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Brian Galvin is the Director of Academic Programs at Veritas Prep, where he oversees all of the company’s GMAT preparation courses.
If your goal is to become the youngest Fortune 500 CEO at the age of 27, you have no choice but to be efficient and direct. Those virtues define the business model of Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, who turned a direct manufacturing and sales model into a revolution of the computer marketplace and made himself over $13 billion in the process. (His earliest employees nearly all became millionaires via stock options, earning them the nickname “Dellionaires” around Austin, Texas)
Because Michael Dell is such a titan of business, it is only natural that business schools continue to seek those “Dell Direct” virtues in their applicants. Borrowing from Dell’s philosophies on efficiency and directness as you take the GMAT will help you demonstrate these qualities to business schools. Consider the question:
What is the square root of 1089?
(A) 23
(B) 28
(C) 31
(D) 33
(E) 43
On a question like this, there are plenty of ways to be inefficient and indirect as you attempt to solve it. Theoretically, you could square each answer choice as you attempt to determine the solution, but that commits you to doing several, if not all five, double-digit multiplication problems.
Michael Dell would see a more direct and efficient way. He would note that:
302 is 900 and 402 is 1600, so the answer must be between the two, as we need a number that, when squared, falls between those two parameters.
Only a number ending in 3 or 7 can, when squared, end in a units digit of 9. 312 will end in a 1, so 31 cannot be the square root of 1089.
Therefore, the only number that even has the potential to be the square root of 1089 is 33, and the logic is airtight – you can check 33 by squaring it to be certain, but because you can definitively eliminate each of the other choices you can be even more direct and trust that judgment. 332 is, indeed, 1089, but given the answer choices provided, it has to be without your needing to calculate it.
Michael Dell became a billionaire by recognizing inefficiencies in the current business model and finding a more direct way to solve a problem – consumers want high-quality, inexpensive computers, and Dell found a way to deliver on both quickly and profitably. Similarly, you can capitalize on more direct ways to reach your “end consumer” (or correct answer choice) by surveying those choices first. Often, you can find a more direct way by narrowing down a potential range for your answer choices and/or eliminating answer choices that simply do not fit (does the correct answer need to be odd? End in 9? Be a multiple of3?). Like Dell, you should seek out efficient answers to problems, and reap the rewards: dude, you’re getting a 700+!
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