GMAT Strategy

Jeff Sackmann put it well when he says about the Official Guide in his forum: "The questions, on average, are set at about the level of a 600-650 test taker." The questions on my GMAT were considerably harder. So how do I study for the upper level?

Hey artistocrat,

Great question and observation - there are some tough questions in the OG, but the majority of them are going to fall below the 700 level. And understandably so - only about 10% of people score at that level, so 90% or so of all GMAT questions (by that logic...kind of a simplification) are written for a lower level.

So with that in mind, here are a few ways to prepare for the top-shelf questions:

1) Take the official practice tests (GMATPrep, available at www.mba.com) several times. That pool of questions is deep so you won't see too many repeats, and because the test is adaptive you'll see the vast majority of questions within or at the upper limit of your ability level.

2) Take the OG questions and ask yourself "how could you make this harder?" to anticipate how the GMAT authors might add a twist to an existing question. For example, most who have been through the OG know that question (and I'll paraphrase on the numbers):

When x is divided by y, the remainder is 14. And x/y = 65.4. What is the value of y?

Well, that's actually a pretty tough problem...but if you really wanted to throw it to an advanced level you could ask it as a data sufficiency question and take the answer choices out of the "asset" pool. I wrote up a version that I give my students:

For nonnegative integers x and y, what is the remainder when x is divided by y?

(1) x/y = 13.8

(2) The numbers x and y have a combined total of less than 5 digits

That adds a twist - it takes the same platform for the question but tweaks the setup in a way that obscures the method.

You can do this yourself pretty often on the quant section, and even on the verbal section (but don't fall into the "what if there were two correct answers" trap...there won't be)


3) This forum is a great place to look for harder problems because people tend to post about the trickier stuff. Find a few experts to follow (I recommend David...) and see which problems they comment on (I can only speak for me, but I gravitate to discussing the tougher stuff). Look for titles like "Expert help needed!" or "Really hard problem" and you can be exposed to a lot more difficult problems.


I hope that helps...and congratulations on "outgrowing" the OG!