GMAT students can now benefit from a new series featuring video tips from Veritas Prep’s own Brian Galvin. Last week, Brian shared a tip for mastering Data Sufficiency.

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Last week, we began a new 5-part series on SAT math tips for smart students who are struggling to keep their SAT math scores high. In Part I we learned that the result is rewarded, not the effort. Today, we’ll take a look at a second tip where tricky problems and specific language can really clue you in. Always read SAT problems carefully!

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Let’s say you were in the market for some new technology, and let’s say your friend introduced you to a guy who sold used, refurbished gadgets at a huge discount. And let’s say he gave you this choice – you could buy:

A) An iPhone 5 for $50

or

B) A digital camera for $40

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As schools continue to release admissions deadlines and essays for the 2013-2014 application season, Veritas Prep will periodically bring you a preview of what’s to come. Already, Yale SOM, Duke Fuqua, and NYU Stern have released their new application deadlines for the upcoming season, with Stern also releasing its application essay questions. Look below for the new deadlines and check back for more commentary next week!

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Summer blockbuster season is upon us, and one of the joys of the movies is to go see an ambitious motion picture on the big screen and get immersed in a world of make-believe for a few hours (this kind of sounds like taking the GMAT, doesn’t it?). If you’re going by yourself or with another person, you can usually agree on a movie pretty quickly and be on your way. However, if you’ve ever tried to go see a movie with like six friends, it often becomes a case of Process of Elimination.

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Now every GMAT student in the world can take a class with Worldwide Instructor of the Year Matt Douglas – Veritas Prep is proud to announce G-Matt Mondays, a free live online study session featuring one of the world’s most-requested instructors.

Every other Monday, Matt will answer your GMAT questions, using each question as an opportunity to teach one of his famous mini-lessons that’s sure to echo in your mind on test day.  Whether it’s quant or verbal, difficult or something you know you should know but just can’t quite train yourself to remember, submit your question when you register for each session and Matt will choose the most teachable problems to create engaging lessons that will improve your score.  Even if you don’t have a question to ask, Matt encourages drop-ins – listen to the questions of others and absorb Matt’s lessons to take with you as you study.

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Do you find yourself with your head in your hands after yet another series of practice questions, looking at a less than 50% hit-rate on Assumption questions? You’re not alone! Most of us have no background with formal logic prior to the GMAT, and suddenly we’re expected to understand brand-new concepts like premise, conclusion, flaw, etc. intuitively. To start with, let’s review some basic definitions.

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As the old saying goes, “practice makes perfect”.  It is true. Human beings are designed to improve, learn, and excel through rigorous and mindful practice. In addition to teaching, I also dance. When I was younger, dance class was simply a fun activity to do after school. I have come to learn now that I need to practice consciously every single day if I want to excel at dance and succeed.

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Competition is as inherent in nature as life itself.  Darwinian natural selection is an exercise in pure competition among and within various species.  War is an extension of this brand of competition.  War, it happens, has also contributed to some of the most momentous developments throughout history.  Not only have civilizations risen and fallen, some of the most incredible progress and regress has come from battles for supremacy.  Many of our oldest surviving texts were written to preserve the memory of major wars, and many technologies have arisen from the desire for victory, in battle or in life.  This notion of competition has evolved and spread into more modern forms — business, sports, politics, and even academics.  A wise student will see a similar kind of competition manifested in the GMAT.

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We spoke with a student the other day over the phone who was near tears. She had a 3.9 GPA, always got A’s or an A- at worst in math class. But she was absolutely devastated by her math score on the SAT before she came to us: 530. How can she, a bright student with a near perfect GPA, have only gotten a score barely higher than average? Surprisingly this isn’t all too uncommon. A lot of very good students struggle with SAT math and underperform to their ability level. The solution is almost always focused preparation for the SAT with strategies that are specifically designed to tackle the types of problems you will see on the test. Here’s part one of our five-series article on why we see good students like the one mentioned above struggle with SAT Math.

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Let’s go back to geometry now. We will discuss how to use diagrams to solve DS questions today. Though we discussed a DS question in a previous geometry post, we didn’t discuss how the thought process used for a DS question is different from the thought process used for a PS question. To find whether a statement is sufficient to answer the question, you should try to prove that it is not sufficient. Try to make two cases which answer the question differently using the give information. If there are two or more different answers possible, it means the given information is not enough. Let’s discuss this with the help of an official question.

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This week, the 24-hour news cycle is focusing on the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program, which taps the data collection of cell phone carriers, search engines, and internet service providers to amass huge volumes of information. And regardless of your politics or opinions, you have to recognize one thing about the PRISM program – NSA is using any and all available information to do its job. Which is exactly the prism through which you should look at Data Sufficiency problems.

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Students prepping for the GMAT now have the opportunity to learn from video tips, in addition to the text articles from our blog. Brian Galvin is a main collaborator on all of the Veritas Prep materials, and in these videos he will share his tips and expertise so you can quickly learn how to master the GMAT.

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It pays to study over summer. Studying for standardized tests during your summer vacation could lead to a big payoff in scholarship money towards your college education. While you may see a disconnect between the PSAT and the SAT, you will soon learn that studying for the SAT can cover all the bases. Take a look through these four reasons why you should prepare for PSAT this summer and how it will help you get ahead of the game.

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I like to compare the GMAT to everyday things that hopefully resonate with people. To that end, I often like to use the analogy of routes to work to compare the different methods one can use to get the answer to a question. Invariably, there are multiple ways to get to the right answer on a math question, just as there are multiple ways to get to work. Some are just more direct than others. If I work on the island of Manhattan and live on the island of Manhattan, I can detour through The Bronx to get to work, but I’ll probably waste a lot of time. However, that doesn’t mean that I won’t get there, so it is an acceptable route for work. Of course, most of us are usually looking for the quickest way to get to work (for some reason my boss gets testy when I show up 3 hours late).

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Your outlook on test day is probably something like this: Oh no; it’s here. The test is this weekend. That big test. The one I’ve been partially dreading and partially waiting for just so I can get it over with. I’m a little nervous, no, a lot nervous. Isn’t this test supposed to decide my life or something? Isn’t this the test that determines whether or not I’ll get into a good college?

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Last week Harvard Business School released the details of its application for the 2013-2014 admissions season. While there was some moderately interesting news around Harvard’s admissions deadlines, much of the chatter has been about Harvard’s drastically revised essays. Make no mistake — this is a very different application than what HBS has used in the past, but keep in mind that Harvard still wants to see the same qualities (across your entire application) that it has been looking for in applicants for years. Harvard still wants to find bright budding leaders who are ready to undergo a transformational experience. The admissions committee is just going about finding those applicants a little differently this year.

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Got the basics of the Integrated Reasoning formats, and ready to start with some questions? The Two-Part Analysis question is one of the most straight-forward IR question types. A short paragraph is followed by information in columns and rows. You’ll be asked to choose one answer from each column since the complete answer will have a “two-part” solution. Let’s look at a sample Two-Part Analysis question!

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If you are wondering about the absurd title of this post, just take a look at last week’s title. It will make much more sense thereafter. This post is a continuation of last week’s post where we discussed number plugging. Today, as per students’ request, we will look at the inequalities approach to the same official question. You will need to go through our inequalities post to understand the method we will use here.

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R. Kelly. Jermaine Dupri. Mariah Carey. The Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC). What do they all have in common?

It’s the remix.

All four artists above are masters of the remix, taking the same song and making it different and, in most cases, better by simply changing a few things around. To the casual observer the end result may be entirely different (hey R. Kelly – is there even a non-remixed version of “Ignition”? It almost doesn’t matter with the remix being that good…), but to those who seek to understand the art of either music or the GMAT, it’s extremely helpful to recognize the way that these artists ply their trade. To get a feel for it, let’s look at two almost-identical-but-beautifully-remixed problems from the Official Guide for GMAT Review:

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Now that we’ve got the what and the how from Part 1 and Part 2, let’s tackle a full question!

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Want to know the secret to writing an essay for the SAT? Cuba Gooding Jr., in the movie Jerry Maguire, puts it well when he says, “SHOW ME THE MONEY!”. In the movie the catchphrase is a request to back up talk with cash.

In the case of the SAT essay, the money is in the details. Specific details in an essay support a thesis statement like experimental evidence proves scientific theory. The more substantive detail you include into your writing, the more you support your argument. Here are some tips for how to generate and organize those details into a perfect scoring essay.

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In writing a weekly column for Veritas Prep, I try to cover topics and subjects that will help you avoid common pitfalls on the GMAT. The exam uses certain common traps and therefore it is better to review them routinely in order to be prepared to deal with such adversity on test day. Every type of question on the exam can have pitfalls and I’d like to cover the major ones in every question type. Today, we’ll take a look at Reading Comprehension.  

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On the SAT, you’ll see a handful of permutation questions. Permutation questions deal with the rearranging of existing elements. Let’s look at an example problem. The problem goes something like this “A northeastern (museum/school/restaurant) has four (displays/desks/seats) all in a row.  How many different combinations of six (paintings/students/diners) can be made?”

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The Stanford Graduate School of Business has released its admissions essays and deadlines for the 2013-2014 application season. Stanford has actually made no changes to its admissions essays this year, which suggests that the admissions committee liked what it saw in the applications that it reviewed last year. Accordingly, our advice hasn’t changed much, although it has evolved subtly since last year. Let’s dig in.

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Frustrated by Parallel Reasoning questions, even after lots of practice? I don’t blame you! It’s tough to tackle 6 arguments instead of 1, especially if pacing on the Verbal section is challenging for you. In Part I of this series, we looked at how to define parallel reasoning questions on the GMAT. Today let’s take a look at 3 steps to take in order to get these questions correct!

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Writing a college application essay can be hard. Below are a few tips for the high school student staring at a blank screen, trying to write the perfect college application essay. Hopefully you find guidance so you find time to rest your eyes!

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Springtime has always been a reason to celebrate – we’re recently through Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, and on to “Dads and Grads” and wedding season.  Oh, and next week the GMAT’s Integrated Reasoning section turns one year old.  So grab your party hats and noisemakers and get ready for some sloppy cake eating…let’s celebrate the Integrated Reasoning section’s first birthday with 8 strategies to help you get a perfect 8 on that section.

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Let’s take a break from Geometry today and discuss the concept of transition points. This is especially useful in questions where you are tempted to plug in values. A question often asked is: how do I know which values to plug and how do I know that I have covered the entire range in the 3-4 values I have tried? What transition points do is that they give you the ranges in which the relationships differ. All you have to do is try one value from each range. If you do, you would have figured out all the different relationships that can hold. We will discuss this concept using a GMAT Prep question. You can solve it using our discussion on inequalities too. But if number plugging is what comes first to your mind in this question, then it will be a good idea to get the transition points.

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There are many memorable things happening this Memorial Day weekend, but perhaps none is as exciting as the much-anticipated return of Arrested Development, the cult classic sitcom re-premiering on Netflix on Sunday. Panned by the masses in large part because it’s humor was “too smart,” Arrested Development can provide some useful intelligence to aid in your own GMAT development. So if the GMAT has you down this beginning-of-summer weekend, there’s no need to hide in your Aztec tomb, join a blue man group for moral support, or hide your lack of GMAT confidence behind cutoff shorts. We don’t think you’re a chicken (coo-coo-ca-cha!). Arrested Development is here to teach you an important lesson – and this time it’s not J. Walter Weatherman, but instead the former President of the Bluth Company, Gob.

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We use pronouns everyday – I, he, me, we, they, she – these words are so common that we rarely think twice about them. Yet, finding pronoun misuse on the SAT writing section is often overlooked. By learning to always match a pronoun with its antecedent (the noun that the pronoun replaces) you can avoid missing these errors. Let’s look at the following example first to ascertain what an antecedent is.

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In the quant section of the GMAT, there are a fair number of formulae to know in order to answer the ensemble of questions that may be asked of you. Most of them are covered in any basic test prep material, but a formula is always just a short hand version of a much longer manual process.

There is an anecdote about a primary school teacher who wanted to keep a misbehaved child busy for a period, so she asked him to sum up all the numbers from 1 to 100. To her dismay, the child answered the question in a matter of seconds, and the answer was correct. The child explained to his teacher that, instead of simply adding 1+2+3…, you could create a pairwise addition that would always yield the same number. If you added 1 to 100, you would get 101. If you added 2 to 99, you would still get 101. If you added 3 to 98, you’d still get 101, and so on. Thus the addition of 100 different numbers could be turned into a multiplication of two simple numbers: 101 x 50. The student in question was mathematical prodigy Carl Friedrich Gauss.

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This year Columbia Business School leads the charge, releasing its MBA application essay prompts before any other top business school. The school has also released the admissions deadlines for its two intakes in 2014.

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Word Problems tend to intimidate newcomers to the GMAT.  Don’t be scared!  The math on most word problems is actually easier and less troublesome than the math on a straightforward arithmetic or algebra problem.

The reason the math is easier on these problems is because the problem is made hard in other ways.  Word problems are considered hard because you have to convert a word problem into a math question.  This involves good reading skills and good critical reasoning skills.

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Avoiding Assumptions is probably the best strategy period on SAT Reading. But it will take a long time before you master this strategy. You will need to practice the art of avoiding assumptions over and over on SAT passages until you perfect it.

Remember that an assumption is an induction that is not based on textual evidence from the passage. So how can you avoid making assumptions on the SAT? Well, you can ask yourself one magic question:

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Click here to read the intro to this blog series! Send your admissions questions to timeout[at]veritasprep[dot]com.
–
Dear Trav,
I was waitlisted to my top choice schools. What should I do, if anything, to follow up with these schools?
– 

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Without descriptive words, phrases or clauses, sentences lack color.   A misstep of many is not paying close enough attention to the proper placement of modifiers.    The makers of the GMAT are aware of this shortsightedness of many test-takers.  As a result, they do test your ability to recognize illogical modifiers.

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Parallel Reasoning questions on the Critical Reasoning section of the GMAT are a type of “method of reasoning” question-type. These questions require you to focus on the author’s logic. Parallel reasoning questions ask you to look for the answer choice that has the closest logical structure as the argument in the question stem. Ask yourself: which choice best matches the WAY the author moves from the evidence to his conclusion?

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Last week, we discussed how drawing extreme diagrams can help solve Geometry questions. Today we will see how to solve another Geometry question by making diagrams. The diagram can help you understand exactly what it is that you need to do; doing it will be quite straightforward.

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If GMAT tutoring sessions sometimes look like George (or Oscar) Bluth prison meetings from Arrested Development – two people across the table from each other speaking intelligently – the “no touching” recurring theme is embedded in this exchange:

Step one: Student begins to work on problem, places scratch paper directly underneath problem covering answer choices.
Step two: Instructor slaps the note paper away and yells “no touching (the answer choices)”

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