Sun Tzu is famous for saying, in The Art of War, “know thy enemy, know thy self” (a loose translation, but that’s the famous quotation that has lasted centuries). And while at Veritas Prep we hesitate to call the authors of the GMAT “thy enemy,” we still advocate that you learn to Think Like the Testmaker, much as Sun Tzu would advise, and to think about how well the testmaker knows yourself.

Know this about “thy enemy” — the makers of the GMAT will admit that theirs is a test of “higher order thinking”, of your ability to think critically, solve problems efficiently, and otherwise demonstrate not merely that you have knowledge but that when you do have knowledge you can leverage it to greater gain. For this reason, the test is obligated to use tricks, shortcuts, and partial knowledge against you if that’s all you bring to the table on harder questions; at some point in the 500s/600s, the test has to determine not just “who studied” but “who can really think and problem solve”. And for that reason, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.

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Hoping to encourage more of its MBA graduates to pursue career in social enterprise, NYU Stern has just announced a new Loan Assistance Program for full-time, part-time and Executive MBA grads. The program, launched with the support of Stern’s Social Enterprise Association MBA club, seeks to ease some of the pain of repaying student loans for those who pursue careers in these important but less lucrative careers.

This program doesn’t only apply to current NYU Stern students. Anyone may apply for the Loan Assistance Program within 10 years of graduation, meaning that people who earned that MBAs from NYU Stern as far back as 2003 are still eligible to apply. So, even if someone decided to embark on a career in social e enterprise a few years after leaving school, they still can apply for help with their loans.

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This past Sunday, Penn’s Wharton School crowned another batch of new MBA graduates. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the author and TV personality who dispenses advice on a variety of issues related to health and well being, gave this year’s commencement address. In his speech, he offered Wharton grads his “Top 10 Tips for Success and Happiness.”

We admit that our first reaction upon hearing that a TV personality would deliver Wharton’s commencement address was something like “Huh?” But, the advice he gave in his speech was pretty timeless and universal. While there weren’t many MBA-specific nuggets in his address, these grads have spent most of the last two years having MBA-specific knowledge drummed into their heads. So, perhaps some more general “life balance” advice was just what these graduates needed before heading back to the real world.

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Do you love technology — particularly web technology? Are you a strong student with an analytical mind? Are you looking to supplement your education with real-world experience? Veritas Prep is looking for a smart and motivated student to work in our IT department as a summer intern — with the potential to extend to part-time work when school resumes.

What do we do at Veritas Prep?
We provide elite GMAT preparation and graduate school admissions consulting to students around the world. We train the brightest minds to get into the best schools in order to create and manage the world’s most successful businesses. We believe that technology should be leveraged to improve access to educational content, and we strive to provide students with the best educational experience.

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Last week we discussed arithmetic means of arithmetic progressions in GMAT math problems. Today, let’s see those concepts in action.

Question 1: If x is the sum of the even integers from 200 to 600 inclusive, and y is the number of even integers from 200 to 600 inclusive, what is the value of x + y?

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Read that sentence from the title again (please…in honor of Mothers Day we should certainly mind our Ps and Qs!): Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Does that make any sense?

Not at all, but grammarians have to admit that *grammatically* it’s not a flawed sentence, in that it proceeds with Adjective, Adjective, Plural Noun, Plural Verb, Adverb. This sentence, coined by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures, shows the necessity in language of not merely grammatical correctness, but logical meaning as well. And as you’ll note, this concept of “logical meaning” is one that has become increasingly common in these GMAT-themed blog circles of late, and one that has traditionally appeared on this blog in years past. Consider another, more GMAT-relevant sentence:

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You had it all planned out. You were going to prepare for the GMAT in April and May, take the GMAT on June 1, and absolutely crush the exam. The GMAT would be done, and you never would have crossed paths with the new Integrated Reasoning (IR) section. But then life got in the way. You had long long nights at work, you fell behind in your study schedule, and you realized that the rest of the GMAT actually was pretty challenging by itself. Reluctantly, you’re now looking at a test date of no earlier than the middle of June.

Now what? After all that you’ve read about how applicants who take the old GMAT will have a distinct advantage over those Next-Generation GMAT suckers, do you really think you stand a chance of breaking a 700 on the exam now that you must face the new Integrated Reasoning section?

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Just in the past week two top-ranked business schools announced new plans to add online learning components to their MBA programs. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Dartmouth’s Tuck school will deliver some of its introductory prerequisite classes online, helping students prepare for the school’s core curriculum on their own time, at their own pace.

At the same time, UC Berkeley’s Haas School has announced plans to launch three digital classroom pilots. Haas is also using its first foray into online learning as a way to deliver prerequisite courses for its Evening & Weekend MBA Program.

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Every January, we make predictions about the coming year in this space. Our 2012 edition includes predictions for weaker international application volume at U.S. business schools and growth in non-traditional graduate management programs. It’s still far too early to see how those predictions will pan out, but today we want to get a little more down in the weeds and make several predictions about what MBA admissions essays might look like in the coming year.

Every spring Harvard normally leads the charge by releasing its application essays first, firing the symbolic starter pistol for the new application season. In fact, last year HBS released its essays in the second week of May, so we may be just days away from the 2012-2013 admissions season getting underway. With that in mind, here are three predictions for what we’ll see in business school application essays in the coming year:

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Today’s post is again focused on arithmetic mean. Let’s start our discussion by considering the case of arithmetic mean of an arithmetic progression.

We will start with an example. What is the mean of 43, 44, 45, 46, 47? (Hint: If you are thinking about adding the numbers, that’s not the way I want you to go.)

As we discussed in our previous posts, arithmetic mean is the number that can represent/replace all the numbers of the sequence. Notice in this sequence, 44 is one less than 45 and 46 is one more than 45. So essentially, two 45s can replace both 44 and 46. Similarly, 43 is 2 less than 45 and 47 is 2 more than 45 so two 45s can replace both these numbers too.

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On the GMAT, Data Sufficiency questions can be tricky. But perhaps most frustrating about Data Sufficiency questions are those that somehow trick you when, upon further review, they gave you absolutely everything you needed. When you look back at them, you can’t believe that you got them wrong – but you should also notice patterns in why you did. One common way that an in-hindsight-pretty-straightforward question can be extremely challenging involves the “hiding” of pertinent information in the question stem itself, where the testmakers know that you’re apt to read quickly in your haste to get to the statements. Consider the question:

If xy < 0, is x/y > z?

(1) xyz < 0
(2) x > yz

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An article that appeared in yesterday’s edition of The Harvard Crimson described an interesting phenomenon that is happening in the first cohort of students who were admitted to the HBS 2+2 Program back in 2008. Rather than entering Harvard Business School as first-year students last fall, a surprising number decided to keep working and delay their matriculation for another year.

According to the article (which mentions some former Veritas Prep students!), of the 106 students who were accepted in the HBS 2+2 Program’s first year, 65 entered HBS this past fall, 40 postponed matriculation, and one dropped out. And the trend is growing: For the group that is supposed to start at HBS this coming fall, more than half have decided to postpone matriculation.

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As different as applicants are from one another, it’s amazing how often we see them make the same mistakes over and over. We recently asked our team of admissions consultants, “What mistakes do you see applicants make most often?” and we frequently heard the same themes: not highlighting extracurricular activities in the right way, using the same applications for multiple schools, and not answering honestly when asked for a personal weakness.

Admissions officers want to get to know applicants and gain an insight into their goals, motivations, values and other personal attributes — what makes them tick and how they might fit into the program. Unfortunately, many applicants lack the self-awareness to give admissions officers what they want.

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Just weeks after ending its joint EMBA program with Haas, Columbia Business School has announced it will go it alone with a new executive program called EMBA-Americas. As its name suggests, the new program will serve experienced professionals living in North and South America.

While Columbia previously served EMBA students in New York and in the Bay Area (throughs its partnership with Haas), the school will now offer programs that meet in multiple locations in the Americas. In response to changing market conditions, Columbia will make an effort to bring the EMBA experience to students, in their local markets. According to the school’s website: “Columbia EMBA-Americas is designed for highly accomplished and motivated professionals who are looking to enhance their career with a top executive MBA degree, but whose location or schedule precludes them from attending the traditional alternating weekend format of Columbia’s EMBA New York Program.”

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I hope the theory of arithmetic mean we discussed last week is clear to you. Let’s see the theory in action today. I will pick some mean questions from various sources (Official Guide, GMAT prep tests, etc.) and we will try to use the concepts we learned last week to solve them.

Let’s start with a simple question.

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We’re less than six weeks away from the grand unveiling of the Integrated Reasoning section within the “Next-Generation GMAT”. So at this point it’s fairly safe to say that most readers of this article will see Integrated Reasoning on their exams.

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Last week at Veritas Prep HQ we passed around a Harvard Business Review article called “Be Proud of Your Accomplishments, Not Your Affiliations.” That article title could not more perfectly sum up how we feel about so much of what goes into your business school applications. Above all, admissions officers want to know what you’ve done in your career, not just where you have worked.

We say it to our admissions consulting clients so much that some of them get tired of hearing it, but that lesson is too important not to repeat: When business schools are building their incoming classes, and doing it using applications which are no more than mere snapshots of what you’ve achieved by your mid-20s, they need to see strong evidence that you’re someone who makes a lasting, positive impact on those around you. You absolutely must show this in your applications if you want to stand a chance of getting into a top-ranked MBA program.

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Over the last week, in a series of blog posts, FAQ updates, and conference calls, the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) released more information regarding the scoring and implementation of the new Integrated Reasoning (IR) section, which will debut in just over a month now, on June 5. Some of the highlights include:

- The section will be scored on a scale of 1 to 8 in integer increments
- The 12 questions can include multiple responses per question, but no partial credit will be granted: each of the 12 items is all-or-nothing
- Of the 12 questions, some will be unscored, experimental items that do not count toward your score, but rather allow GMAC to gather data about new questions that may soon enter the active pool
- The Integrated Reasoning section is not adaptive: all users will see a (relatively) equal mix of question difficulty levels
- BECAUSE OF the above: your score will not merely be a percentage correct out of the total! Raw scores will be scaled to account for fluctuations in difficulty between your question pool and those of other candidates.
- Percentiles for the IR section will be re-centered monthly for the first six months of the new section, and then annually thereafter.

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Let’s start today with statistics – mean, median, mode, range and standard deviation. The topics are simple but the fun lies in the questions. Some questions on these topics can be extremely tricky especially those dealing with median, range and standard deviation. Anyway, we will tackle mean today.

So what do you mean by the arithmetic mean of some observations? I guess most of you will reply that it is the ‘Sum of Observations/Total number of observations’. But that is how you calculate mean. My question is ‘what is mean?’ Loosely, arithmetic mean is the number that represents all the observations. Say, if I know that the mean age of a group is 10, I would guess that the age of Robbie, who is a part of that group, is 10. Of course Robbie’s actual age could be anything but the best guess would be 10.

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Our friends at Beat The GMAT (BTG), the world’s largest social network for MBA applicants, will soon stop accepting applications for their seventh annual Beat The GMAT Scholarship Competition. This year, BTG will award scholarship packages for six winners, valued at more than $11,000. Each of the winners will receive one GMAT prep course (even a Veritas Prep course!), an admissions consulting package and a $250 GMAT voucher. BTG will accept applications until tonight (Monday), April 23rd. Winners will be announced on April 30th.

Since 2006, Beat The GMAT has been able to distribute $193,000 in scholarships to MBA applicants. We have gladly given some years’ past winners GMAT prep courses and MBA admissions consulting packages, and we must say that we’ve been incredibly impressed by the caliber of these applicants. If all business school applicants had their act together as much as these find young folks do, then the admissions process would be even more competitive than it already is.

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As you study for the GMAT, it is important that you recognize that the GMAT is not a test of memory or knowledge, but rather of higher-order thinking, problem solving, and true understanding. If you’ve begun studying at the memorization/knowledge level, you may already be appalled at the title of this post (“Being! It’s wrong…it’s wrong!”). But that title – which employs correct usage of “being” – should indicate a better way of studying for a reasoning-based test. In this post, we’ll explain how.

First things first: Dr. Lawrence Rudner is considered by most to be the guru of the GMAT. He oversees the administration of the GMAT for the Graduate Management Admissions Council, shaping the scoring algorithm and the direction of question creation and implementation. So as you aspire to “Think Like the Testmaker” to fully understand the GMAT and how to succeed on it, in a way you’re hoping to think as much like Dr. Rudner as possible. Hopefully you learned in high school and college that the topics most favored by your professor were the most likely to appear on the exam; similarly, on the GMAT, if you can understand how questions are written and what they are trying to assess, you can become a much more effective studier and examinee.

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For all of the buzz around the GMAT’s new Integrated Reasoning section, it’s easy to forget that the first 30 minutes you spend on the GMAT will be on the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA). After June 5 the AWA’s “Analysis of an Issue” essay will be replaced by the Integrated Reasoning section, but you still will need to be ready to craft a strong “Analysis of an Argument” essay as soon as you sit down at the test center.

Fortunately, anyone looking to perform well on the AWA section can help themselves immensely by remembering just several key ideas. Follow the following steps to write a well-organized, high-scoring essay:

Start and End Strongly
One easy way to write a well-organized essay is to begin with a clear introduction and conclude with a clear conclusion. For example, the paragraph above offers a clear introduction to this essay, noting that organization is a key component of a well-written essay and inviting the reader to look at the subsequent paragraphs like this one for tips on how to write a well-organized essay. With a clear introduction and a clear conclusion, it becomes easy for the grader to follow your essay and to provide you with a high score.

Use Transition Words as Your Turn Signals
Another effective way to ensure that your essay is well-organized is to use structural cues in your writing. Just as turn signals can help other motorists understand where you’re going, transition words can help the reader follow you from one thought to the next. Words such as “also” and “furthermore” to show that you’re adding support to a point, or “however” and “conversely” to show that you’re changing directions. One example of that is the word “another” at the beginning of this paragraph, which clearly demonstrates to you that this paragraph will add one more method for organized writing to the paragraph above, which was clearly opened with the phrase “one easy way.” By including these transitions, an author can clearly show the reader what will happen in each paragraph, making the essay easy to process and understand.

Frequently Remind the Reader About Your Main Point
A third method for writing an effective essay is to use the last sentence of each paragraph to tie that paragraph’s significance back to your main point. As you’ll see in the next sentence, we will accomplish that by showing how this tip directly relates to the main point of writing a well-organized essay. When each paragraph directly relates back to the thesis statement of the essay, the reader is constantly reminded of that main point, and will accordingly be impressed by the organization of your essay.

Some may argue that this method sucks much of the creativity out of one’s writing and can lead to a bland, formulaic style. However, remember that your job in the AWA is not to entertain the reader, but rather to demonstrate that you can write clearly and logically, and a formulaic approach to writing makes that very easy for the grader to immediately grasp. This is not creative writing, but instead is clear, concise business communication. You therefore will likely want to sacrifice a bit of creativity in favor of organization, saving your brainpower and energy for the multiple choice questions that follow and that create your scale-of-800 score.

In conclusion (look at that explicitly stated conclusion!), it is critical for AWA authors to write clear, well-organized essays in order to achieve high scores on this section and to save their energy for the remainder of the test. This can efficiently be done by writing clear introductions and conclusions, using structural language to show the reader the purpose of each paragraph, and tying each individual paragraph to the overall main point. Make these items a focus of your writing on test day and you’ll quickly and efficiently guarantee yourself a high AWA score and be ready to move on to the rest of the test.

Plan on taking the GMAT soon? We have GMAT prep courses starting around the world in just a few weeks. And, be sure to find us on Facebook and Google+, and follow us on Twitter!

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I have my CFA level II exam in June and I am certainly looking at disaster (but that’s not what I am going to discuss today). While studying for it yesterday, I did something really stupid and that gave me an insight on ‘mind matters’. That is what I want to talk about today but I will have to give you some background to make my point clearer.

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If you are just beginning to start your GMAT prep, then your preparation schedule may very well put you on track to be among the first people to take the Next Generation GMAT in June or later. If that sounds like you, don’t fear Integrated Reasoning… Embrace it! We’ll show you how in a free live online seminar.

Join Veritas Prep’s Director of Academic Programs, Brian Galvin, as he discusses strategies that will help you succeed on the GMAT’s new Integrated Reasoning section. Brian will show you how to employ Veritas Prep strategies such as Relative Math and Sort-and-Scan to solve even the trickiest Integrated Reasoning questions.

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Bloomberg Businessweek recently highlighted some research that suggests that business schools are misguided in preferring (or even requiring) applicants with at least several years of work experience. This admissions preference, the researchers claim, actually does MBAs a disservice.

The argument goes something like this: Since business school significantly boosts most graduates’ pay (comparing their pre- and post-business school bae salaries), then delaying business school will only negatively impact one’s lifetime earnings. If business school helps someone earn more money, then young professionals should attend business school as early in their careers as possible. Several more years of MBA-grade pay will only help make someone better off in the long run.

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If you’re like many of us at Veritas Prep Headquarters in Los Angeles, you spend an undue amount of time driving, and driving in heavy traffic. But if you find that you’re spending too much time driving and that you need to spend more time studying for the GMAT, you’re in luck! Driving and the GMAT go hand in hand, in a way, and there are two major ways that you can use your drive time to become a better GMAT test taker:

1) Driving lets you use a lot of mental, GMAT-style math

2) Driving is a metaphor for GMAT reasoning

Let’s start with mental math. You should know that the GMAT tests a lot of Number Properties, Divisibility and Factors, Rate Problems, and calculations that are done much quicker without doing problems fully by hand. And you should also notice that, while you’re driving, you’re absolutely bombarded with numbers in that GMAT style. So even if you’re just driving from Santa Monica to San Diego for the weekend, you can sharpen your mental math skills by nothing things like:

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Getting rejected by your dream business school is not easy. It can be downright soul-crushing, in fact. Making is even more painful is the fact that few MBA programs (or other top graduate schools) give rejected applicants specific feedback on why they didn’t get in. Anyone who gets rejected will inevitably ask, “What did I do wrong? What’s the one thing that kept me out?” But, even when admissions officers do provide feedback, it can seem vagaue and not particularly helpful.

Admissions officers are clearly trying to keep you in the dark so that you can’t game the system, right? They must be scheming to keep you out. Surely your face is posted on a wall in the admissions office somewhere, with “Not enough leadership” or “Weak quant skills” scrawled across it. While that certainly sounds interesting, the truth is that, if you get rejected, it’s often because the school just couldn’t find any great reason to admit you over thousands of other terrific applicants.

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Recently the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) announced what the scoring scale will be for the new Integrated Reasoning section that will appear on the Next Generation GMAT. Integrated Reasoning (IR) will be scored on a scale of 1 to 8, in whole-number increments.

Remember that your total GMAT score (out of 800) is only calculated off of your Quant and Verbal scores. So, you can do horribly on the AWA and IR sections and still earn an excellent total GMAT score, or vice versa. This should not affect your GMAT preparation strategy, but if you somehow get flustered on the IR section, put it out of your mind because the next two and a half hours are what actually impact your total GMAT score.

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The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) recently released data showing that, while the total number of GMATs taken around the world has declined from the peak that occurred several years ago, the real story may be just how much more international the pool of GMAT takers has become. In testing year 2011 (which ran from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011), 55% of GMATs were taken outside the United States, representing the heaviest proportion of non-U.S. activity in the history of the GMAT.

Interestingly, while China has seen tremendous growth in GMAT volume over the past five years, the number of GMATs taken in India actually declined for the second straight year. While more than 30,000 GMATs were taken in India in testing year 2009, in testing year 2011 that number dropped to a little more than 25,00, representing a 17.1% decline.

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Last week, at the end of the Geometric Progression (GP) post, I gave you a question to figure out. I hope some of you did try it. Today we will discuss the question in detail and look at two different approaches – one without using GP formula (we discussed this approach in a previous post) and another with the formula. As I said before, you can solve every sequence question on GMAT without using the formulas we are discussing. We are still investing time in these formulas so that we can save some in the actual exam. Let me show you how.

Question 3: For every integer n from 1 to 200, inclusive, the nth term of a certain sequence is given by (-1)^n*2^(-n). If N is the sum of the first 200 terms in the sequence, then N is:

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For Major League Baseball fans, this week marks Opening Day, the dawn of a new season and the unofficial beginning of spring. For GMAT test-takers, Opening Day of the new Integrated Reasoning section is two months away…and sadly most GMAT examinees don’t quite see that Opening Day with as much hope and promise as baseball fans have for their opener. But the two Opening Days have some direct similarities, and understanding those similarities can help you to see the IR Opening Day with much more promise and excitement.

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When perusing the data and seeing the average starting salaries at the top-ranked MBA programs and law schools, it’s easy to get the impression that getting into a top graduate school can turn you from an 80-pound weakling into a money-making, world-beating dynamo. But don’t be fooled. Yes, these schools can significantly improve your earnings power, but to get in you have to demonstrate that you’re already a rockstar.

“Wait a minute,” you might be saying, “If I’m already a rockstar, then why do I need the school?” That’s a good question, but in your question already lies the answer.

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The phrase “Return on Investment” (ROI) is essentially shorthand for “what you get out of it.” Estimating ROI requires calculations that you can easily find assistance with from applications online, but in order to obtain meaningful numbers, it is vital to include more than just tuition costs and expected salary benefits. Opportunity costs, cost of living and interest on educational debt should be included, but you should also consider the many benefits of business school which are more difficult to quantify, such as networking opportunities and immersion in an academically and professionally rigorous culture.

How Culture Adds Value
A business school’s culture cannot be reduced to a number that fits cleanly into your ROI calculation, but that does not mean you should ignore this critical factor when deciding whether or where to earn your MBA. Anyone who believes that the business world functions according to quantitative calculations that exclude human elements should read Greg Smith’s recent op-ed in The New York Times. The common values held by members of any community or institution end up influencing all those who attend. The culture at a business school will effect how much you enjoy your time there, what kind of network you form while earning your degree and even how well you learn the material. In other words, those ROI figures that promise to transform your future? They depend on culture, too.

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If you’re a regular reader of this space, you’ve seen us comment on the importance of recognizing the GMAT as a reasoning-based test, and not merely one that tests content. Why is that so important and why are we so emphatic about it?

At Veritas Prep headquarters, we’re fortunate to be able to see quite a bit of that upper echelon of GMAT scorers, as we have had hundreds of instructors with 99th percentile scores and have trained thousands of 700+ scorers. And particularly as we talk with our instructors, the following themes emerge about those who score in that top percentile on the test:

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Let’s look at geometric progressions (GP) now. Before I start, let me point out that GMAT is unlikely to give you a statement which looks like this: “If S denotes a geometric progression whose first term is… ” GMAT will not test your knowledge of GP (i.e. you don’t really need to learn the formulas of the sum of n terms of a GP or sum of infinite terms of a GP etc) though it may give you a sequence which is a geometric progression and ask you questions on it. You will be able to solve the question without using the formulas but recognizing a GP can help you deal with such questions in an efficient manner. That is the reason we are discussing GPs today.

For those of you who are wondering what exactly a GP is, let me begin by giving you the definition.

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Welcome to the final day of Hip Hop Month here in the GMAT Tip of the Week space, where like any good radio station we’re letting our listeners have a say through the request line. Sean in Wayne, Michigan requested an old-school cut that should have a tremendous impact on your GMAT study regimen and test-day strategy. So we’re going to take you back to 1999 with a study message from Sporty Thievz.

Like you as a GMAT test-taker, Sporty Thievz found themselves chasing a big career jump (they weren’t getting much airplay; you want to get an elite MBA) and being held down by a powerful, acronymed entity (GMAC for you, TLC for them) that seemingly wrote all the rules. TLC had taken a shot at Sporty Thievz types with their hit single “No Scrubs,” decrying the low-on-cash, high-on-themselves types of wannabes. The overarching message – “don’t have a car so you’re walking”; “if you live at home with your mama”; “wanna get with me with no money” – was “impress me, then we’ll talk”. Which, if you think about it, is exactly the GMAT’s message to you:

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When it comes to getting into the world’s most competitive graduate schools, many applicants have a “I’ll worry about it later” mentality. If they’re fortunate enough to get into a school like Harvard, the thinking goes, then they’ll gladly deal with the question of how to pay for it. While this is somewhat understandable (Why worry about how you’ll pay for a yacht if you won’t ever set foot on one to begin with?), applicants owe it to themselves to consider the true cost and the true reward of the educational opportunity before them.

Many will tell you that borrowing money to pay for school is an investment and not debt, but try telling that to the loan services when they send out the monthly bill. Not only that, but the analysis is rarely about going back to school or not going, but rather about making the best possible choice. It may very well be the case that attending your dream school without the aid of scholarships or grants is the best decision, but it might also be true that a secondary opportunity starts to look a lot better when the calculator comes out.

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Yesterday The Princeton Review announced that it will sell its test prep business to private equity firm Charlesbank Capital Partners for $33 million. The Princeton Review name and all of the company’s test prep-related operations will transfer to Charlesbank, and publicy-traded company now known as The Princeton Review (TPR) will change its name and focus exclusively on its for-profit online education arm, Penn Foster.

While the TPR name will live on, this truly marks the end of an era. Under the leadership of John Katzman, who founded the company in 1981 after graduating from Princeton University (the company has never been affiliated with the school), TPR quickly rose to become the first national challenger to Kaplan, which by the 1980s had become by far the largest test prep company in America. Katzman stayed at the helm until 2008, by which time the company had lost much of its magic but still had a very recognizable brand name.

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They say breaking up is hard to do. Don’t tell that to Columbia Business School and UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, which announced that they will exit the Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA Program in February 2013, when the current EMBA class graduates. In a joint announcement, the deans of the two schools said that the breakup was mutual, and was made in recognition of each program’s future plans.

The joint program, which has been around since 2002, was originally hailed as the ultimate “East Meets West” power combination, with Wall Street smart combining with Silicon Valley brains to create the next big thing in executive education. While the program has been a success by virtually any measure, one big thing has changed over the past decade: Both schools have announced or introduced their own in-house executive MBA options, leaving little room for the joint program.

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Last week, we looked at some basic formulas related to Arithmetic Progressions. This week, we will look at a particular (and related) type of Arithmetic Progression — Consecutive Integers.

Look at the following three sequences:

S1 = 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

S2 = -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

S3 = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

All of them are APs of consecutive integers so every formula we looked at last week is applicable here.

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