Archive : GMAT Prep

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!

This is a big week here at Veritas Prep! We’ve just announced the availability of our new GMAT on Demand app for the iPad, the first full GMAT course from an established GMAT prep company that can be completed on any iOS device! There is no shortage of flashcard apps and games for people who want to study for standardized tests on their mobile devices, but this is the first real, complete GMAT course for the iPad.

Veritas Prep has been a pioneer in the mobile prep space. We launched our free GMAT Practice Quiz app in early 2009, and to this day it remains the most widely download GMAT prep app of its kind. That app is great for practice — as are many other apps on the market — but it doesn’t provide real instruction, which is where our new GMAT on Demand app comes in. Our new app covers the same exact content that we cover in our 42-hour Veritas Prep on Demand^TM self-paced online GMAT course. This is the real deal.

Much has been made of the recent “revelation” from this month’s GMAT Summit, in which the Graduate Management Admission Council provided some updates on the recent evolution of Sentence Correction problems on the GMAT. What was stated as (we’ll loosely paraphrase here) “years ago we starting moving away from questions that unduly put emphasis on idioms, especially those that give native English speakers an unfair advantage,” was misinterpreted by some to mean, “Effective now, we’re no longer testing idioms on the GMAT! Ready, set, GO!”

The GMAT prep world is a small, incestuous one. It was only a matter of hours before chatter picked up on various message boards and in other online channels. And boy, did it ever. We did our part to spread the word, but today GMAC’s Dr. Lawrence Rudner posted an official statement on its blog to clarify any misconceptions that are still out there.

We have good news and bad news for you: The Next Generation GMAT’s new Integrated Reasoning Section (debuting in June, 2012) will feature an onscreen calculator, marking the first time the GMAT will allow students to use a calculator on the exam. The good news is that, when you might need it, the calculator will be there to help you do some quick math, and you don’t need to waste valuable time “carrying the 1″ and that sort of thing.

So what’s the bad news? It’s the fact that the calculator’s very presence will likely tempt many test takers into using it when they don’t need to. While using a calculator is usually a quick exercise, it still represents time spent doing calculations that may be unnecessary. In today’s video, Brian Galvin explains how this may prove to be yet another trap for less savvy test takers:

Last week I wrote about the day I scored 780 on the GMAT. That post was purely about my experiences on test day — from what I ate in the morning to how I kept my mind sharp during short breaks in the exam. Today I’ll dig into some of the specific strategies I used to ace the GMAT.

Note that many of these strategies overlap heavily with Veritas Prep’s own GMAT prep philosophy — I do work for Veritas Prep, after all — so regular readers will probably see some overlap between this post and the advice they read on this blog on a regular basis. Here I describe how the “rubber met the road” for me as I put these strategies to work.

So I’ve been working for Veritas Prep at headquarters for over 4 years now and I’d been reluctant to actually take the GMAT. One, I felt pressured to score in the 99th percentile like all our instructors have, and two, because I hadn’t found the time to really get down and study in earnest. In addition to that, most of the practice tests that I had taken had me scoring between 680 and 720 — still quite a bit of work left to get past that 99th percentile threshold. I’m happy to report however, that over this past weekend, I took the test and scored a 780!

Continuing our GMAT prep video series, today we break down a common type of ratio problem that you will often see in Data Sufficiency problems. As Brian says, many people are not comfortable working with ratios. Add in unknown variables, and intuition often goes out the window. But, if you look closely, often the problem does indeed give you enough information to solve the problem.

Fortunately, being grounded in basic Data Sufficiency strategy can help. Remember that there will be many instances in which you’ll be tempted to select answer choice E (insufficient information), but upon further inspection, you may realize that you do in fact have what you need. Watch the video to learn more:

Every week we receive multiple inquiries from business school applicants in India, and they all want to know the same thing: Are Veritas Prep GMAT courses available in India? While we have offered GMAT courses in select cities in India in the past, a long time ago we decided that we couldn’t keep up our high teaching standards in that market with our partner at the time. So, we exited India, and promised ourselves that we would only return once we found a partner who believed in the Veritas Prep mission.

We’re happy to announce that we have found that partner. Effectively immediately Veritas Prep India, a new partnership between Veritas Prep and New Delhi-based White Glow Consulting, offers GMAT courses in New Delhi. Bangalore, Chennai, and Mumbai locations will open early next month!

Continuing our new GMAT prep video series, today we look at how statistics can easily mislead you in Critical Reasoning problems. As Brian says, people tend to make bad decisions when dealing with statistics. It is far too easy — either deliberately or not — to mislead others (or yourself) with statistics-based arguments. Any time statistics enter the picture, you want to be especially critical when evaluating an argument.

Today’s video analyzes a debate between two people, and tests whether or not you can find the identify the link in logic that would most weaken the argument presented. Pay attention to the arguments and any gaps that might be hiding in the logic!

Still need to land a great GMAT score before you start working on your business school applications? Good news… We have GMAT prep classes starting around the world next week!

If you’re applying to business school this coming year, now is the perfect time to start preparing for the GMAT. In fact, the summer is our busiest time of the year — many applicants are working on the GMAT right now. Starting your prep now puts you in position to take the GMAT and still be ready to apply to top MBA programs by the Round 1 deadlines.

Continuing our new GMAT prep video series, today we take a look at some common traps that the GMAT sets in Sentence Correction problems. As Brian states at the start of the video, simple content knowledge is virtually everywhere these days. What separates great managers from good ones is not the ability to call up facts, but rather the ability to interpret information and make good decisions.

Today’s video takes a look at a Sentence Correction problem that preys on many test takers’ dogmatic search for idioms, leading many of them to make the wrong choice. This is a good example of the type of logic that can keep you from earning those last critical 50 points on the GMAT!

If you plan on enrolling in a Veritas Prep GMAT course or MBA admissions consulting service, there are only a couple of days left to lock in our old prices! This Friday (July 1), prices will go up on most GMAT prep classes and on all admissions consulting packages.

Summer is always the most popular time of year for our GMAT prep and admissions consulting services. Starting now puts you in a great position to apply in the fall. Now, as if you didn’t need more reason to get started now, enrolling in June will save you some money!

The Veritas Prep blog just added another weapon to its GMAT arsenal! This summer Veritas Prep will roll out a new series of video tips on this blog and on YouTube. We plan to explore all aspects of GMAT prep in the same witty, easy-to-understand way that we normally do on our blog. These video tips will provide a great way for you to get a quick explanation on something or to brush up on a key skill needed for GMAT success.

Our first video tip is actually a two-for-one affair: Brian Galvin, Veritas Prep’s Director of Academic Programs, shows you key relationships to remember when working with squares inscribed inside circles, and when tackling circles inscribed inside squares.

While there’s no shortage of GMAT prep apps available for the iPhone and iPad (including our own free iPhone GMAT app), until now test takers haven’t had access to a course of official GMAT questions that they can use on their mobile devices. That changed this week as the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) announced that its “Official GMAT” app is now available on iOS devices. This of it as a portable, more interactive version of the Official Guide for GMAT Review.

The basic app costs $4.99, and gives users access to 50 questions. From there, users can pay $9.99 each for additional sets of 250 verbal or quant questions (or pay $9.99 for one blended set of 250 questions).

Want to secure a great GMAT score before you start working on your business school applications in the fall? Good news… We have GMAT prep classes starting around the world today!

If you’re applying to business school this coming year, now is the perfect time to start preparing for the GMAT. Doing so puts you on track to take the exam by late July. We always recommend planning for success, but you should also be smart and build in enough time just in case you don’ get the GMAT score you want. Missed 700? No problem… You’ll still have plenty of time to take the GMAT again before you start devote your full attention to your Round 1 applications.

At Veritas Prep, we’re always on the lookout for new ways to connect with applicants and help them succeed. Evisors can connect you with savvy former employees and interviewers at top firms who will help you land your dream job. If you are still planning on applying to graduate school, you can also find Veritas Prep admissions consultants on Evisors who will help you gain acceptance to the world’s top graduate programs.

Evisors was created to provide a menu of the best career and admissions consultants out there (they’re called “evisors”) and let the customer pick and choose who they want to talk to. Veritas Prep and Evisors have teamed up to make some of our best GMAT and MBA admissions experts available through the Evisors website. These experts can easily be identified by the “Veritas Prep Certified” seal next to their profiles.

In the new U.S. News graduate school rankings issue, which hits newsstands this coming week, we’re quoted on the upcoming changes to the GMAT, coming in June, 2012. (You can read the online version here.) The article outlines the big change coming to the GMAT — replacing one of the AWA questions with a new section called Integrated Reasoning — and the Graduate Management Admission Council’s reasons for the change.

The new Integrated Reasoning section will go beyond the traditional “pick one of these five answer choices” format. It will ask test takers to assess information in a variety of formats, synthesize the information given, and draw conclusions from the information given. (We wrote about the new format a great deal last year.) Sounds scary, right?

Looking to get ahead of the game and pocket a great GMAT score before the summer? Good news… We have GMAT prep classes starting around the world next week!

If you’re applying to business school this coming year, now is the perfect time to start preparing for the GMAT. Doing so puts you on track to take the exam in early summer. You should always plan for success, but you should also be smart and build in enough time just in case you don’ get the GMAT score you want. Missed 700? No problem… You’ll still have a couple of months to take the GMAT again before you start working on your Round 1 business school applications in earnest.

It may well be fair to say that GMAT students, on average, dislike studying for Sentence Correction questions than for any other question type. Grammar in itself is less than enjoyable, and to many the correct answers seem awkward and the incorrect answers seem to fit the “yeah, but I still understood what they were saying” protest.

Where Sentence Correction can become a bit more relevant and enjoyable is in the fact that, more than any other area of grammatical relevance, the GMAT tests logic. When it comes to Modifiers, Pronouns, Subject-Verb Agreement, Verb Tense, etc., the correct answer is just as likely to be found by asking “does this even make sense?” than by consulting Strunk & White’s Elements of Style (you know… that book of which you received multiple copies for your high school graduation). And if you embrace the logical absurdity of incorrect answers, studying Sentence Correction can be fun (or at least less un-fun). As you notice these grammatically-induced absurdities, you can bring extra enjoyment to day-to-day reading and radio-listening. For example, consider this segment from today’s Morning Edition on NPR.

Chris Kane is a longtime Veritas Prep instructor and recipient of the worldwide Instructor of the Year Award. Having taught thousands of students in New York City and the tri-state area, he contributes frequently to the Veritas Prep lesson materials and is the primary instructor for the popular Accelerated Course format in Midtown Manhattan, where he will begin another such course this week. In his first of many contributions to the Veritas Prep blog, he shares the wisdom of his experience with the one-week, 42-hour Accelerated Course format.

While no Veritas Prep class is more popular than the Full Course, the Accelerated Course has a lot to offer. It undoubtedly makes for a long week: We cover all the material presented in the 42 hour Full Course in one week, meeting every day from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM with a one hour lunch break. When I teach the Accelerated Course, students in my evening Full Course often remark that the format is, well, insane: “How could you learn all this in one week?” Information overload! I could never do that… It’s crazy!”

Happy New Year, readers! As we begin a new year and Veritas Prep launches its first 2011 GMAT courses next week, we’d like to take a moment to reflect on a highly successful 2010 and honor some of the people who most contributed to it.

Here at Veritas Prep, we have the honor at the end of each year of looking back at the thousands of students and hundreds of classes we’ve taught.  It has become tradition each December to name winners of the Worldwide Instructor of the Year award, and the process has grown in enjoyment level each year as we’ve been treated to mountains of positive student evaluation scores and comments.  With a company average of approximately 4.4 on a 5-point scale (4 is “agree” and 5 is “strongly agree”) to the prompt “I would recommend my instructor to others”, it’s clear that to become an Instructor of the Year one must truly be a star among stars, and it’s a privilege for our headquarters staff to sift through the data and reflect on the countless lives that our instructors have changed for the better.

Happy Holidays, everyone! We hope you’re able to get some rest and enjoy time with your friends and family during the holidays. And, especially if you’re in the Northeastern United States, we hope you’re staying dry and safe in the middle of some serious snow!

As for us, we’re taking advantage of the holidays here at Veritas Prep to get caught up on things and get ready for our next big wave of GMAT courses, which start worldwide in two weeks. If you’re planning on preparing for and taking the GMAT in 2011, here are three ways you can start your preparation at no cost:

Last week GMAC’s own Dr. Lawrence Rudner, the ultimate “guy behind the GMAT” if there ever was one, wrote an article on Bloomberg Businessweek letting GMAT students know that the punishment is severe for anyone caught trying to cheat the exam. And, perhaps even more importantly, he has real-world data to prove that the advantage someone gains by cheating is slight, if they exist at all.

On October 30 and 31 we ran the first ever Veritas Prep Essentials Course, giving students an entirely new way to think about how they should prepare for the GMAT. The reviews have been nothing short of phenomenal so far, which explains why we’ve been humbled by the terrific demand we’ve seen for the course. But, this new course is the biggest change to GMAT prep since we launched our original 42-hour course back in 2002… How did it come about?

The Essentials Course came up as a challenge based on what’s happening in the marketplace; there are a lot of options for the GMAT student these days, and many of them advertise shorter classes, more convenient schedules, and lower prices, and we wanted to compete in that market. Our Full Course’s strengths have a lot to do with was how comprehensive it is –- it’s 42 hours (normally over 7 weeks) and covers everything from fundamental skills to higher-order strategies. We still know that it’s the best way for most people to study for the GMAT, but we also know that one size doesn’t fit all (as we told BusinessWeek last year).

The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) has announced that those who take the GMAT between November 19 and November 24 will be among the first to see examples of the GMAT’s new Integrated Reasoning questions in a live test setting. This will strictly be for the purpose of evaluating the questions, and will have no bearing on students’ official GMAT scores. Anyone who completes the sample questions and fill outs a short online survey the next day will receive a $25 credit for their time.

Last week the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), the people behind the GMAT, announced the release of the Official Guide for GMAT Review series of digital talking books, making the popular GMAT prep material more accessible for the visually impaired. The new books provide the exact same GMAT preparation material found in the printed GMAT study guides.

Attention Round 2 and Round 3 applicants! If you still need to take the GMAT, of if you’re not happy with your current score, we have GMAT prep classes starting around the world next week!

If you’re applying to business school this year, hopefully by now you have already beaten the GMAT and are able to focus on the rest of your applications. If not, there’s still time to properly prepare for the exam, get a competitive score, and complete your business school applications this year. But, time is running out, so you’d better start your test preparation now.

While Veritas Prep is obviously in the business of getting paid to provide GMAT preparation services, we know that a lot of our fans have chosen the self-study path for their GMAT prep. In fact, most of us here at Veritas Prep HQ chose the self-study route when we took the GMAT (and the rest have taken a Veritas Prep course!).

For the past eight years we have helped tens of thousands of students prepare for the GMAT. Not only have we helped students by knowing the GMAT better than anyone, but also by constantly staying innovative with our GMAT prep curriculum. That innovative spirit is behind our newest course format, The Essentials Course.

Like your iPad? Love doing well on the GMAT? You’re in luck… Veritas Prep’s industry-leading GMAT prep books are now available for download on the iPad! Now, test-takers can develop customized study programs using individual downloadable books from the most comprehensive GMAT prep course ever created.

If you’re applying to business school this year, hopefully by now you have a great GMAT score under your belt. If not, there’s still time to properly prepare for the exam, get a competitive score, and complete your business school applications this year. But, you’d better start your test preparation now to give yourself enough time.

Since 2002, tens of thousands of business school applicants have chosen Veritas Prep to help them achieve their maximum potential on the GMAT. In 90+ cities worldwide, every year more and more students find out what makes the Veritas Prep strategy for GMAT mastery the best in the industry.

We’re just two months away from the first Round 1 deadlines for the 2010-2011 MBA admissions season, and one question that we frequently receive at this time of year is, “I took the GMAT and scored X… Should I take it again before I apply?”

By popular demand, today we introduce something that will surely bring a smile to the face of anyone who’s ever wanted to pay Tuesday for their hamburger today: Now you can enroll in any Veritas Prep GMAT class and pay in three monthly installments!

To celebrate the worldwide reach of our GMAT courses (we have 87 locations in 16 countries and offer live online courses) we are hosting an Around the World Facebook photo contest! Everyone is invited to submit a picture of themselves wearing a Veritas Prep t-shirt or holding Veritas Prep books and the person with the picture that receives the most votes will get his or her choice of the following prizes:

We thought we’d take a quick break holiday (what, you didn’t get July 5 off??) to let you know that we have GMAT prep classes starting around the world next week! If you’re planning to apply to a top business school this coming fall, now is the perfect time to get started on your GMAT preparation.

We have big news to announce! Today, on our 8th birthday, we introduce our GMAT prep books for individual purchase! These are the same books that we use in our industry-leading 42-hour GMAT prep course, and they contain everything that tens of thousands of students have learned in a Veritas Prep class.

It only comes six times a year, when the planets align and our GMAT prep classes start around the world on the same week! If you’re planning to apply to a top MBA program this coming fall (or even if you’re just starting to think about it), this is the perfect time to start preparing for the GMAT.

At 12:00 PM U.S. Pacific time today, Veritas Prep co-founder and CEO Chad Troutwine will conduct a live online seminar titled “What the GMAT Can (and Cannot) Do For Your MBA Candidacy.” Chad’s presentation is part if the Association of the first annual Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants (AIGAC) Graduate Admissions Virtual Summit. There’s still time to register here!

They say hysteria sells. And it sure does, or at least it did, back in the 1980s, when Def Leppards’ Hysteria went on to sell more than 20 million copies worldwide after its release in 1987. The name “Hysteria” was inspired by the surge in media coverage caused by drummer Rick Allen’s Dec. 31 1984 car accident. While Allen’s accident was devastating (he would rebound to drum on Hysteria, and is still with the band today, despite only having one arm) the worldwide “hysteria” caused by his accident dwarfed the event itself, to the band’s bemusement.