Beat The GMAT

This is the last installment of an FAQ series on Computer-Adaptive Tests (CAT). Check out part 1 and part 2 as well.

How can my overall percentile be higher than both my quantitative and verbal percentiles? Why isn’t it the average of the two?

You can be in the 99th percentile overall even if you didn’t score in the 99th percentile on either of the sections, because the overall score is calculated separately from the section scores and their percentiles. So, for example, you could get a 48 on Quantitative (86th percentile), a 45 on Verbal (98th percentile), and a 760 overall (99th percentile).

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Test day needs to be given the weight it deserves.  While you can retake the test over and over until you do what you think is the best you can do, if you master it the first time you will save yourself a lot of time and at US$250 a pop, a lot of money.

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Last week I talked about overcoming the challenge of a low GMAT quant score. Today we’ll discuss how to handle a less-than-perfect verbal score.

With such a strong emphasis on teamwork and communication in b-school (and for the rest of your life as a successful businessperson), it’s no wonder that stellar written and spoken verbal skills are essential for MBA students.

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It is test day.  You are on question number 11 of the quantitative section.  You have been on question number 11 for the past 2 minutes.  You glance down at your scratch work and you see a tangle of equations and calculations, but not one of them is getting you any closer to the right answer.  What do you do?

The first instinct of most students is to check how much time is left.  This is an important consideration in determining your next step, but its usefulness varies based on a couple of factors, as we will see below.

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By far, the easiest and fastest way to learn English is to be a tiny baby growing up in an English-speaking environment.  If you are reading this article, though, you are no longer in a position to take advantage of that opportunity, and will have to improve your English the hard way:  practice.  Not all practice is equally good, however!  English, like all living languages, is complex and constantly-changing; what is acceptable in spoken English is not always accepted in Standard (written) English.  The key to improving your English reading, processing, and writing skills for the GMAT is consistent high-quality practice.  It's true that native speakers have a big advantage -- they have typically been listening to correct English for at least two decades.  Non-native speakers, however, have a small advantage -- they (unlike native speakers) have not been listening to incorrect English for two decades.  Build your study around quality writing and daily practice -- and start as early as you can.

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For those of you looking to go to business school to switch careers, even if you were not entirely up front about that fact on your essay, you need to be prepared.  There will not be the down time that you imagined to sit back, learn a little business and lament on your potential future.  At most schools this process begins during orientation, when you are recruited by the various clubs on campus.  Some of these clubs can be fun (eg: Food and Wine, Sports or Adventure), but most of them are focused on future employment.

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You’ve been studying religiously for the GMAT, learning all of the content and formulas you need, practicing under timed conditions…and suddenly, your practice test scores went down!  How is that possible, you wonder?  Is all the work that you’re doing pointless?  Are you doomed to stay at this low score level no matter what?

Relax, and know that it is NORMAL for your practice test scores to fluctuate.  There are many reasons for this, including:

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GMAC has released this detailed video tour of a GMAT testing center. Definitely spend some time to watch this video to set expectations for your test day. Take notes on what the center looks and feels like, and during your practice tests try to simulate this environment the best you can.

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Let’s face it, studying is not fun. It’s usually something you struggle through, is discouraging, tedious and expensive, and requires faith that it will pay off in the end.

Here’s the good news: it will pay off, but only if you do it correctly. These are some good rules to follow:

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In today’s competitive job market, even an MBA might not seem like enough to get you the kind of job that you want.  If you’re looking for something to set you apart from the crowd, a JD/MBA might be an appealing option to you.  But what is involved in earning those degrees jointly, and what can holding them do for your academic experience and your career trajectory?

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Welcome back to this week's Challenge Problem! As always, the problem and solution below were written by one of our fantastic instructors. Each challenge problem represents a 700+ level question. If you are up for the challenge, however, set your timer for 2 minutes and go!

Question

Two different primes may be said to “rhyme” around an integer if they are the same distance from the integer on the number line. For instance, 3 and 7 rhyme around 5. What integer between 1 and 20, inclusive, has the greatest number of distinct rhyming primes around it?

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On the GMAT verbal section, all questions consist of one right answer choice, and four wrong answer choices.  Test takers tend to focus on how to get to the right answer (obviously).  However, to really sharpen your verbal skills, I also encourage students to spend some time during their preparation focusing on wrong answer choices as well.  Just as there is great care from the test creators to make a choice unequivocally correct, there is just as much effort to make the other four answer choices unequivocally wrong. Being able to spot wrong answer choices is especially helpful when you’ve made an elimination of wrong answer choices, and you’re narrowing down to the correct answer from two or three remaining choices.  Here, I’ll discuss two common wrong answer types in GMAT Verbal (which show up in both Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning): choices that we classify as Extreme, and Out of Scope.

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Though they’ll never admit to using “dirty tricks” to keep your score down, the authors of the GMAT can be shrewd in the way that they word questions to prey on the inefficiencies of human nature.  Previously in this space, we talked about the “Simon Says” nature of Data Sufficiency questions, in which the authors know that you will often make assumptions about variables – that they’re integers, or positive – without being explicitly told so.   Data Sufficiency questions contain another, perhaps even more devilish, example of this need for perfect precision, embedded deeply in the way that these questions are written.  Consider this fragment of a GMAT question:

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The following is a guest post by Andre S., a current MBA student and a blogger for The Dirt. Andre began his MBA blog to share a bluntly honest perspective of life in business school. Beat The GMAT's editorial staff purposely left his article today in its original raw (and entertaining) form. With out further ado, here is Andre S.:

So this past week I returned back to the east-coast to start my MBA program, but I was a little exhausted after driving for 1000 (!) miles. Although the fact that me and my girlfriend did it without tearing eachothers hair out is quite impressive. 15 states, 4 days, and 36 cups of coffee later, im sitting here back in my MBA program fresh from my road trip, when i hear the words that every MBA student secretly dreads. No its not a quiz or a test of some sort, this is something far, far worse...

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If there’s one question type that makes most GMAT testers sigh or even curse, it’s Reading Comprehension. Most testers find the passages confusing or boring or some combination of both. The questions may be hard to follow, ask for information that is difficult to find in the passage, and/or present answer choices that are hard to understand and difficult to choose between. However, as RC is roughly 30% of the Verbal section, these questions simply cannot be disregarded. Typically, a GMAT tester will see 4 passages with 2-4 questions each. Passage subject matter ranges from social science/history to economics/business to science/technology. Question types range from information retrieval and specific inference to primary purpose and passage structure. RC appears roughly once during every set of 10 questions. Therefore, performing well on the first 3 passages, which will occur during questions 1-30, is essential to building and maintaining a great Verbal score.

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