iliavko wrote:
Isn't this question a little bit too technical? Like increases in sales are less\grater than X years before so that means that sales actually decreased, bla-bla. I'm not a Business student so I'm not into all those terms and how they work.
Don't you think one has to rely on a lot of outside knowledge to answer this?
Thank you!
Dear
iliavko,
I'm happy to respond.
I have a few things to say.
First of all, this is a question from GMAT Prep, a question from the people who write the GMAT. A private company might write a question that did not match the feel of the GMAT, but official questions from the
OG and from GMAT Prep are the most GMAT-like questions you will see. As someone who writes practice questions professionally, I am simply in awe of the quality of the official questions on the GMAT.
As I am sure you understand, the GMAT is a test designed to assess readiness for Business School. People who understand all this technical language are eminently ready for business school and for promising managerial careers. People who don't want anything to do with this technical language about business are probably better served by pursuing some other career path in life. It doesn't matter what you studied in your undergrad: there are many engineers on this site. If you want to go to B-school and you want to pursue a career in business management, then you should embrace every aspect of the discussion of business. You should read the business news in English every day: the
Wall Street Journal, the
Economist magazine,
Bloomberg Businessweek, etc. You should make it a point to make yourself much stronger in your areas of weakness. If you find the discussion of the business world stultifyingly boring, then you are probably pursuing the wrong career. Don't pursue something you hate because it is someone else's idea about what you should do.
This is a very subtle point. On GMAT CR, you never need technical outside knowledge of the specific industry or product. You don't need that. BUT--and this is something many students fail to appreciate--you need to have good instincts about the push-and-pull of the business world in general. See:
GMAT Critical Reasoning and Outside KnowledgeFinally, I will say: remember that GMAT Club is a public forum. People see what you write here. If you expressed these same sentiments during a business school interview, there is a very good chance that you would be rejected. You are essentially expressing that you don't like technical business discussion. This would be like a doctor saying that he can't stand the sight of blood or a priest saying that he didn't like religious language. If you run up against what you know, you could express curiosity or open-minded inquiry: those would be welcome on GMAT Club. When you express yourself in terms of criticism and complaint, especially when your targets are the official questions themselves, that reflects very poorly on you. You never know whether another member on GMAT Club will one-day be your boss, your co-worker, your supplier, your competitor, your buyer, your seller, etc. etc. In any public forum, it's always valuable to put your best self forward on each and every occasion. You only get one opportunity in life to make a first impression on someone, and it's worth its weight in gold to make each first impression as positive as you possibly can.
Does all this make sense?
Mike