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# If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips

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Veritas Prep GMAT Instructor
Joined: 26 Jul 2010
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If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink]  01 Dec 2010, 13:52
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Hello, everyone:

As I was discussing with a group of Veritas instructors yesterday in one of our instructor development sessions, there are a lot of GMAT strategies that I've learned over the years that I now wonder how I ever took the GMAT without! In discussing the curriculum for our new strategy-heavy Essentials Course, we all agreed that there are quite a few strategies that make taking the GMAT infinitely easier that we wish someone would have told us from day one.

So I thought it would be a good thread if people want to chime in with the one GMAT strategy/tip/concept that they've learned recently that they wish they had known all along. Who's with me?

Probably my personal favorite is Prime Factorization. The more I break numbers down into their primes, the more useful I find that whole thought process.

For example, on a problem like:

How many unique factors does 36 have?

Instead of trying to list them all, you can break 36 down to:

2*2*3*3

And then build up from there with combinations of those numbers:

2
3
2*2
2*3
3*3
2*2*3
2*3*3
2*2*3*3
And, of course, 1, which is a factor of all numbers. So 36 has 9 factors, and there's a systematic way to arrive at that. And using the Prime Factorization technique has taught my how to break down a lot of questions that have "factor" or "divisible" in them somewhere - it's a guiding principle that so often works.

Does anyone else have a favorite "wow, I wish I had known that all along" GMAT strategy? I'm interested to hear yours...
_________________

Brian

Save $100 on live Veritas Prep GMAT Courses and Admissions Consulting Enroll now. Pay later. Take advantage of Veritas Prep's flexible payment plan options. Veritas Prep Reviews  Veritas Prep GMAT Discount Codes Knewton GMAT Discount Codes GMAT Pill GMAT Discount Codes Ms. Big Fat Panda Status: Three Down. Joined: 09 Jun 2010 Posts: 1923 Concentration: General Management, Nonprofit Followers: 380 Kudos [?]: 1551 [2] , given: 210 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 01 Dec 2010, 14:03 2 This post received KUDOS Expert's post When you are asked to, for example find the value of 1000/1001 and the answer choices are 0.998, 0.997 and 0.999 - you really are left with no choice but to do long division. But there is a simple trick for this: When you are asked to find the value of a/a+b where b is a small number, you can use the approximation that the fraction is equal to a - b. Quite a neat trick eh? As for strategies, eliminating the scope of answers in Verbal questions by usage of relevance and tone really really helps a lot. Especially in assumption questions with causal effect involved. If you have a causal effect, that says X causes Y, you are intrinsically assuming that 1. Y does not cause X 2. Z does not cause Y Usage of these two simple cases will help you eliminate a lot of choices or just arrive at the right one through prephrasing! Manager Joined: 04 Nov 2010 Posts: 230 Followers: 4 Kudos [?]: 85 [0], given: 21 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 01 Dec 2010, 14:06 I just like the idea... thanks for those tips, I'll do the same if I have one _________________ If you find the post useful, don't be shy and Kudo me Manager Joined: 16 Feb 2010 Posts: 225 Followers: 2 Kudos [?]: 116 [0], given: 16 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 09 Dec 2010, 09:41 VeritasPrepBrian wrote: Hello, everyone: As I was discussing with a group of Veritas instructors yesterday in one of our instructor development sessions, there are a lot of GMAT strategies that I've learned over the years that I now wonder how I ever took the GMAT without! In discussing the curriculum for our new strategy-heavy Essentials Course, we all agreed that there are quite a few strategies that make taking the GMAT infinitely easier that we wish someone would have told us from day one. So I thought it would be a good thread if people want to chime in with the one GMAT strategy/tip/concept that they've learned recently that they wish they had known all along. Who's with me? Probably my personal favorite is Prime Factorization. The more I break numbers down into their primes, the more useful I find that whole thought process. For example, on a problem like: How many unique factors does 36 have? Instead of trying to list them all, you can break 36 down to: 2*2*3*3 And then build up from there with combinations of those numbers: 2 3 2*2 2*3 3*3 2*2*3 2*3*3 2*2*3*3 And, of course, 1, which is a factor of all numbers. So 36 has 9 factors, and there's a systematic way to arrive at that. And using the Prime Factorization technique has taught my how to break down a lot of questions that have "factor" or "divisible" in them somewhere - it's a guiding principle that so often works. Does anyone else have a favorite "wow, I wish I had known that all along" GMAT strategy? I'm interested to hear yours... or you can always use $$(x+1)(y+1)(z+1)....$$ where x and y refer to the powers of each unique prime factor: eg $$36=2^2 3^2$$ therefore 36 has $$(2+1)(2+1)=3*3=9$$ factors Manager Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Posts: 63 Followers: 1 Kudos [?]: 1 [0], given: 5 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 09 Dec 2010, 21:54 these are really helpful. Thanks guys! Veritas Prep GMAT Instructor Joined: 16 Oct 2010 Posts: 5464 Location: Pune, India Followers: 1338 Kudos [?]: 6802 [1] , given: 177 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 10 Dec 2010, 05:10 1 This post received KUDOS Expert's post Before I took my GMAT some years back, I had looked at only some OG questions in a span of 15 days! So Brian, you can imagine that after I went through our books, there were many 'Oh, I wish I knew this strategy before' moments! My favorite is "The most important aspect of solving most CR questions is finding the correct conclusion." I used to read the stimulus, read the question stem and find the appropriate answer. I am sure I made some terrible mistakes in my Verbal section at that time. Now, each and every CR question makes so much sense. It's unbelievable... _________________ Karishma Veritas Prep | GMAT Instructor My Blog Veritas Prep GMAT course is coming to India. Enroll in our weeklong Immersion Course that starts March 29! Veritas Prep Reviews Veritas Prep GMAT Instructor Joined: 26 Jul 2010 Posts: 226 Followers: 139 Kudos [?]: 304 [1] , given: 27 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 10 Dec 2010, 09:24 1 This post received KUDOS Oh, absolutely right, Karishma - I think we've talked about it but I often tell my students to do a CR drill in which they: 1) Read the question stem first 2) If it's a Strengthen/Weaken/Explain question write down the conclusion (or keywords) and stop there, moving on to the next question. 2a) Email me the conclusions that they've identified 3) Go back and finish the problems I can predict with >90% accuracy which questions they'll get right or wrong just based on the conclusions they've identified. If they're on the conclusion, they're almost always right; if they've missed it, they almost never are. One thing I want to add to my original strategy on here - zisis is right that there's a trick for the number of factors in a given number (using the exponents, adding one to each, and multiplying), but I definitely want to add a little caution to focusing too much on those tricks. The GMAT is pretty slick...the authors have a way of knowing which tricks have become popular (in fact, they've been known to browse these forums to see how people are doing on harder questions - hey, guys!) and then write questions that circumvent the trick. Accordingly, while it can certainly save time to know the tricks, I think it's significantly more important to know the concepts that underlie them (e.g. Prime Factorization). The Veritas Prep blog has a post on that today: http://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2010/12/gmat-tip-of-the-week-gmat-math-the-gob-bluth-way/ _________________ Brian Save$100 on live Veritas Prep GMAT Courses and Admissions Consulting

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Last edited by VeritasPrepBrian on 13 Dec 2010, 09:25, edited 1 time in total.
Manager
Status: Fighting the beast.
Joined: 25 Oct 2010
Posts: 182
Schools: Pitt, Oregon, LBS...
Followers: 29

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Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink]  11 Dec 2010, 05:37
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KUDOS
I used to completely struggle with Data Sufficiency, but after I had read the Veritas Prep DS book, I started getting 80-90% of them right. The simplest trick of them all is to read the stem, and then immediately start looking at the easier of two pieces of information, for example, if you get these two options:

1) x+y-6+2xy= 23

and

2) x=6

I used to go to 1) and analyze it. Now, I just pick the easier one to start, which in this case would be statement 2). When you are able to easily eliminate 1 of the statements, it gives you a decent confidence boost because you narrowed your choices down by 40-60%.
_________________

[highlight]Monster collection of Verbal questions (RC, CR, and SC)[/highlight]
massive-collection-of-verbal-questions-sc-rc-and-cr-106195.html#p832142

[highlight]Massive collection of thousands of Data Sufficiency and Problem Solving questions and answers:[/highlight]
1001-ds-questions-file-106193.html#p832133

Intern
Joined: 12 Dec 2010
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Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink]  12 Dec 2010, 09:53
Good stuff! Thanks all of you!
Veritas Prep GMAT Instructor
Joined: 26 Jul 2010
Posts: 226
Followers: 139

Kudos [?]: 304 [1] , given: 27

Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink]  13 Dec 2010, 09:57
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Great advice, MisterEko - and not only does that boost confidence but it also helps you to get a better feel for what kinds of information you might need in the "trickier" statement. In your example, x = 6 for statement 2 may get you to recognize that statement 1 only works if x is positive or something like that. Because you're actively starting to work with the problem, you're getting your mind around how to solve it, and that can be extremely helpful.

While we're on that - here's another tip about "the easier statement":

When a statement is clearly insufficient on its own, you MUST make a decision about whether:

-You need that information to make the other statement work (you're shooting for C)

OR

-They're trying to make you think you need that statement, but the other statement actually already tells you that information (so it's A or B)

This is a strategy we call "Why Are You Here?" - you need to determine why the "weak" individual statement was provided. For example, consider the question:

How many integers x exist such that a < x < b?

1) b - a = 6

2) a and b are nonintegers

Statement 2 is clearly insufficient - it tells us nothing about x and the range of a and b is infinite. So, here, you can infer that "nonintegers" is a decision point for you - do you need to be told that a and b are nonintegers, or is that something that's embedded within statement 1 or that's just unimportant?

Because you know that you need to make this decision, you should test statement 1 with both integers and nonintegers:

Integers: 7 - 1 = 6, values of x are 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 ---> answer is 5

Nonintegers: 7.5 - 1.5 = 6, values of x are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 ---> answer is 6

Now we know that statement 1 is insufficient on its own (we got two answers) and we knew that statement 2 was no good, so the answer is C. And by using the weaker statement, statement 2, as a decision point, we could efficiently derive all of that.
_________________

Brian

Save $100 on live Veritas Prep GMAT Courses and Admissions Consulting Enroll now. Pay later. Take advantage of Veritas Prep's flexible payment plan options. Veritas Prep Reviews Manager Status: Fighting the beast. Joined: 25 Oct 2010 Posts: 182 Schools: Pitt, Oregon, LBS... Followers: 29 Kudos [?]: 294 [0], given: 36 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 13 Dec 2010, 11:07 VeritasPrepBrian wrote: Great advice, MisterEko - and not only does that boost confidence but it also helps you to get a better feel for what kinds of information you might need in the "trickier" statement. In your example, x = 6 for statement 2 may get you to recognize that statement 1 only works if x is positive or something like that. Because you're actively starting to work with the problem, you're getting your mind around how to solve it, and that can be extremely helpful. While we're on that - here's another tip about "the easier statement": When a statement is clearly insufficient on its own, you MUST make a decision about whether: -You need that information to make the other statement work (you're shooting for C) OR -They're trying to make you think you need that statement, but the other statement actually already tells you that information (so it's A or B) This is a strategy we call "Why Are You Here?" - you need to determine why the "weak" individual statement was provided. For example, consider the question: How many integers x exist such that a < x < b? 1) b - a = 6 2) a and b are nonintegers Statement 2 is clearly insufficient - it tells us nothing about x and the range of a and b is infinite. So, here, you can infer that "nonintegers" is a decision point for you - do you need to be told that a and b are nonintegers, or is that something that's embedded within statement 1 or that's just unimportant? Because you know that you need to make this decision, you should test statement 1 with both integers and nonintegers: Integers: 7 - 1 = 6, values of x are 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 ---> answer is 5 Nonintegers: 7.5 - 1.5 = 6, values of x are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 ---> answer is 6 Now we know that statement 1 is insufficient on its own (we got two answers) and we knew that statement 2 was no good, so the answer is C. And by using the weaker statement, statement 2, as a decision point, we could efficiently derive all of that. Isn't it nice when we discover ways to beat the GMAT with its own weapons? _________________ [highlight]Monster collection of Verbal questions (RC, CR, and SC)[/highlight] massive-collection-of-verbal-questions-sc-rc-and-cr-106195.html#p832142 [highlight]Massive collection of thousands of Data Sufficiency and Problem Solving questions and answers:[/highlight] 1001-ds-questions-file-106193.html#p832133 Manager Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Posts: 63 Followers: 1 Kudos [?]: 1 [0], given: 5 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 13 Dec 2010, 11:24 This keeps getting better and better. I hope more people happen to stumble in this forum like I did. Thanks guys. Intern Joined: 15 Dec 2010 Posts: 9 Location: San Francisco Followers: 0 Kudos [?]: 6 [0], given: 0 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 16 Dec 2010, 00:05 I have a pretty extensive discussion of how to find all the factors of any number on my website, 790gmat. Just look for "Free Prime Factorization Problems" on the right side of the homepage. In particular, you should read page 1 and attempt questions 15 and 16. The GMAT Guru _________________ The GMAT Guru Private Tutoring for Top MBA Applicants Manager Joined: 04 Nov 2010 Posts: 230 Followers: 4 Kudos [?]: 85 [1] , given: 21 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 16 Dec 2010, 07:52 1 This post received KUDOS Hi Mr. The Gmat Guru, I think that your GMAT score is pretty appealing to us... I will have a look at your website. Who knows, maybe that could bring me some inspiration for d-day. _________________ If you find the post useful, don't be shy and Kudo me Senior Manager Status: Bring the Rain Joined: 17 Aug 2010 Posts: 407 Location: United States (MD) Concentration: Strategy, Marketing Schools: Michigan (Ross) - Class of 2014 GMAT 1: 730 Q49 V39 GPA: 3.13 WE: Corporate Finance (Aerospace and Defense) Followers: 7 Kudos [?]: 43 [0], given: 46 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 16 Dec 2010, 08:30 MisterEko wrote: I used to completely struggle with Data Sufficiency, but after I had read the Veritas Prep DS book, I started getting 80-90% of them right. The simplest trick of them all is to read the stem, and then immediately start looking at the easier of two pieces of information, for example, if you get these two options: 1) x+y-6+2xy= 23 and 2) x=6 I used to go to 1) and analyze it. Now, I just pick the easier one to start, which in this case would be statement 2). When you are able to easily eliminate 1 of the statements, it gives you a decent confidence boost because you narrowed your choices down by 40-60%. This is a great tip! I sometimes find myself bogged down on Stmt 1, taking up too much time and then making me nervous that I'm not doing something right. _________________ Intern Joined: 15 Dec 2010 Posts: 9 Location: San Francisco Followers: 0 Kudos [?]: 6 [0], given: 0 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 16 Dec 2010, 10:51 MisterEko wrote: The simplest trick of them all is to read the stem, and then immediately start looking at the easier of two pieces of information, for example, if you get these two options: 1) x+y-6+2xy= 23 and 2) x=6 I used to go to 1) and analyze it. Now, I just pick the easier one to start, which in this case would be statement 2). When you are able to easily eliminate 1 of the statements, it gives you a decent confidence boost because you narrowed your choices down by 40-60%. What is more interesting about the example above and something that most prep companies don't tell you is that IF YOU CORRECTLY GET ONLY ONE SOLUTION TO ONE OF THE STATEMENTS, THAT SOLUTION WILL AUTOMATICALLY BE A SOLUTION TO THE OTHER STATEMENT. For example: What is the value of x? 1) x is a prime factor of 221 2) 2x = 34 Clearly, the second statement is easier to evaluate (sufficient..only answer is 17) If you know this, the first statement is much easier to evaluate because you KNOW that x=17 is a solution and you can immediately divide 221 by 17 to see what other factors it may have. (17*13 = 221) Note that knowing the answer to one statement does not tell you how many solutions the other has, so it won't tell you directly "insufficient" or "sufficient", but it gives you at least one solution to start with. _________________ The GMAT Guru Private Tutoring for Top MBA Applicants Manager Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Posts: 63 Followers: 1 Kudos [?]: 1 [0], given: 5 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 16 Dec 2010, 12:57 GMAT Guru...forgive me if you have already posted it but can you share your website? Thanks. Intern Joined: 15 Dec 2010 Posts: 9 Location: San Francisco Followers: 0 Kudos [?]: 6 [0], given: 0 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 16 Dec 2010, 14:08 spyguy wrote: GMAT Guru...forgive me if you have already posted it but can you share your website? Thanks. Just google "The GMAT Guru" and my website 790gmat should come up. GMATclub won't allow new users to post urls directly, otherwise I would just post it. _________________ The GMAT Guru Private Tutoring for Top MBA Applicants Manager Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Posts: 63 Followers: 1 Kudos [?]: 1 [0], given: 5 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 16 Dec 2010, 15:08 thanks Manager Joined: 12 Sep 2010 Posts: 218 Followers: 2 Kudos [?]: 16 [0], given: 17 Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 16 Dec 2010, 15:54 Thanks for all the great tips. Posted from GMAT ToolKit Posted from GMAT ToolKit Re: If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips [#permalink] 16 Dec 2010, 15:54 Go to page 1 2 Next [ 21 posts ] Similar topics Replies Last post Similar Topics: What You Need to Know to Get Accepted to Wharton 0 12 Aug 2014, 11:51 Applying in 3-4 years.. what did you wish you knew? 2 30 Jun 2014, 12:39 46 The One Thing You Wish You Knew - GMAT Club Contest! 23 09 Oct 2012, 06:50 9 The One Thing You Wish You Knew About GMAT - Win$\$ 26 31 Aug 2011, 08:46
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# If you only knew then what you know now... Fave GMAT Tips

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