some people, a 750 or a 780 is doable with a year’s worth of studying. For others, a 700 is possible with a herculean effort. And for some, 650 would take a crapload of studying. It isn’t fair, but it’s reality. After a few hours of tutoring, I usually have a good idea of which category a GMAT student falls into, but it’s awfully tough to tell from an email or a phone call.

One more thing I can tell you without knowing much about you: your work (and other) experience is far more important than the GMAT in the admissions process. If you’re an amazing candidate with an amazing work ethic, the GMAT will be an irritation, but never an obstacle.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in All, GMAT, MBA Admissions

Tagged , , , , , ,

is GMAT verbal arbitrary and subjective?

Posted on August 30, 2009 | Leave a comment

I received an interesting email this weekend, and wanted to share the question with anybody who might be interested:

… I don’t see how I can improve my level in verbal. This section looks so arbitrary and subjective. Most official answers in SC, RC and CR are highly arguable. It also explains why most people get a low score in verbal while there is no required knowledge for this section contrary to quant. I don’t understand how people manage to nail this section… I never scored steadily. Yesterday I made a 40 on a prep test, today I made a 20… Is there some magic to understand what test makers expect from the candidates?

Some great questions in here, some of which, unfortunately, do not have great answers. But I’ll do my best to pick apart some of the topics in here.

First of all, I think that GMAT sentence correction is not at all subjective. In theory, the GMAT tests your knowledge of standard, written American English grammar and usage. In practice, I can see why many of the principles tested in GMAT sentence correction seem completely arbitrary. As somebody who has worked for much of the last decade as an editor and GMAT tutor, I can assure you that the GMAT concerns itself with a lot of rules that would slip right past the vast majority of copy editors. A sizable minority of “wrong answers” on GMAT would be completely fine in most major American newspapers, and an even larger minority of the “wrong answers” would be considered completely acceptable spoken English, at least in some parts of the English-speaking world.

However, I don’t think that the arbitrary topic selections should be confused with subjectivity. If you pick up a good usage dictionary or style guide (Bryan Garner’s The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style is my personal favorite), you’ll find endless collections of rules that most people never think about. The GMAT applies these rules consistently–even if they test a seemingly arbitrary subset of those rules.

For most people, the easiest way to make progress on verbal is to very thoroughly learn the major grammar and usage rules that appear on the GMAT. Manhattan GMAT’s sentence correction book is probably the best self-study resource for this purpose; PowerScore’s book isn’t too bad, either. If you struggle to learn grammar from a book, then a good  GMAT tutor could help straighten you out; the GMAT forums also have some fantastic sentence threads with great explanations.

Similarly, critical reasoning and reading comprehension questions in the official GMAT material are extremely consistent. Sure, they can get outrageously difficult, but the test-writers are trying to test your ability to understand the nuance of language, your ability to notice fine details, and your ability to stick to the internal logic of a passage. If you think that answers to official critical reasoning questions are arbitrary, it might be because you’re allowing yourself to “think outside the question.” Once you spend enough time with official GMAT material (and again, a study partner or a good GMAT tutor might be useful), you’ll start to see how the test is rigid and consistent in its application of logical principles.

If you want to improve your reading comprehension and critical reasoning skills without paying a bunch of money for a tutor, I strongly recommend reading The Official LSAT SuperPrep, or at least the parts that describe logical reasoning (LSAT’s version of critical reasoning) and reading comprehension. It’s not necessarily an easy read, but it might help to convince you that the people who write the GMAT are systematic, even if they are kind of evil.

Here comes the rough part.

Unpleasant dose of reality, part 1: I think that it can be incredibly hard to improve your score in reading comprehension. It takes a ton of practice, and possibly a fair amount of guidance. During my long, ugly history of teaching test-prep (SAT, GRE, ACT, TOEFL, TOEIC… including a stint as a TOEFL book writer), I’ve rarely seen anybody make large improvements in reading comprehension with anything less than a herculean GMAT study plan. You could make moderate improvements in a few weeks, but major gains on reading comprehension usually take months. (Occasionally, I can browbeat a smart-but-lazy teenager into doing much better on the ACT or SAT in a few weeks, but that’s not a skill problem–it’s a focus problem.)

Unpleasant dose of reality, part 2: unless you’re using official GMAT (or LSAT or GRE) material, “knockoff” verbal questions actually ARE completely subjective and arbitrary, at least some of the time. I strongly discourage my students from touching any verbal material other than that found in the GMAT official guide, the official GMAT verbal review guide, GMATPrep, and official LSAT books. (Manhattan GMAT is an exception of sorts, but I still don’t think that anybody should rely exclusively on MGMAT for verbal. Manhattan does an absolutely amazing job, but their material is still designed as a copy of the real thing, and like all copies, the material inevitably has its biases and imperfections.)

So if you’ve taken tests from any sources other than the aforementioned, you should expect your verbal scores to be completely random. Trust me, it is more difficult to write “real GMAT reading comprehension questions” than you can possibly imagine, and most test-prep companies would never dream of spending the money it takes to produce, test, and polish a truly accurate set of GMAT verbal questions. Focus exclusively on official material for a month or two, and the GMAT will start to look much less arbitrary and subjective.

Thank you for the great set of questions! You’re surely not the only person who has these thoughts, and I wish you all the best with your GMAT studies.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in All, GMAT

Tagged , , , , , ,

GMAT Focus quirks

Posted on August 26, 2009 | 1 Comment

For the most part, I’m a fan of GMAC, the company that produces the GMAT. I’ve spent a good chunk of the last decade working as an SAT, ACT, GRE, and TOEFL tutor, and I respect that fact that the GMAT is much more complicated, precise, and nuanced than any of the aforementioned exams. And GMAC is also fairly generous about publishing retired test questions; some of us whine about the GMAT OG’s lack of hard questions, but the official guides for GRE and TOEFL are far worse, offering only a handful of (ancient, moldy) practice questions. So while I generally think that GMAC does its job really, really well, they seem to have been a little bit sloppy with GMAT Focus lately.

In some ways, GMAT Focus is the best of the GMAT practice material. Sure, it’s overpriced ($25 for one test, or $65 for three… basically, you’ll pay almost $1 per question). And I think it’s weird that they sell the tests in groups of three–you can actually take the test four times before questions start to repeat. And you’re given only 45 minutes to complete 24 questions–a little bit odd, since you’ll ultimately need to get used to doing 37 GMAT questions in 75 minutes. But GMAT Focus still contains an impressive bank of difficult, fresh GMAT questions; I’m convinced that GMAT Focus questions are much closer to the real thing than any other practice resource available. If you’re serious about improving your quant score, GMAT Focus is absolutely not optional.

Unfortunately, the GMAT Focus questions are no longer all that unique. Many of them appear in the 12th edition of the official guide, and I have a funny feeling that even more will show up in the next edition of the Quantitative Review guide. So you might be paying $1 for questions that you’ve already purchased in another book. That’s really annoying, especially if you’re already paying for a GMAT tutor.

Even more annoying: the GMAT Focus might not be as representative of the real test as I once thought. For a long time, it seemed that the GMAT Focus would give you a pretty good idea of the composition of the quantitative section–specifically, GMAT Focus included a lot more tricky logic, combinatorics, and “creative algebra” questions than the official guides, and GMAT Focus seemed to be an extremely accurate representation of the actual test. Sadly, something might have shifted, at least a little bit. In the past month, several of my students (all with quant raw scores above 40) whined that the real test didn’t have any of the tough combination/permutation/probability questions that appear on GMAT Focus. It makes me wonder whether the GMAT Focus is becoming somehow less indicative of the actual test. Again, I find that a little bit irritating–if it’s actually true.

Here’s the strangest report of all: one of my GMAT students swears that he saw a GMAT Focus question on the real exam last weekend. He claims that the question was absolutely identical, with the same numbers and everything. He didn’t share the details of the question (that would be illegal), but I find that pretty alarming if it’s true. Is GMAC getting sloppy? Was the “retread” GMAT Focus question tossed back into the real test as some sort of experiment, or as a statistical control for other questions? Or was my student just hallucinating after a long, stressful few hours of test-taking?

Either way, it’s interesting. I still think that it’s worth spending $90 for all four GMAT Focus tests, but I couldn’t really blame a budget-conscious GMAT student who comes to a different conclusion.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in All, GMAT

Tagged , , , , , ,

a ridiculous, expensive GMAT myth

Posted on July 23, 2009 | Leave a comment

Before I make the main point of this post, a few disclaimers: 1) I have absolutely nothing against GMAT prep classes; on the contrary, I think that they’re more cost-effective than a tutor for many students. 2) I have absolutely nothing against any of the major GMAT test-prep companies. In fact, I had an absolutely wonderful experience working for one in the early 2000s. 3) The following is meant to be informative, not bitter or critical.

OK. Just wanted to make sure that I made it clear that I’m not trying to be a jerk here.

But I had to share this with anybody who might be interested. I just started working with a new student here in NYC, and she’s using a GMAT tutor as a supplement to a test-prep course. Her classroom teacher apparently said the following: “If you’re debating between A and D on a GMAT question, the answer is probably A.”

Whoa. Really? This deserves a special place in the Crappy Test Advice Hall of Fame, alongside the old adage about picking C whenever you need to guess.

I would be shocked if the GMAT doesn’t randomize its answer choices. Randomizing might be a little bit tricky on, say, data sufficiency, but I’m pretty certain that A and D are both correct about 20% of the time on GMAT. It’s an awfully sophisticated test; why would they do something stupid like making A the answer most of the time?

As soon as my student said this to me, I probably got a crazed, skeptical look on my face. I started searching for any conceivable explanation… was it on sentence correction, and the teacher just meant to say that people are often overly reluctant to choose A? Was it on data sufficiency, where the same might be true? Nope. My student insisted that they were discussing a plain old math problem solving question.

Again, (here comes disclaimer #4), this is second-hand information, and I’m wondering whether something got lost in translation from teacher to GMAT student to tutor. But if a major test-prep company is making blanket statements about A (or D or C or any other letter) being a fundamentally better guess than other choices, that’s pretty scary stuff.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in All, GMAT

Tagged , , ,

what? the test-prep industry isn’t totally awesome?

Posted on July 10, 2009 | 1 Comment

I just read a great article in the Wall Street Journal that pretty much hits it on the head when it comes to the test-prep industry: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124278685697537839.html. It doesn’t specifically mention GMAT, but it’s still an interesting commentary that applies, in some ways, to everything in the test-prep industry.

Basically, the article quotes a bunch of academic studies that suggest that the average score improvement from SAT and ACT prep courses is minimal: about 30 points on the SAT, and less than 1 point (!!) on the ACT composite. The article, based on some solid reporting from students at Lowell High School in San Francisco, also accuses test-prep companies of rigging their “diagnostic tests” so that they can claim that their students had huge score improvements.

They wouldn’t really do that, would they?

Um, yeah, they would. It’s the oldest trick in the test-prep book, and I’m surprised that parents and students are still duped by promises that a certain tutor or class “will raise your score by 240 points… guaranteed!” I’ve been teaching test-prep for nearly a decade now, and I can tell you that there are never any guarantees–some students, for a host of reasons, will never gain 240 points on their SAT score, no matter how brilliant their prep course or tutor may be. (Similarly, there are some people who will never gain 240 points on their GMAT score.) And yes, many companies still rig their “diagnostic” tests so that they can claim that you made a huge score jump.

Don’t get me wrong: score increases of 240 points happen on the GMAT, but they’re exceedingly rare. Familiarity with the test will definitely improve your score, and a thorough review of basic test content is always productive. A great tutor will help you with the psychological aspect of testing, and any good teacher will help you to get a grip on the trickiness inherent in GMAT. But everybody is different, and there are limits to what prep courses and GMAT tutoring can achieve for any given individual.

All I’m saying is that it’s good to be wary of the claims and statistics. The lively forum debates help keep GMAT prep companies honest, but there are still lots of snake-oil salesman in our midst.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in All, GMAT

Tagged , , , , , ,

why I love the GMAT

Posted on June 5, 2009 | Leave a comment

When I first encountered the GMAT, I was working at a major test-prep firm as a GRE and SAT instructor.  At the time, I was 23 years old, and had absolutely no thoughts of business school.  For that matter, I hadn’t even finished my undergraduate degree; I was dancing professionally during an indefinite hiatus from university, and there was no reason why I would have any interest in the GMAT.

But as luck would have it, my company needed a GMAT teacher, and I was ushered into a computer lab to take a practice test.  After clobbering the ACT, SAT, and GRE, I figured that the GMAT would be basically the same deal.  For the first time in my life, I did “just okay” on the practice GMAT.  I did well enough to be initiated as a GMAT instructor, but I was nowhere near a perfect score.

And my curiosity was piqued.

Fast-forward eight or nine years, and I’m still playing with the GMAT.  I’ve worked as a private tutor for a long time now, and I’ve spent quite a bit of time tutoring the SAT and GRE and ACT–but there’s a special place in my heart (or brain?) for the GMAT.

The GMAT is, without question, the most complex and nuanced standardized test out there.  There’s absolutely no way to boil the GMAT down to a nice, simple series of tricks.  The GRE, by contrast, employs an extremely limited set of questions; once you know what to expect on the test (particularly the quantitative section), it’s just a matter of execution.  The GMAT seems almost infinite, and they seem to write questions that only the most ridiculous of geniuses are able to solve.  (When I took the GMAT last year, I spent eight minutes on a single question… and still had absolutely no idea how to solve it.  Whoever writes these questions is a bad, bad dude.)

So that’s why I’m here, all these years later.  Still playing with GMAT, still trying to figure out every little nuance and evil question, so that I can offer the most help possible for my friends and students who want to achieve their MBA goals.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in All, GMAT

Tagged , , , ,