750 Q49 V44 AWA 6.0 - I don't know how I did it

Congratulations on the great score! After you drink those energy drinks don't you feel a bit tired toward the end of the tests though?

As I love to give examples, consider this one below.

Assume that p is 16 and q is 9. What is the area of perpendicular triangle ABC (see diagram below)?



I tried to solve this question by myself for twenty minutes until I saw that triangle SBC is equal to triangle ABC and that you could equal some things to find out the height. Typical thinking that MGMAT teaches you.

I gave this problem to my dad: He solved it in 15 seconds. He told me that there is actually a rule that for every perpendicular triangle p*q=h², with h being the height (and I checked on the internet, he is right on that one). 9*16 = 144, so the height is 12. 12*25/2 (hypotenuse times height divided by two - triangle area formula) gives you the area (150) within twenty seconds. Nothing that MGMAT or Kaplan or any study guide would teach you. This is what I mean by "stay open-minded". Especially for geometry and also combinatorics there are tons of simple rules and shortcuts like these. If you still have them take a look at your highschool mathbooks. Those often contain stuff like this.