Let’s look at the concept of conditional probability in detail today. (As if the probability questions weren’t tricky enough!) But since I like to discuss advanced concepts in this blog (in addition to alternative approaches and very important fundamentals), it would not be fair on my part to end the probability discussion without a quick review of conditional probability. Let me start by tossing a question at you.

Question 1: Alex tosses a coin four times. On two of the tosses (we don’t know which two), he gets ‘Heads’. What is the probability that he gets ‘Tails’ on other two tosses?

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Like high school seniors across the country, we at Veritas Prep are already well within our countdown-to-June period as we anxiously await the unveiling of the GMAT’s new Integrated Reasoning (IR) section (less than four months to go! Seniors/GMAT enthusiasts whoooo!) If you’re similarly-minded and thinking about the IR section already, the following should help you set your mathematical mind to the right frequency. Remember this: while the numbers in many IR problems might be large and specific, the math is all relative.

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Although Wharton has had a presence in San Francisco for more than ten years now, the school’s Bay Area outpost for executive education has had a relatively low profile. Wharton seeks to change that with a recent rebranding and a move to a new space that gives the program significantly more room than it had before. Wharton | San Francisco has relocated to the historic Hills Plaza building on the Embarcadero, taking over a space that feels less like that of an East Coast business school and more like a Bay Area tech startup’s offices.

The first class enrolled at Wharton West (as it was then known) in August, 2001. The dot-com meltdown, which was well under way at that point, surely came at a bad time for the fledgling program, but Wharton persevered. Now, Wharton | San Francisco boasts nearly 1,000 alumni of its executive education programs, and its new space will allow the program to grow: It can now accommodate 150 students at one time.

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It must be that time of year again… Ahh, yes, early February. The phone is ringing right now, and there’s a decent chance it’s an applicant calling to ask if he should apply to business school in Round 3, or if he should wait until next year. (Okay, I was wrong… That client called for help in resetting his password for our website. But it will ring again shortly!)

At this time of year, we have the “Round 3 or wait?” discussion with applicants multiple times per day. As usual, the answer we give them is, “It depends,” although we do have some very strong opinions on the matter. Applying in Round 3 is not automatically a bad idea (if it were, then why would schools have a Round 3 deadline at all?), but there is definitely a “buyer beware” aspect that you should consider. In this case, what you’re buying is a few minutes of an admissions officer’s time, and the price you pay is the application fee plus all of the blood, sweat, and tears that will go into your application.

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Yesterday the Kellogg School of Management unveiled its new strategic vision for the coming decade, called Envision Kellogg. The plan, announced by Kellogg Dean Sally Blount, contains many moving pieces, including an expanding global footprint and a complete overhaul of the school’s MBA curriculum. Most notably, Kellogg plans to shrink its two-year MBA program class size by as much as 25%, and double or even triple the size of its one-year MBA program.

There are few, if any, American one-year MBA programs as prominent the one Kellogg offers. (Among top-ranked schools, Columbia’s accelerated January-intake class is the most similar.) Recognizing this unique asset and the apparent growing popularity of accelerated MBA programs around the world, Blount is doubling down on the one-year program in an effort to further stand out vs. its U.S. competition. Its two-year full-time enrollment, which currently stands at about 1,115, may drop as low as 850. Meanwhile, the school’s one-year program class size could grow from approximately 80 students to as many as 250.

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I would like to take up a couple of questions on binomial probability today. The concepts of the topic have been covered in detail in the book so I am assuming that you know how to solve questions such as “What is the probability of getting at least 3 heads on 5 tosses of a coin?” etc. Therefore, let’s work on a couple of questions which use the binomial probability with a twist.

Question 1: Martin and Joey are playing a coin game in which each player tosses a fair coin alternately. The player who gets a ‘Heads’ first wins. The maximum number of tosses allowed in a single game for any player is 6. What is the probability that the person who tosses first will win the game?

Solution:

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In today’s GMAT Tip of the Week, New England-based blogger and former Tom Brady classmate David Newland explains why New York is Not Sufficient…on the GMAT or in the Super Bowl.

New York is Not Sufficient…on the GMAT or in the Super Bowl

I am writing this from New England — Vermont to be precise — so maybe you think that I am a bit biased as far as the Super Bowl goes. But I KNOW that I am biased when it comes to my LOVE for Data Sufficiency. That love is pure and ever-lasting.

So while I may not be able to convince you that the New York Giants are not sufficient to win the Super Bowl on February 5^th, I bet that I can give you a quick memory device to think about for Data Sufficiency.

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As if there weren’t enough good reasons to live in Southern California this time of year, we can officially add “the world’s best GMAT instructors” (at least for 2011) to that list. The 2011 Veritas Prep Worldwide Instructor of the Year winners both teach and reside in the greater Los Angeles area, a treat for those of us at Veritas Prep headquarters but certainly not a reason to infer regional bias in the selection process!

Both Mia Groves and Travis Morgan stand a cut above on their own merits, having posted outlandishly-high student evaluation scores and, more importantly, having delighted dozens of students who have raved about both their experiences and their scores. Without further ado, we present the 2011 Veritas Prep Worldwide Instructors of the Year, Mia and Travis!

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We get no shortage of inquiries from clients about the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which isn’t surprising given that it sits at or near the top of any significant ranking of MBA programs. What’s not to love about an elite, cozy MBA program in the heart of Silicon Valley? Still, we’re often disappointed by how little these applicants actually know about Stanford before they apply. We always urge these applicants to go back and do their homework a bit more before they begin the application process.

Are you thinking about applying to Stanford? If so, why? How do you know if it’s really is a good fit for you? More importantly, how do you know the Stanford admissions team will think you’re a good fit for the school? Today we present five things that make Stanford GSB unique among top-ranked MBA programs:

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The Financial Times has just released its new global MBA rankings for 2012. For the first time in the history of the FT rankings, Stanford grabs the top spot, pushing London Business School and Wharton (Which were tied for #1 in 2011) down to #2. Stanford becomes only the fourth school to sit atop the FT rankings, joining LBS, Wharton, and Harvard for that distinction.

Without further ado, here are the Financial Times’ top ten global MBA programs for 2012:

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Let’s take another tricky probability question today and employ two different methods to solve it.

Question: Two couples and one single person occupy a row of five chairs at random. What is the probability that neither couple sits together (the husband and the wife should not occupy adjacent seats)?

(A) 1/5
(B) 1/3
(C) 3/8
(D) 2/5
(E) 1/2

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Happy Friday, everyone, and welcome back to the GMAT Tip of the Week! We here on the editorial team would describe ourselves and our roles primarily as “teachers,” and what do teachers do? They teach. And your author plans to spend the weekend teaching, but as a break from teaching Algebra and Data Sufficiency, this weekend he’ll be teaching a 5-year old to ski. And what both of them learn can teach you to be a better GMAT test taker.

There are a few pillars of ski instruction, most notably:

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We are big fans of the UC Berkeley MBA program here at Veritas Prep. The school’s “Confidence Without Attitude” thrust is one we can really get behind, and it’s that ethos (among others) that makes Haas grads so popular among hiring companies. Haas is also popular among Veritas Prep clients, which is no surprise given the school’s location in the Bay Area and progressive reputation. We know other applicants agree — Haas actually has one of the lowest acceptance rates among all MBA programs in the United States.

Are you thinking about applying to Haas? How do you know if the school really is a good fit for you? Today we present six reasons why UC Berkeley may be the perfect school for you to target for your MBA experience:

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Are you planning to attend an MBA Admissions event? If you are planning to attend one of The MBA Tour’s upcoming conferences in Washington DC (Feb 2), New York City (Feb 4), San Francisco (Feb 6) or another admissions event in the near future, here’s some advice from The MBA Tour’s CEO, Peter von Loesecke on how to prepare for meeting with Admissions Directors in person:

“The best thing applicants can do is research the schools that are participating in the event and their admissions statistics. I would also recommend coming with a resume to share with admissions representative during the event. Ask pertinent information about the school as it relates to your post MBA goals, be sure to articulate your goals clearly and, finally, I suggest attending in business attire to help make a great first impression.”

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Last week INSEAD announced that it will launch an executive MBA (EMBA) program on its Singapore campus, and that it will introduce its own admissions test for the school’s EMBA program. Built in conjunction with test prep company Prep Zone (which was founded by INSEAD alumni), the exam will mark the first time that a top MBA program has created a proprietary entrance exam for its admissions process.

The new exam will keep some elements of the GMAT, such as questions that measure quant- and verbal-related reasoning skills. (“Higher-order thinking,” anyone?) INSEAD will remove some of the more obscure measures of one’s mathematical ability and grasp of more subtle language nuances, and in their place will introduce “mini case studies” and a a personal interview. In this way, the line will be blurred between the entrance exam and the rest of the admissions process.

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Today, as requested by Pratap, we are going to take removal/replacement in mixtures. For those of you who were looking forward to some more tricky probability questions, I will make up for your disappointment next week. Meanwhile, rest assured, replacement is a very interesting, not to mention useful, concept in GMAT. So brace yourself to learn some new things today.

First of all, many “replacement” questions are nothing but the plain old mixture questions, the type we discussed in this post, with an extra step. So don’t flip out the moment you read the word “replace.” Let me show you what I mean:

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As you’ve probably already seen this morning, last night the President ba-rocked the Apollo, singing a few bars from Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” in front of the soulful reverend himself and complicating the next “2012 Presidential Election” category clue to be aired on Jeopardy.  “Let’s Stay Together” – is it “what is Barack Obama’s campaign song?” or “what is something Newt Gingrich has never said to a wife?”.  Ba-dump-bump.

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Today’s headline on Yahoo Finance states that:

Fed’s latest easing could cost $1

Which is pretty surprising.  A dollar?  Sign us up – staplers and trash cans seem to cost the government hundreds a pop.  If we can do anything worthwhile for a dollar, just add it to my tax bill.  Even McDonald’s dollar menu costs more than a dollar when you add tax.  If the government is doing things for a dollar, well, what is Newt going to use as his platform now?  Chalk one up for efficiency.

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When clients we ask our admissions consulting clients which MBA programs they’re targeting, NYU’s Stern School of Business is often on the list. Given the school’s New York location, impressive faculty, and strong ties to the finance sector, it’s no wonder that so many people apply to Stern each year.

If NYU Stern isn’t on your list, then perhaps you should take a step back and research the school more closely. It’s a personal favorite of many of us here at Veritas Prep headquarters, and it’s one that we frequently recommend that our clients research in more depth. Today we dig into four things that make NYU Stern unique among top business schools:

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I hope you have gone through the theory of probability from your book. I will not replicate that theory here but will assume that you already know it. Instead, what we will do now is take some tricky questions on probability and try and find out the various ways in which they can be solved. Hope they give you ideas and takeaways for other questions too!

Question: At the shooting range, the probability that Robert will hit the target in any one shot is 25%. If he takes four shots one after another, what is the probability that he will hit the target?

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Would you like to work with an energetic group of really sharp people at a startup-like 10-year-old established company that rivals Google for its smarts, Zappos for its customer focus, and Apple for its elegance (and modesty)? Join our team!

• Technology (senior level)
• Admissions Consulting (entry level)
• Operations (entry level)

To break through the average-difficulty GMAT problems and succeed on those upper-level separate-the-700s-from-the-Sixers items, you need to accept that the harder problems offer a unique challenge. They aren’t typically concerned with more obscure information in the way that Jeopardy-style trivia questions get harder the more obscure the information is.  Instead, they challenge you to think more critically about the same fundamental skills that you have mastered in the middle-range problems to even get to that top-shelf point.

The key to success on hard GMAT problems is to accept this quirky challenge — think differently and critically.

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Looking for a unique opportunity to meet one-on-one with admissions representatives from both local and international business schools? We always tell applicants that the very best way to get to know an MBA program is to visit the school. The next best thing, however, is when the school visits you!

The upcoming MBA Tour Conferences involve a variety of formats to help you gain a competitive edge in the admissions process. If you’re researching business schools, events like this one are an excellent way to get to know schools better as you narrow down your list of target programs.

This year MBA Tour features a variety of ways to get to know top business schools:

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Dean Nitin Nohria has only been at the top spot at Harvard Business School for about a year, but the effects of his projects and initiatives are already starting to be seen. He has declared that his priorities are around five core themes: Innovation. Intellectual Ambition, Internationalization, Inclusion, and Integration. What does this all mean specifically for you as an HBS applicant?

The visible changes at Harvard that are at least in part due to Dean Nohria’s influence include:

A move beyond the case method
What was sacrosanct at Harvard for generations was that 100% of courses were taught using the case study method. As Veritas Prep predicted when Dean Nohria arrived in Summer 2010, the curriculum is undergoing change. Starting with the class matriculating in Fall 2011, students will now have “field method” experiences as a counterpart to the case-based teaching. The first change to the curriculum is a year-long first-year course called FIELD, for Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development. FIELD features small-group opportunities for students to put what they learn into practice. The Class of 2012 will also see a reduction in the number of case-based courses and the introduction of new labs, similar to what schools like MIT have offered for some time.

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Yesterday the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University announced that Soumitra Dutta, a professor of business and technology and founder and faculty director of a new media and technology innovation lab at INSEAD, will become the eleventh dean of the school. Dutta will step into the new role on July 1, 2012, replacing Joseph Thomas, who will return to the classroom after five years of leading the school.

Aside from being news because it’s a leadership change at a top MBA program, Johnson’s announcement is also notable since this marks the first time top-ranked business school in the U.S. has hired a dean from a business school outside the country. Last year INSEAD plucked a graduate management leader from the U.S., when it announced that former Kellogg dean Dipak Jain would run the school. Now, the U.S. has struck back and brought a top business mind to this side of the pond.

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Now that we have laid the groundwork for permutations and combinations, probability will be a piece of cake. We just need to build up on what we have already learned.

The single most important concept in probability is the following:

The probability of an event A is calculated as P(A) = No. of outcomes when A occurs/Total no. of outcomes.

In this post, we will just extend the combinatorics concepts and apply them to probability. Let me explain how we will do it using some examples.

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Happy January 6, or as it is known to many, the day of  the Epiphany…the twelfth day of Christmas.  If your New Year’s Resolution includes getting serious about the GMAT and your  b-school future, epiphanies are a great place to start.

The feast of the Epiphany, in Western Christianity, celebrates primarily the visitation of newborn Jesus Christ by the three kings, who famously bore gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  And this is a mistake that many GMAT test-takers make when studying – they anticipate “knowledge” as “gifts,” asking questions like “what is the formula?” and “what is the rule?”  But, really, what’s important about the Epiphany is not the gifts themselves, but the revelation (in the Christian tradition of the new Lord to the rest of the world). And for your GMAT study, the revelation/epiphany that comes with newfound (or newly-reviewed) knowledge is exponentially more important than is the knowledge itself.  As you study for the GMAT, allow yourself to have epiphanies and not just “gifts.” 

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What do you know… Another year has already gone by. We’re so full of opinion and points of view here at Veritas Prep that we thought we should commit ourselves to another round of prognosticating about what the coming year will bring in the worlds of standardized tests and grad school admissions. It will be fun to check in at the end of the year to see how we did.

Without further ado, here are six things that we predict will happen in 2012:

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Every year we get countless inquiries from applicants about Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business. Given the school’s tight-knit community and its successful track record in placing grads in high-paying careers, it’s no wonder that so many applicants are drawn to Tuck every year. What does surprise us, though, is how many Tuck applicants don’t really know whether the school is good fit for them. We always urge these applicants to go back and do their homework a bit more before they begin the application process.

Are you thinking about applying to Tuck? If so, why? How do you know if it’s really is a good fit for you? More importantly, how do you know the Tuck admissions team will think you’re a good fit for the school? Today we present four things that make the Tuck School of Business unique among top-ranked MBA programs:

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Happy New Year! Hard to believe a whole year has already gone by again. At this time last year we laid out six predictions for 2011. We exhibited restraint by avoiding predictions about flying cars and holographic teachers, but we did stick out our collective neck on a few matters. Now it’s time to see how we did.

More Schools Will Adopt Video and Other Less Traditional “Essay” Questions
We were at least partly correct here. While at least one school actually backed away from utilizing video response (UCLA Anderson, we’re looking in your direction), other programs embraced Twitter and experimented with ultra-short essay responses. In other cases, schools made iPads an official part of the application review process, paving the way to allowing them to view multimedia responses in coming years. We expect this trend will only continue in the coming year.

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If you have been following my last few posts, I am sure you are a little wary of today’s post. They have been a little convoluted lately since we are dealing with permutations and combinations. Next, we will tackle probability but today, I am going to digress (to give you some much needed respite) and take up a simple yet interesting topic. We deal with quadratic equations on a regular basis. Tackling them effectively is pretty much one of the most basic and important skills you need for GMAT Quant. Today we will look at some relationships between the coefficients of quadratic equations and roots.

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It’s hard to believe that 2011 has already come and gone. Why do these years seem to keep going by faster and faster? As we at Veritas Prep wind down the year, we thought we’d share some of our most popular posts and most interesting topics from the past 12 months.

We hope that this blog has provided you with some useful insights as you’ve studied for the GMAT or slaved over your grad school applications. Sometimes we have a little fun, and sometimes we veer off topic to talk about what interests us, but everything written here comes from the same place: We want to help you be successful in your pursuit of grad school and in your career overall!

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We work with dozens of UCLA Anderson applicants every year. Given the school’s strong community and its strength in a number of academy departments, it’s no wonder that so many applicants aim for Anderson every year. What does surprise us, though, is how many UCLA applicants don’t really know whether the school is good fit for them. We always urge these applicants to go back and do their homework a bit more before they start crafting their Anderson applications.

Are you thinking about applying to UCLA Anderson? If so, why? How do you know if it’s really is a good fit for you? More importantly, how do you know the Anderson admissions team will think you’re a good fit for the school? Today we present a few reasons why Anderson might be a good fit for you:

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Another popular combinatorics concept deals with letters and envelopes. Let’s look at it today in some detail.

Question 1: Robin wrote 3 different letters to send to 3 different addresses. For each letter, she prepared one envelope with its correct address. If the 3 letters are to be put into the 3 envelopes at random, in how many ways can she put

(i) all three letters into the envelopes correctly?
(ii) only two letters into the envelopes correctly?
(iii) only one letter into the envelope correctly?
(iv) no letter into the envelope correctly?

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We work with dozens of Kellogg applicants every year. Given the school’s sterling reputation in marketing, its ability to turn out well-rounded general managers, and its high-energy culture, it’s no wonder that so many applicants aim for Kellogg every year. What does surprise us, though, is how many Kellogg applicants don’t really know whether the school is good fit for them. We always urge these applicants to go back and do their homework a bit more before they start crafting their Kellogg applications.

Are you thinking about applying to Kellogg this year? If so, why? How do you know if it’s really is a good fit for you? More importantly, how do you know the Kellogg admissions team will think you’re a good fit for the school? Today we present five things that make the Kellogg academic experience unique:

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Earlier this month we announced that Veritas Prep has partnered with Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) to donate 50 scholarships to qualified IAVA Member Veterans — 25 for GMAT prep courses and 25 for graduate school admissions consulting services. Since then, we have talked to many applicants (and would-be applicants) with military experience who wonder if they’ll fit in at business school. And, they want to know if business schools are really looking for applicants like them.

The short answer is a resounding YES!!! Business schools constantly seek leaders and young professionals with exceptional decision-making ability. Just because you don’t come from a business background, don’t fool yourself into thinking that MBA programs won’t be interested in you. You may have exactly the type of experience and temperament that MBA admissions officers want to see.

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It’s already been almost a year since we wrote about MIT Sloan’s announcement that the admissions office would move to an entirely paper-free, all-iPad system for reviewing applications. Now, more is being written about this as the company that makes the iPad app makes a publicity push and announces that the UCLA Anderson admissions team has also signed on to use the app.

The key takeaway that we wrote in January still holds: While the fact that admissions officers will read your application on an iPad is interesting, the real fuss should be about what this could mean for the future. It’s not hard to imagine video and audio responses becoming a much more common part of business school applications, as admissions officers can move from your written app to a video to something else all with the click of an icon. We think this is inevitable.

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Today’s post is a continuation of last week’s post and heavily refers back to it. I would suggest you to take a quick look at last week’s post again to make sense of this post. Let’s start with the variation question 1a we saw in the last post.

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This weekend, there is a high likelihood that you will unknowingly engage in one of the GMAT author’s greatest devices of trickery. Via Christmas shopping (9 days left… thank Heaven for Amazon Prime shipping) you may try to misdirect your gift recipient by bringing home a bag from a different store (He went to Lowe’s? I thought he went to Jared.) or wrapping a tiny gift in a larger box. Or you may wait on the shopping and watch the Tim Tebow vs. New England game, and in doing so watch Tebow’s option-style offense employ all kinds of misdirection tactics to open up running lanes.

However you view misdirection this weekend, bring some of that back to your GMAT studies and notice misdirection wherever it’s employed. Consider, for example, this question:

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One of the most common questions we get from applicants is, “How strict are schools about word limits in their admissions essays and personal statements?” While the answer itself is rather straightforward, we often encourage applicants to stop focusing on the number, take a step back, and consider what admissions officers are really communicating when they put forward a word limit.

First, we’ll answer the question directly: Schools are not out to reject you for going over a word limit by a small amount. Okay, okay… “What’s a small amount?” you’re asking. One rule of thumb that is frequently tossed around is 10%, although it’s worth noting that admissions consultants tend to promote this rule more than any admissions officer does. However, if you can stay within 10% of the word limit for an essay, you probably are okay.

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