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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Every year we work with dozens and dozens of clients who target Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Given its tight-knit culture, growing global footprint, and strength in academic areas such as marketing, it’s no surprise that Fuqua is on many applicants’ short lists. We are often surprised, however, by how many applicants apply to Fuqua without really knowing whether or not it’s a good fit for them. We always urge these applicants to go back and do their homework a bit more before they start crafting their Duke applications.

Are you thinking about applying to Fuqua this year? If so, why? How do you know if Fuqua really is a good fit for you? Today we present five reasons why Duke may be a great place for you to spend two years as an MBA student:

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Despite a U.S. economy that has been mostly sluggish for more than three years now, there may be reason to believe 2012 will be when the job market finally turns the corner. A new year-end poll of hiring managers by GMAC revealed that most of them plan to increase or maintain their number of new hires in 2012 vs. 2011.

The GMAC poll covered 229 hiring managers at 216 companies worldwide. The poll compares these companies’ actual hiring in 2011 to their expected level of hiring in the coming year, including hiring of MBA graduates as well as grads from other master’s-level business programs. While the results don’t paint a 100% rosy picture, the news seems better than it has been in the past couple of years.

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Today, using some examples, let’s look at different ways of distributing identical/distinct objects among people or in groups. There are some formulas which can be used in some of these cases but I will only discuss how to use the concepts we have learned so far to deal with these questions. I am not a fan of unintuitive formulas since the probability (we will come to this topic soon) that we will get to use even one of them in GMAT is quite low while the effort involved in cramming all of them is humongous. Therefore, I only want to focus on our core concepts which we can apply in various situations. Let’s start with our first example.

Question 1: In how many ways can 5 different fruits be distributed among four children? (Some children may get more than one fruit and some may get no fruits.)

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Watching the Republican Party presidential primary race take shape over the past six months, we can’t help but think of one of our favorite GMAT sentence correction lessons. Seemingly forever, Mitt Romney has been the lead horse in the race, but voters have never quite seemed to embrace him. One month it was Michele Bachmann who seemed to be a more popular alternative, the next it was Rick Perry. Then, Herman Cain uttered the phrase “9-9-9″ and became the next candidate to potentially overtake Romney, and now it’s New Gingrich’s turn. Before we finish writing this post, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman will probably get their turns, too.

There seems to be the pervasive feeling about Romney that, while many Republican voters like him, not many love him as their nominee. They keep one hand on the “Romney” lever in the election booth, but always have an eye out for someone who’s potentially better. If you’ve done enough Sentence Correction problems on the GMAT, this may sound familiar to you.

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Late last week Harvard Business School broke ground on Tata Hall, the new facility that will house HBS’s executive education program. Tata Hall is named in honor of Ratan Tata, whose cluster of companies and nonprofit organizations (all of which bear his name) donated $50 million toward construction of the new building.

In some respects, Ratan Tata is uniquely qualified to help steer the construction of the new building, since he is a 1975 graduate of Harvard’s Advanced Management Program for senior executives. As one of India’s (and the world’s) most successful businessmen, he no doubt was eager to leave a lasting legacy at Harvard.

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When clients talk to us and list the handful of MBA programs to which they’re applying, the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business is often on the list. Given the school’s strong academics, impressive alumni reach, and strength in multiple academic disciplines, it’s no wonder that so many people apply to Ross each year.

If Ross 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 not just among those who went to school in Ann Arbor), and it’s one that we frequently recommend that our clients research in more depth. If any of these descriptions below apply to you, then Ross should also be on your MBA radar:

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We are very excited to announce today our new partnership with Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the country’s first and largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As part of our new partnership, we will award 50 scholarships to qualified IAVA Member Veterans, 25 for GMAT prep courses and 25 for graduate school admissions consulting services offered by Veritas Prep. The partnership will help veterans interested in earning a graduate degree become more competitive candidates.

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Now that we have discussed both permutations and combinations independently, it’s time to look at questions that involve both. Mind you, these questions are not difficult -– they just involve both concepts. The first one is a circular arrangement question with a tiny twist. The second one requires us to make some cases. It takes a fair bit of patience to work out one case at a time and I doubt that GMAT will give you such a question since it is a little bit of a bore. (Actual GMAT questions have more entertainment value for the test maker and the test taker. They make you think and are FUN to solve) That said, it is a great question to bind together everything that we have learned till now and strengthen your understanding. Let’s start.

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Matt Damon’s character in the poker-themed movie Rounders had a famous line: “If you can’t spot the sucker in the first half-hour at the table, then you are the sucker.”  The same is often true of GMAT questions — on a difficult question, if you can’t spot the sucker choice, the most popular incorrect answer, there’s a high likelihood that you’ll pick it it yourself.

Learning to understand the GMAT’s popular “sucker choice”  techniques can make you a much better test-taker.  It can also be a much more enjoyable way to study — instead of seeing the traps as threats, you can learn to enjoy the process of outsmarting the GMAT authors.  It’s also a great way to learn from your mistakes, noting after you’ve reviewed an error “I see where you tricked me,” a knowing insight into the test and not a criticism of yourself.  The test is cleverly written, so embrace the insights you  gain about it.  Note a few things about trap answers on the GMAT:

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Among Veritas Prep admissions consulting clients, Columbia Business School attracts more applications than all but several other schools. It’s no surprise, given how many grads Columbia places into high-paying Wall Street jobs every year. What may surprise you, though, is how many applicants apply to Columbia without really knowing whether or not it’s a good fit for them. We always urge these applicants to go back and do their homework a bit more before they start crafting their Columbia applications.

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

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To celebrate its tenth anniversary, the Indian School of Business (ISB) has announced its new ISB@10 International Scholarship, which the school award to 10 applicants from 10 different regions around the world.

No school in recent memory has risen in prominence as quickly as ISB has. While the school has already become one of the premier (if not THE premier) MBA program in India, the school has been very clear about its plans to boost its international profile, and to attract many more top-tier MBA candidates from around the globe. The SB@10 International Scholarship is the newest part of this effort.

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Let’s continue our discussion on combinations today. From the previous posts, we understand that combination is nothing but “selection.” Today we will discuss a concept that confuses a lot of people. It is similar to making committees (that we saw last week), but with a difference. Read the two questions given below:

Question 1: In how many ways can one divide 12 different chocolate bars equally among four boys?

Question 2: In how many ways can one divide 12 different chocolate bars into four stacks of 3 bars each?

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It’s the day after Thanksgiving, so as you read this you are probably eating a leftover turkey sandwich and hoping that there’s still a slice of your favorite pie left when you get back to the fridge.  Us, too – having slept off our turkey coma it’s time to make something of the leftovers…namely the problem posted here yesterday about Thanskgiving.

That problem involved what looks on the surface to be a messy, messy algorithm involving fractions and multiple exponents (with variables in them!).  But a closer inspection reveals at least a few things to be thankful for – common GMAT-style exponent “tells” that allow you to get to work:

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Happy Thanksgiving! Hopefully today you are enjoying good food and good company (and copious amounts of both). Even if you’re not in the United States, we hope you are eating well and enjoying the company the others!

Doing GMAT math may not be your ideal way to pass the time on a holiday, but if you’re reading this, then maybe it is your idea of fun! So, without further ado, let’s carve up the following GMAT like a Thanksgiving turkey:

In the well-known Thanksgiving equation below, M = the number of minutes after dinner until a person falls asleep, t = the ounces of turkey consumed by that person, s = the ounces of stuffing consumed by that person, c = the number of cocktails consumed by that person, v = the ounces of total vegetables consumed by that person, and K is a constant. Last year, Aunt Jane fell asleep exactly 17 minutes after dinner and she consumed 8 ounces of turkey, 6 ounces of stuffing, 5 cocktails, and 10 ounces of vegetables. This year Lauren is planning on eating 10 ounces of turkey, 6 ounces of stuffing, and 14 ounces of vegetables, while drinking 7 cocktails.

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Among top MBA programs, MIT Sloan stands apart for its reputation for producing grads with strong quantitative skills. But there’s a lot more to Sloan than spreadsheets and operations models. If you’re aiming for the top business schools, you will want to take a long, hard look at Sloan. But how do you know if Sloan is a good fit for you? Today we dig into six things that make MIT Sloan different than other top business schools. If you like the way these sound, then Sloan should probably be on your short list of MBA programs:

Technology
Given the strength of MIT and engineering, it’s no surprise that Sloan has a superior offering in the area of tech ventures and IT. Innovation is a buzzword at many top business schools, but Sloan embodies it, particularly in the area of high tech. Support for an entrepreneur in launching a new venture at business school is stronger at MIT than almost anywhere else (schools like Berkeley Haas and Stanford also have extensive resources and are good choices for those wanting to pursue a technology career).

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Admissions interviews are underway for Round 1 applicants at the top American business schools. If you were lucky enough to receive an invitation to interview with a top-ranked MBA program, this thought has almost certainly gone through your head recently:

“Great! I made the first cut! Now, I wonder what my chances are?”

This thinking is correct. You did make the first cut. And by “cut,” we mean that admissions officers looked at the whole applicant pool and, seeing that some applications were just too weak for those people to stand any chance of getting in, let those people that they were no longer being considered. No reason to interview those applicants if they’re clearly not getting in, right? So, yes, you did make the first cut. The admissions committee at least thinks there’s a decent chance that you’ll be admitted. Congratulations!

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Last week, we discussed the basics of combinations. Until and unless you have worked a decent bit with combinatorics in high school, the formula of combinations will not be very intuitive. We have already discussed how you can easily think of “selection” in terms of basic counting principle and un-arranging instead of the formula, if you so desire. Today, I would like to discuss some combination questions with constraints. A very common type of such questions asks you to make a committee of r people out of n people under some constraints. Let me show you what I mean with the help of some examples.

Question 1: If a committee of 3 people is to be selected from among 6 married couples such that the committee does not include two people who are married to each other, how many such committees are possible?

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Do you remember that Tag Team song “Whoomp! (There It Is)” from the early 1990s?  Are you still bumping the ESPN Jock Jams CD in your car?  If so, you’ll know what we’re talking about.  One of the funnier-if-you-listen-closely lyrics in world history is this gem from the one-hit-wonder:

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Here at Veritas Prep we’re approaching that time of year when MBA applicants start to ask us, “Should I apply in Round 2 with what I’ve got, or should I work on [fill in the blank] and apply later?” Or, the other way the conversation happens is that an applicant comes to us with grand plans for applying in Round 2, but with a profile that contains at least one thing that really concerns us. In these cases, we often bring up the idea that the applicant should take a step back and work on improving his profile before charging ahead with his applications.

Before you read any further, let’s get one thing out of the way: Applying to business school in Round 3 is NOT automatically a bad idea. MBA programs always go to great lengths to let applicants know that they have three rounds for a reason, and that they do indeed accept people in Round 3. Yes, the numbers do support the argument that, all things being equal (which they never are), you’re better off applying earlier, but GREAT applicants always get in to every top business school every year. And if you’re not a GREAT applicant, then should you apply? Or keep working at it until you are one?

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In terms of reputation, Chicago Booth is one of the fastest-rising MBA programs in the world. More and more top-tier candidates now consider applying to Booth than ever before, making getting in to Booth tougher. Over the past several years, we have probably seen inquires about Booth increase more than those for any other school. Booth is hot, and people want to go there. If you’re reading this, then odds are that you’re considering Booth, too.

But how do you know Chicago Booth is a good fit for you? Today we dig into five things that might make Booth an especially good fit for you. Not all of these need to apply to you, but the more these things sound like you, the more likely you are to fit in at Booth and excel in its rigorous learning environment:

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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.

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We will start with Combinations today. The moment we start talking about Permutations and Combinations, the first question many people ask is: “How do I know whether the given problem is a combinations problem or a permutations problem?”

My answer is: “Focus on what you have to do. Do you have to just SELECT some friends/toys/candies/candidates etc or do you have to ARRANGE them in distinct seats/among some children/in distinct positions etc too. If you have to only select, it is a combinations problem; if you have to only arrange, it is a permutations problem; if you have to first select and then arrange, it is a combinations and permutations problem. But if you are not using the formulas (nPr and nCr), you don’t have to think in terms of permutations and combinations. Just think in terms of selecting and arranging.” In the discussion below, I will start with an explanation of how we can make selections and how we can work on combinations without using the formula. We will also take a quick look at the formula and why it is what it is. Then we will move on to some examples.

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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)
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In case you missed it, today’s date is a rather fun one: 11/11/11. (It’s also a date that Europeans and Americans write the same way. No fretting over “Should the day or month come first?” here.) Next year we’ll have a 12/12/12, but then after that the “fun” dates will be few and far between. While we still have this fun date to enjoy — three prime numbers in a row! — let’s revisit a lesson from the past about how to quickly break down larger numbers and determine whether or not they’re prime.

Let’s look at 2011. Is it a prime number? You could spend at least a few minutes trying to answer this question if you’re not careful. But if you think strategically, it needn’t take that long, and you can likely complete your “prime test” even within the two-minutes-per-question time allotment that the GMAT would give you for a question that, as so many do, requires your knowledge of prime numbers and divisibility. Here’s how to get started:

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Last month we introduced a new service for our blog readers and Facebook fans: Live online profile evaluations of MBA applicants’ profiles, done in real time in front of an online audience. Over the course of an hour we did a deep dive into three applicants’ profiles, uncovering their strengths and weaknesses and giving them an honest assessment of their chances of gaining admission to a top MBA program. The event was such as success that we’re announcing our second one, which will run on Wednesday, November 16! This event will be accessible to everyone, no matter where you live.

If you’ve spent any time in online forums (including ours), you’ve seen discussion threads in which applicants post their “stats” and admissions experts comment on their chances of success. This is the same thing, but done live online in real time, with the applicant being able to ask followup questions, and the admissions officer digging far deeper than she normally can in a static online setting.

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Today we share an insider’s perspective from a current first-year Columbia Business School student. We asked him to share his thoughts on Columbia, the school’s culture, and whether or not the impression that some people have — that it’s a commuter school for many students — is true.

His guest blog post provides a terrific, candid take on what life is really like at Columbia. Read on!


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For the past two years Yale University has offered a three-year joint JD/MBA degree, offered between Yale Law School and the Yale School of Management. Now, after a nearly year-long review, the Yale Law School faculty has voted to make the joint degree a permanent offering. While the SOM faculty has yet to vote, it is expected that it will also vote in favor of making the program permanent.

Yale’s JD/MBA program is only six semesters long, with no summer component, making it one of the shortest such programs in the country. Students spend two academic years in the Law School and one year in the School of Management. While Yale’s accelerated JD/MBA is not the first such program in the nation — Northwestern, Duke, and Penn also offer similar programs — the fact that Yale Law School has finally embraced this model is big deal, and it could mean that more top universities will soon follow.

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With today’s post, let’s wrap up arrangements for the time being. We will discuss some complex circular arrangement constraints (which we will easily work through) today and start with combinations (i.e. picking “r” units out of “n” units) next week. Thereafter we will look at questions involving both, picking and arranging (yeah, that will be fun!).

Question 1: A group of 8 friends sit together in a circle. If A refuses to sit beside B unless C sits on the other side of A as well, how many possible seating arrangements are possible?

Solution: Let’s start with what we know. We know that the total number of ways in which 8 people can be arranged around a circular table is (8-1)! = 7!

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It was the divorce that everyone — except perhaps Kris Humphries — saw coming on the day of the wedding. After a mere 72 days, Kim Kardashian and her New Jersey Net announced that they would end their brief experiment with the idea of matrimony. Whether you think it was a publicity stunt or a more heartfelt commitment that just didn’t work out, there’s something that you can take away from all of this.

Just as you should get married when you’re serious about the commitment (ahem, Kim and Kris), you should only adopt a GMAT prep strategy when you’re sure that it’s effective and it suits your learning style. It’s good to know what works for other people, but your learning style is unique to you, and your mileage may vary. So, choose a GMAT study strategy carefully and, once you’ve done that, commit to it with all of your heart.

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Without a doubt, a Wharton MBA is one of the most sought after graduate degrees in the world. And every year we at Veritas Prep certainly get our share of applicants who want to spend two years in Philadelphia. It’s no wonder — very few schools can match its reputation in finance, and in recent years Wharton’s pace of curriculum innovation actually seems to be accelerating.

But how well do you really know Wharton? Today we dig into three things that contribute to Wharton’s unique, high-energy learning environment. If reading about these attributes make you even more excited Wharton, then the school might be a good fit for you:

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We love when you take the time to write comments on our blog!  And recently, a user named Quit Smoking Weed (who conveniently included a link to a website of the same name) commented on a post:

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The Internet is teeming with 30-day GMAT study plans, 60-day study plans, 60-minute study plans, and even promises of rock-hard abs in merely seven minutes. While we do have a six-minute GMAT success plan that we aren’t quite ready to share with you (just kidding), we do want to share some thoughts on what you should NOT do the night before you take the GMAT, if you want to do well on test day.

These are all what we consider “no brainers,” but every year we hear about students doing all of these. So, we offer these with the sincere hope that you already know them. If you don’t already know them, then please pay attention!

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In the last two posts, we discussed how to easily handle constraints in linear arrangements. Today we will discuss how to handle constraints in circular arrangements, which are actually even simpler to sort out. Let’s look at some examples.

Question 1: Seven people are to be seated at a round table. Andy and Bob don’t want to sit next to each other. How many seating arrangements are possible?

Solution: There are 7 people who need to be seated around a circular table. Number of arrangements in which 7 people can be seated around a circular table = (7-1)! = 6!

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Vanilla Ice is famous for many reasons, but perhaps most of all for his lyric “If there was a problem, yo, I’ll solve it…” (Check out the hook while his DJ revolves it).  You, too, can be ice cold under pressure and a master problem solver.  Consider these three essential problem solving strategies:

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