The Strategies I Found Most Useful<\/strong> Most of the strategies I list here have some relationship to how the test rewards that certain type of thinking that makes you an effective business person.<\/p>\n Problem Solving<\/strong> This was very useful for me on the problem solving section. I would traditionally try to read the question, solve the problem and then look for which answer choice matched my solution. However, sometimes, the answer choices gave clues to what I needed to look for in the solution as well as whether there was a shortcut that I could use to save time. If a question asks me to multiply a bunch of awful-looking numbers together, and the answer choices were in exponent form and were all an order of magnitude away, then it is s a giveaway that I can estimate and just get close. Or, if I\u2019m dealing with a geometry problem and I see roots of 2 and 3 or \u03c0\u2019s in the answer choices, I know I will be dealing with an isosceles\/30-60-90 triangle property or some kind of circle property. There were definitely 3-4 questions on the test that I used this strategy for. I was able to cut a lot of time down by using estimation, thereby saving time for problems that I needed it on.<\/p>\n The Business Takeaway: <\/em>\u201cGood business people are able to effectively use the limited resources at their disposal to solve a problem.\u201d Remember that answer choices are resources too and they can often help guide you on how to approach the problem.<\/p>\n Data Sufficiency<\/strong> Data Sufficiency was frustrating for me because although I knew the math concepts, I kept getting fooled by little details and assumptions I was making. The math itself is not hard, but the GMAT often obscures information or hides information in the question stem or individual statements to try to fool you. You often have to re-arrange or translate the information given to actually make it useful to the problem. Other times, the test will embed information in one statement in the other statement, fooling you into thinking you need both statements when one of them is sufficient alone. When studying for the test, I followed a simple hierarchy of answer choices:<\/p>\n D When I think I have reached an answer choice, I will double check for any tricks or hidden information that might get me to a nearby answer choice. If I think the answer is A or B, I double check to see if the other statement can be sufficient as well, making it D. If one statement is clearly insufficient alone and I\u2019m thinking A or B, I check to make sure I don\u2019t need the clearly insufficient statement to be true, thereby making the answer C. If I think the answer is E, I check to see if I missed something that actually allows me to solve the problem with C. If I think the answer is C, I check to make sure there is no embedded information in A or B that allows me to do it with one statement alone. Finally, if I think it\u2019s C and I am sure that A and B don\u2019t work, I\u2019ll check to see I assumed something I shouldn\u2019t, actually making the correct answer, E.<\/p>\n The Business Takeway: <\/em>Good business people are generally able to make decisions with less information but know when they are making unfounded assumptions and need to do more research.<\/p>\n Reading Comprehension:<\/strong> I definitely had some trouble with reading comprehension on my practice tests, missing about 1 or 2 questions per passage\u2014far too many to score well on the verbal section. I found that my strategy for dealing with reading comprehension was\u00a0 flawed. I was trying to read the question first and then skim through the passage to get the answer to the question. This didn\u2019t work so well since many of the questions require an understanding of the passage as a whole, not just individual parts. As a result, I started employing \u201cactive reading\u201d using the Veritas Prep STOP methodology. I changed my strategy and spent more time on the first question reading the entire passage carefully while actively looking for the STOP elements of Structure, Tone, Organization and main Point. This way, I had a much clearer understanding of the passage from the first read through and could immediately identify things such as:<\/p>\n By taking more time up front to read the passage carefully, I found it much easier and faster to answer the subsequent questions about the passage. So instead of spending 2 minutes on each of 4 reading comprehension passages for a total of 8 minutes or so per passage, I instead spent 4 minutes first carefully reading the passage, looking for the STOP elements and then spending about 30 seconds to 1 minute on each of the subsequent questions.<\/p>\n After doing this, I went from 1 or 2 errors per passage to 1 or 2 RC errors in the entire verbal section.<\/p>\n The Business Takeaway: <\/em>When presented with foreign, unfamiliar subject matter, the effective business person is able to focus on and extract the most important elements from an otherwise esoteric source of information.<\/p>\n Critical Reasoning: <\/strong> I\u2019ve found that a lot of the wrong answers I was choosing on the CR section were answer choices that were true, but did not directly address the specific path of logic that the argument uses. Often times, an answer choice that more appropriately fits the argument\u2019s reasoning turned out to be the correct one.<\/p>\n For example: \u201cEver since the CEO of the company implemented a company-sponsored health care program, the productivity per employee has been up 12% over last year. Since there were no other incentive programs created in the last year, the rise in productivity must be directly attributable to the employees\u2019 happiness with the CEO\u2019s program.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked which answer choice would most WEAKEN the conclusion of the argument, a popular wrong\u00a0 answer I might have selected may have been:<\/p>\n \u201cIncentive programs have been shown by business studies to be generally ineffective at boosting employee productivity.\u201d<\/p>\n However, the correct answer choice would have been:<\/p>\n \u201cOver the last year, over 15% of the staff of the company has been laid off, while the company has shown the same level of business activity.\u201d<\/p>\n As you can see, the first answer choice is very tempting since it has the words \u201cincentive program\u201d and \u201cemployee productivity\u201d in it. However, it only states that it is a general case and not an absolute rule. The second answer, while it may not sound as good, actually directly addresses the argument\u2019s logic in that the rise in per employee productivity may have actually been the result of employees having to cover for the laid-off employees\u2019 workload.<\/p>\n Using this general strategy, I was able to\u00a0 effectively identify the trap answers that did not relate directly to the pattern of logic presented in the argument.<\/p>\n The business takeaway: <\/em>Effective business people have a tight focus on the things that really matter when faced with critical decisions and do not get dissuaded by irrelevant facts or information.<\/p>\n Sentence Correction:<\/strong> Sentence Correction was my worst verbal subject before I started studying. I kept on getting a lot of questions wrong and was not able to identify any solid rules to follow so I just started memorizing the particular structures of the sentences on the questions that I got wrong and saying \u201cOK, this is the idiomatic way of writing this.\u201d This became completely unmanageable because there was no way I could hold all those idioms and constructions in my head with a sufficient level of accuracy.<\/p>\n Then I thought, \u201cWell, the GMAT really shouldn\u2019t reward my ability to memorize idioms. Otherwise, the people with the best memory and not necessarily those with the best reasoning abilities would do well on the test.\u201d As a result, I changed my thinking and started to approach sentence correction from a logical standpoint. Instead of relying on a vast library of idioms, I took a small subset of grammar rules (mostly those in the \u201cagreement\u201d category) such as verb tense, pronoun agreement, modifier agreement, subject-verb agreement, and agreement between equivalent elements. I found that almost all of the sentence correction problems could be solved by applying this relatively small set of rules to them. It was much more manageable and made much more sense:<\/p>\n Dealing with sentence correction using this frame work was infinitely easier than trying to pull out the proper idiom from my memory bank. There wasn\u2019t a single question on the actual GMAT where I had to actually KNOW the proper idiom to use in that situation. In fact, there were several instances where I saw that a wrong answer choice contained a \u201cnice-sounding\u201d idiom that ultimately ended up being the incorrect answer choice because it did not conform to one of the rules above. Had I \u201cused my ear\u201d like I was doing before, I would have certainly gotten those questions wrong.<\/p>\n Finally, the difficulty on the harder sentence correction problem wasn\u2019t so much that there were harder and more obscure rules that were thrown at me as much that the GMAT just put a bunch of junk in my way to hide where the real subjects and antecedents were. So a tricky sentence would read something such as:<\/p>\n \u201cThe committee that handles the country\u2019s budget, made up of six senators and six congressmen from twelve different states, are currently deciding what programs to cut in order to reduce the deficit.\u201d<\/p>\n You see how this is trick since the sentence hides the verb \u201care\u201d from the singular subject \u201ccommittee\u201d. By cutting out all the fluff, the sentence would ready to me as:<\/p>\n \u201cThe committee, ::junk junk junk junk::, are currently deciding ::junk junk junk junk::\u201d<\/p>\n Now, it\u2019s plainly obvious that the \u201ccommittee\u201d requires a singular verb of \u201cis\u201d instead of \u201care.\u201d For many of the problems, I was so focused on the critical elements in the sentence, I don\u2019t even remember what the subject matter of those sentences were after answering the question!<\/p>\n There are probably only 2 dozen or fewer grammar rules that you actually have to know to do well on sentence correction\u2014much easier than memorizing a whole list of idioms!<\/p>\n The Business Takeaway:<\/em> Effective business people are able to avoid distracting information and sort through to the most important elements.<\/p>\n In conclusion, the same skills that are rewarded on the GMAT are the same skills that are required to become successful MBAs and effective business people:<\/p>\n When you are studying for the GMAT, keep in mind that the GMAT rewards this type of thinking and you will be able to tell which strategies will actually be effective on the GMAT and which strategies will not.<\/p>\n By popular demand we have added more online GMAT prep courses<\/a> this month. Hurry\u2026 We do close courses once they fill up! And, as always, be sure to find us on Facebook<\/a> and follow us on Twitter<\/a>!<\/p>\n
\nI have always been pretty good at math and my quant scores on practice tests were all around the mid-40\u2032s. My verbal scores were lower and ranged from the mid 30\u2032s to low 40\u2032s. In the weeks of studying before taking the test, I had a shift in thinking about the strategy of the GMAT. Excuse the clich\u00e8, but I really started to \u201cThink Like the Testmaker.\u201d I thought \u201cWhat is the GMAT and what does it reward?\u201d It\u2019s a test to get into graduate business school, not a graduate math program nor a graduate English program. As a result, the GMAT is not looking for the number crunchers or the grammar Nazis but for those who would do well in a business program \u2014 those who can interpret, distill, manage and simplify complex, loose data and transform it into usable information to make decisions and solve business problems. In order for the GMAT to be a useful tool for admissions officers, it must be a relevant test of the skills needed for an MBA. And in order for the GMAT to be relevant, it must reward the type of thinking that is consistent with what admissions officers at MBA programs are looking for. As our Director of Academic Programs, Brian Galvin says, \u201cThe test is not a test of what you know, but a test of how you think.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cAlways look at the answer choices before you start to solve a problem\u201d (Page 25, Lesson 10)<\/p>\n
\n\u201cSpot the con\u201d (Page 36, Lesson 8\u00a0 )<\/p>\n
\nA & B
\nC
\nE<\/p>\n
\nThe \u201cSTOP\u201d reading methodology.<\/p>\n\n
\nFocus on the specifics of the argument and ignore any answer choices that do not\u00a0 directly address the linear logic of the argument.<\/p>\n
\nApproaching sentences with the goal of creating logical meaning instead of \u201crelying on my ear\u201d or on idioms to correct sentences. And getting rid of \u201cjunk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
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