Sometimes it's explicitly stated in the passage, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, you must find it. Recognizing the main idea is critical on RC for two reasons.
Use as few words as possible. Don't include random facts that look important. Each Paragraph's Structural Purpose Remember that even though the passages are written using obscure words and difficult constructions, the structure will always be logical.
Every paragraph is there for a reason. It's up to you to work out what those reasons are and to write them down again, in your own words. I tell my students to try and keep this part of their outline entirely content-neutral. In other words, try to leave out all the details.
Your outline should be so general that it doesn't even make clear the topic of the passage. Here are some examples:. Notice that in each example, content has been left out.
The point is to focus on the structure. At first glance, this might seem silly. Why not include a bit of content, just in case? The problem is that I've seen too many students use note- taking as a crutch. They figure that if they can only write down enough of the passage, it won't matter if they didn't totally get it, because they can refer to their notes. Unfortunately, their notes will not save them if they didn't comprehend what they read.
In fact, their notes will just get in the way, adding no value but sucking up valuable seconds. Also, because you don't have any specific details written down, you have no choice but to look back at the passage to answer specific detail questions, which is universally acknowledged as the only way to get these questions right. If you depend on your memory or a flawed set of notes , you're far more likely to make a mistake. These methods will not be easy to put into practice, and it might take 30 or 40 passages before you see the fruits of your labor.
But trust in the method. Would you go to one week of soccer practice and then quit, because you still kinda sucked at soccer? Of course not! Everyone knows that improvement takes weeks or even months.
The key is to start right now. Never let yourself read an RC passage or answer a question without employing the method. Don't let yourself off the hook because you're low on time or energy, or because you think the passage is simple enough that you can answer the questions without notes. Even if it works on that passage, as the passages and questions get harder, you'll find yourself missing more and more.
With a good process, you'll be safe no matter the difficulty of the passage or the questions at hand. Ready, Set, Compute! This can be an issue even for people who are good at math because most of us simply haven't done calculations without a calculator or spreadsheet since junior high, and so we have forgotten all of the techniques that make hand calculations easier.
Can you quickly compute the following without a calculator? The drill sets for FDPs and exponents are very helpful if you just need to knock the rust off of your computation skills. The chapter reading explains basic techniques such as cancelling, factoring, and finding common denominators in case you have forgotten how or even never really knew how to do these things. You can also help yourself get better at computation by putting down your calculator when you shop.
Sum the cost of your groceries on a little notepad while you are waiting in the checkout line. Building Speed and Accuracy One of the keys to building speed and accuracy is doing your computations on paper instead of in your head. It really helps to write down your math steps—otherwise, you are much more likely to make silly mistakes. However, on the GMAT, an approximation is usually good enough for a computation problem like this because the answers tend to be spread apart.
So it would be much easier to do the following approximate math instead of long division:. The actual answer is closer to This kind of number sense is very helpful because it lets you quickly check your work without redoing calculations. In order to develop your number sense, spend time playing with numbers. Try approximating the total of your groceries to see how accurate you can be. Try ballparking multiplication and division as well. For instance, if 21 servings of crackers come in a box, and each serving is 11 crackers, about how many crackers come in a box?
Memorizing some of the most commonly needed arithmetic for the GMAT can also help. Here are some student favorites:. Seemingly Magical Computation Although the GMAT doesn't actually test your ability to do enormous calculations, it does test your ability to figure out how to avoid doing enormous calculations when performing computations. For example, if you see the following:. You should know that you do not have to compute or to solve the problem. There is a computation shortcut!
In this case, the trick is to factor out from the numerator:. The first step in mastering the clever tricks is to make sure that you deeply understand the logic behind arithmetic rules. This is the key to doing seemingly impossible math. All the great computation techniques are just clever applications of the arithmetic rules you learned in grade school.
By building your intuitive understanding of computation, seemingly impossible math will become as easy as one plus one. Even if you are a whiz at thinking through the toughest math problems, if you can't do computation without a calculator, you won't get the problem right or achieve your target GMAT score. To remedy this:. Memorize common math facts. Do drills in FoM.
Use the online FoM Question Banks. Practice computation, estimation, and testing your math sense whenever you can even in the grocery store. Arithmetic and algebra, in particular, often involve a lot of steps. As you study, make it your goal to first understand the meaning of the rules surrounding the manipulation of arithmetic and algebra. You'll find that you are able to repeat the steps more easily if you understand why you can perform certain operations but not others. Really try to talk out the meaning of it to yourself.
But after you've come to understand the meaning of the manipulation, you'll want to practice these mechanics over and over to solidify your new skill. Sometimes, you'll be able to find lots of OG questions or other questions on which to practice.
But oftentimes, you won't. Let's say, for instance, that you find that you need more practice with FOIL- ing and factoring quadratic forms. Well, if you can't find a bunch of problems to practice, don't worry! You can make such forms yourself. In fact, the process of making them will often help solidify your understanding. Moreover, making drills is often easier, and faster, than finding drills. I've listed here several methods for creating a drill for yourself to practice.
Start by trying any of the suggested drills that strike you as relevant to your current needs. Later, use the general idea of these drills to make your own drills. Often, it is not a whole GMAT problem but rather one part of the problem that gives us trouble.
If this is the case, practice that one aspect of the problem repeatedly, until you feel comfortable with it. Finally, note that scrap paper processes are very important for all aspects of math mechanics! So, commit to the following principles:. Try dividing primes by each other, as these numbers will often yield interesting decimal results. Check your answers on a calculator. Purpose: To get faster at long division; to recognize when a decimal will begin to repeat; to work neatly; to be able to rely on long division on the test when you need it; to memorize some common decimal equivalents.
How to: Multiply numbers together on the calculator. Start by multiplying various small primes together. Write down the resulting product in the notebook.
Do this again 5—10 times. Next, take each number and create a factor tree. Purpose: To get faster at prime factorization; to build clean work habits; to learn divisibility tricks how to tell if a number is divisible by 9, for example.
How to: Write out a random series of fractions with various mathematical operations connecting the numbers. For example, write:. Now simplify and solve. Carefully check your work to make sure you are solving correctly. Solve the same formation multiple times to make sure that you arrive at the same solution. How to: Write out random exponent patterns above integers and fractions connected by various mathematical operations.
Purpose: To get faster at fraction manipulation; to practice clean work; to better understand exponent rules. How to: Write out random algebraic forms using one or more variables. Use exponents, and connect the forms with various mathematical operations. Now simplify the form. Carefully check your work as you proceed. Note that the form is not part of an equation, so you will not solve to an actual value for any variable; rather, you are just looking to boost your speed at combining like terms.
Remember to try each form more than once to make sure that you arrive at the same answer each time. Now solve for each variable. What is x equal to, in terms of y and z? What is y equal to, in terms of x and z? Purpose: To get faster at algebraic manipulation; to gain comfort solving for one variable in terms of other variables.
Now, FOIL each form, and combine like terms for the simplest expression in each case. On a separate sheet of paper, rewrite the simplified, distributed forms in a different order. Check that you have arrived at the original forms. Repeat this exercise until you can factor or distribute basic quadratic equations in under 30 seconds.
Learning to Think Like a 99th Percentile Scorer Now that you know what you will need to learn or relearn and have an understanding of the level of skill that you will need, you may find yourself getting a little wary.
You're probably wondering how you are going to manage to think quickly enough through all of this material in order to complete the GMAT in the allotted time. The solution lies in learning to think the way a GMAT expert does. Our instructors actually do less thinking to solve GMAT problems than most students do.
When tackling a tough problem, they zero in very quickly on what's important and draw on their past experiences with similar problems to help themselves solve efficiently. It's a valuable skill set to have, and one that you will be working towards as you prepare for the GMAT. When I was a student in the PhD program at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, I became fascinated by this sort of research and even ran studies on doctors making hypothetical medical decisions to test my theories.
That's nice, you may think, but how is this relevant to getting a better GMAT score? Understanding the way experts think through and solve complex problems, both in general and on the GMAT, can help you more efficiently master the thinking skills that you need in order to become a GMAT expert.
There is general agreement among psychologists that there are two fundamentally different ways to think. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman who you will run into again in business school when you study prospect theory and behavioral economics laid this out in his Dual-Process Model of thinking. He called the two basic methods that people use System 1 and System 2, or intuition and logical reasoning.
Intuition is associative thinking, which is fast and relies on shortcuts such as pattern matching, whereas logical reasoning is slow and effortful because it relies on step-by-step, rule-based thinking. For thousands of years, people have argued about which method was the overall best one. The ancient Greek philosophers typically favored step-by-step, rule-based thinking, whereas artists and other creative types throughout history generally favored intuition.
Modern psychologists have concluded something rather commonsensical and practical, though: the best problem solvers use both of these styles of thinking and move back and forth between them fluently. Intuition is fast because pattern recognition is fast. It relies on the brain's ability to distinguish patterns and associate them with something previously experienced.
With practice, people learn to almost instantly recognize groups of squiggly lines as letters, groups of letters as words, and then groups of words as algebra word problems. Your brain needs to make sense of the input stimulus at whatever level you perceive it be it letters, words, or an algebra word problem in order to know how to respond.
In contrast to pattern recognition and associative reasoning, rule-based reasoning is slow and effortful because it relies on methodical, step- by-step thinking. Although babies recognize patterns, most people do not develop the ability to engage in rule-based, step-by-step reasoning until they are somewhere between 7—11 years old. This kind of reasoning requires thinking explicitly about each step taken and checking to see that it follows correctly from the previous step.
When teachers teach students something new, such as how to manipulate a quadratic expression, they generally start with step-by-step, rule-based reasoning that details exactly how students should proceed with the task.
As students become more expert at doing something, they shift some of their thinking from effortful, step-by-step thinking to faster pattern recognition and association, thereby tying the two distinct types of reasoning together. For example, a student might see the following quadratic and think about how to solve it using the rule-based, step-by-step process that most people learned in Algebra I as FOIL First, Outer, Inner, Last :. The expert typically knows and uses explicit rules and follows an organized solving process such as the four-step process in Critical Reasoning , especially when facing problems that are harder to categorize or that don't have shortcuts.
Having the ability to think in a step-by-step way on the GMAT is crucial because you need to be able to plan the solution technique, figure out how to deal with weird little problem quirks, and execute solving processes accurately. However, having the ability to see patterns, spot clues, and make quick associative connections is what allows you to finish the test in the allotted amount of time because you don't need to try every rule and technique on every problem.
The difference between a solid novice problem solver and an expert problem solver is often just that the expert recognizes bigger problem pieces and more subtle instances of patterns than the novice does.
For example, although two chess players might both know all of the rules of chess, the more expert one will usually recognize more patterns of pieces on the board as favorable or unfavorable, and so will have to do less explicit step-by-step thinking in order to figure out what to do next.
If you work to develop both types of thinking skills and make an effort to use them synergistically as you solve GMAT problems, you will have a huge advantage when it comes to test day. This may not seem very intimidating—after all, you come to conclusions all day long. The problem is, you are not usually held to very exacting standards in that department. What's an Inference? You may be wondering what an inference is, and how it is different from a conclusion.
Here are the GMAT-ese definitions:. Logical, right? Let's look at an example. A The boss is angry at Lothar. B The boss's opinion of Lothar has declined. C Lothar is the boss's least favorite employee. D Lothar has said or done something recently that the boss found upsetting.
E If someone is going to propose a risky new idea to the boss, Lothar should not be the one to do it. In real life, most or even all of these inferences would probably be correct. So which of these can you conclude on the GMAT? None of the above! All you know is that the boss is not Lothar's biggest fan at the moment. You don't know why this is the case, how long it has been going on, or what effects, if any, it has had on their working relationship. So what would a good GMAT conclusion look like?
These should work:. Lothar has a boss. Lothar has some ability to discern his boss's opinions. At least one person is a bigger fan of Lothar than the boss is. Even that last one is a stretch, because you are assuming that Lothar has a biggest fan. The more interesting conclusions tend to be extreme, to grasp at weak connections, or to make reasonable but unsupported assumptions.
The correct inference usually states something rather mild and boring. That's one step you don't have to worry about. Whenever the GMAT gives you information—whether it's a set of statements, a Reading Comprehension passage, or an equation—you can treat it as true, at least for the duration of the problem.
Let's try another problem. To be fair, we'll throw in a correct answer this time:. The novelist Charles Dickens was an enthusiastic follower of the Star Wars films, and liked to entertain dinner guests by doing uncannily accurate impressions of the characters.
The statements above, if true, most strongly support which of the following conclusions? A Dickens had access to a time machine. B Dickens removed the Yoda character to avoid copyright infringement. C Dickens regularly had guests over for dinner. D The Star Wars films were popular in the 19th century. Okay, so you won't see this on the GMAT, but do not worry about that. The point is that you have been asked to identify what else you know if the statements are true.
Let's see what you can do with the answer choices:. A Watch out for answers that try to explain the premises. You don't know why or how Dickens became a Star Wars fan. You just know it happened. B Again, you don't know why Yoda was cut from the story. C You know that Dickens liked to entertain dinner guests, so C seems pretty safe. But do you know how often this happened? You have to cross this one out. Notice that incorrect conclusions will often add a degree word regularly, most, all, etc.
D This might explain the weirdness of the above statements, but you don't know when the films were popular, or if they were popular at all. E This is your only safe bet. If you are told about an early draft of the book, you can infer that there was at least one later draft. The key to cutting through the wrong answers quickly is to know how far you can go with the information you've been given—not far at all.
Often, students who struggle with this question type find that they are giving the right answer to the wrong question. But the ability to see what makes an inference shaky will help you on just about every CR question, and making inferences is also a core skill in Reading Comprehension. And then there's the Quant section. Oh yes. This test isn't really about calculation; it's about problem solving.
You need to know what you can conclude from the data at hand. That's the secret to success in Data Sufficiency, in geometry, and in quite a few other situations throughout the test. This is why I refer to logical inference as The Secret Nexus—this one concept connects many seemingly dissimilar portions of the test, and mastery of this skill will have a tremendous impact on your GMAT performance.
If you know how to make logical inferences, you will frequently avoid getting tricked or getting stuck between answer choices. If you jump to wild conclusions, you are likely to fail.
Mathematical Inference Data Sufficiency is all about making inferences. Let's try a problem:. While on a June vacation in Hawaii, Carla goes for an ocean ride on a mystic porpoise named Noelani. If Noelani maintains a constant speed for the entire trip, does the ride take less than 3 hours?
What about 6. What you can really conclude is this: in 3 hours, the porpoise swims more than 18 miles. So if the trip is 18 miles or less, the answer to the question is yes.
If the trip is more than 18 miles, the answer is maybe. It depends on how fast the porpoise really swims. Because it's June, Noelani gives mile rides. That still doesn't indicate whether the ride is less than 3 hours, but it provides the piece you were missing.
If the trip is 17 miles or less and Noelani swims faster than 6 mph, then, the trip will take less than 3 hours. Both statements together are sufficient to answer the question. For those familiar with Data Sufficiency, that would be answer C. Okay, you might say, but that problem was like a little story. Sure you have to use your reading comprehension skills there, but what about the pure math problems? Well, try this:.
If you've looked at much GMAT material, this question type should look familiar. You are often asked which of the choices must be true, could be true, or cannot be true, and to tackle these questions, you need to be ready to make careful inferences. In this case, the correct choice will be something that must be true, so what do you know about the rest?
They may be true under some circumstances, or they may not be true at all. In short, they could be false. In a sense, each step you take in manipulating an equation is an inference, and as you go, you need to keep checking to make sure that your inference is a logical one. For instance, your first instinct might be to divide both sides of the equation by y. This makes sense, as long as y is not 0.
Now you know that x2 equals y. What can you infer from this? It would be tempting to infer that y must be greater than x, since you have to square x to make it equal to y. That is a dangerous inference, though, because you are assuming some things about your numbers. These possibilities allow you to eliminate answer choices A , B , and C. So what is a safe inference? Answer choices D and E are dealing with positive and negative.
What do you know there? Whether x is negative or positive, you'll get the same result when you square it—a positive number. From this, you know that y must be positive. The answer is D. At this point, you might be noticing a difference between mathematical inferences and verbal inferences.
To make mathematical inferences, you have to apply mathematical rules! If you feel confident in your ability to apply those rules, you might find mathematical inferences easier and more comfortable than verbal inferences. On the other hand, if you feel shaky about math, each new problem may feel like a fraternity hazing. In either case, the important thing is that you focus not just on memorizing an endless list of rules, but on carefully applying what you know in order to make inferences.
How to Use Your Strategy Guides If you wanted to meet every neighbor on your block, you wouldn't reintroduce yourself to your best friends who live a few doors down or to the guy who has you over for a barbeque every fourth Sunday. Rather, you would identify which neighbors you don't know and go knock on their doors. The same is true for learning GMAT content. If you are already solid on a bunch of content, reading a whole book on stuff you already know and doing practice problems you could do blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back won't improve your score.
You need to identify the content that you do not yet know, or are still shaky on, and concentrate your efforts there.
It is your job to ascertain how to most effectively use the guides. Here's what we recommend:. Create a cheat sheet for the chapter by taking notes on key points that you want to remember but haven't yet memorized. Then, test your learning by completing the Problem Set questions at the end of the chapter. Make sure to check your answer and review the solution after completing each problem—not after completing the whole set. There is no better way to internalize how not to do something correctly than to repeat an incorrect method 15 times in a row!
Turn to the Problem Set questions at the end of the chapter and try a few. If you do not get those problems right, read the chapter.
If you do get those problems right, try a couple more. Make sure to check the answers after completing each problem. If you get them all right, move on to the OG questions for that chapter.
If you get them mostly right, skim the chapter and focus in on the pieces of information that you need to fill the holes in your knowledge. While reading the Strategy Guide, refer back to the appropriate chapters of the Foundations books, as needed, to fill in these gaps.
The Manhattan Prep guides were excellent but I had to read them once, absorb the information by taking the practice tests, and then come back to review in order to truly understand the subtleties of the GMAT. In order to do well on the GMAT, you have to know how to apply the content you learn to new types of problems.
Memorizing facts can help, but the key is really to learn how to analyze and evaluate GMAT problems. The facts that you need to remember to do well on the GMAT are drawn from typical high school algebra and English composition classes. If your pre-test showed a low Quant or Verbal score, it's best to start the recommended pre-work before you start working through the Manhattan Prep Strategy Guides or begin the class.
Exploit everyday opportunities e. There is no calculator on the Quant portion of the test and most students, including those who are good at math, are relatively slow at hand computation. Whether your natural thinking style tends to be more intuitive and pattern based or more rule and formal logic based, it is important to develop both styles of thinking as you learn to analyze GMAT content.
Learn or review the language of logical inference because it will make understanding many GMAT questions much easier. You do not necessarily need to do all of the homework, but you do need to figure out what you don't know so that you can focus on homework that will correct your weaknesses.
The GMAT Quantitative section—unlike those math tests in high school—is designed so that you cannot get every problem right. On a typical high school math test, the hardest part of what you will need to do is the mechanics of the math; however, on the GMAT, the hardest part is the higher-level reasoning and time allocation.
In order to be fast enough, you will have to reason intuitively as well as in the step-by-step, show your work style so popular with high school math teachers. That's only three out of five. The best GMAT Quant problem solvers are able to move back and forth between intuitive pattern recognition style thinking speed and step-by-step logical reasoning error prevention as they work through problems.
They are also good guessers, and spend time reasoning and eliminating whatever answer choices they can, rather than struggling futilely when they don't see how to fully solve a problem mathematically or in a reasonable amount of time.
The following articles will guide you through learning the types of reasoning that you will need to succeed on the GMAT. Understand, Plan, and Problem Solved! Their math is often correct, but the problem they're solving is not. Solving the wrong problem on the GMAT is like running a race in the wrong direction. While you can run the required number of miles, you will not end up at the finish line. Likewise, students who are insecure about their math competence often stare blindly at a Quant problem, pencils poised but frozen in air.
These students believe that they are supposed to be rapidly scribbling down equations, but don't know where to start. Whether you are confident in your math prowess or shudder at the thought of algebra, the odds are that the same issue is holding back your Quant score: if you do not understand the problem, you cannot solve it. It is crucial to invest time making sure that you understand the problem before you try to solve it.
You may ask. I don't have time to sit back and worry about understanding! The truth is, though, that you don't have time not to. I was pretty busy. During that first year, there was a contest going on between the number of parking tickets that I got and the number of times that I locked my keys in my car.
Imagine how much time I would have saved not waiting for AAA to break into my car had I taken 30 seconds each time I left my car to go through a short mental check list. The same is true for GMAT problems: spending time up front to make sure that you understand the problem will save you time in the long run.
Reggie was hiking on a 6-mile loop trail at a rate of 2 miles per hour. One hour into Reggie's hike, Cassie started hiking from the same starting point on the loop trail at 3 miles per hour. What is the shortest time that Cassie could hike on the trail in order to meet up with Reggie?
Understand The GMAT simply doesn't use cookie-cutter problems: the writers are constantly crafting new twists and turns to throw at you.
For this reason, it is essential that you understand the nuances of the problem in front of you and consciously decide how to approach it before you begin to wildly throw equations down on the page. In order to understand a Quant problem, begin by asking yourself these two methodical questions:. Write down all of the information that you gather on your scrap paper; attempting to store information in your head reduces the available brain power that you have to apply towards actually solving the problem.
Also, putting all of the information down in one place will help you see the relationships between the pieces of information, recognize patterns, and minimize the probability that you will forget a pivotal caveat at a crucial time during the solving process.
Looking at this problem, the first thing that jumps out is that it's practically a paragraph written in the Quant section. This is the pattern of Word Problems—that should alert you to the fact that you need to translate the English into math. A key word in this problem is rate. Problems involving rates almost always require this equation. It's a good thing to write down at the top of your page. Also, you should recognize that rate problems can often be drawn, so try sketching a diagram.
Once you've noticed a couple of big-picture elements in the problem, it's time to dissect the question methodically, starting at the beginning. The first sentence begins Reggie was hiking on a 6-mile loop… Aha! There's a path. It's 6 miles long. And it's circular. Draw it! Make sure to write down that it is 6 miles long. Also, draw an arrow to show Reggie walking along it. The sentence continues at a rate of 2 miles per hour. Add Reggie's rate to your picture. Continue drawing until you have worked through the entire question.
Your picture will likely look something like this:. Note that Cassie is drawn two miles away from Reggie. Students looking for a self study guide for GMAT. Students who are already preparing for GMAT. Related Articles. MasterClass N. Test Prep , Udemy , Video Courses. Connect with D. I allow to create an account. When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings.
We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. Once your account is created, you'll be logged-in to this account. GMAT Free focuses on learning through realistic questions and detailed explanations. You can enroll for free here, and the first module will guide you through the study planning process.
Some GMAT books are rich with questions and tests, come from trustworthy sources, and are low in cost. Here are the three most important sources, with pros and cons and then final advice:.
Takeaway: books can be an inexpensive additional source of good questions and practice tests.
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