The Reason Test Prep Blog
Welcome to the Reason Test Prep Blog. Over the course of decades tutoring the SAT, ACT, GMAT, and GRE, we’ve accumulated a lot of insight, and almost nothing pleases us more than sharing that knowledge with people who are hungry for it!
GMAT Verbal Time Management: Speeding up on CR & RC
In this post I want to address one aspect of dealing with time management on the Verbal section of the GMAT: shaving time off of Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension questions. I recently tutored a couple of students who really benefitted from this...
GMAT Time Management: The 2 Kinds of Strategic Guessing
There are 2 different kinds of guessing that test takers should apply on the Quant section of the GMAT – both of them are crucial to success on the GMAT. But in my years of tutoring, I have found that most people just aren’t aware of how different guessing...
GMAT Time Management: The Myth of 2 Minutes Per Question
When preparing for the GMAT you will often hear people say that you should spend 2 minutes per question on Quant questions, yet this advice is misleading and I have seen it hurt many test takers. Of course with 45 minutes and 21 questions you do have on...
The Degrees of Time
This month we switch back to a more quantitative brain teaser. It’s also typical of the type of question one sees on the GMAT and GRE, for reasons that we explain in the answer explanation. Are you up for the challenge? When a clock is at 3:15, what is the...
GMAT Scoring Algorithm: Quant vs. Verbal
In this post I would like to expound upon a theory of mine that gets at the slight differences in the scoring algorithm on the Quant and Verbal sections of the GMAT. In a previous post I commented on the fact that although on the Quant section the number of...
GMAT Sentence Correction: Right Answers Are Often Deliberately Bad
People studying for the GMAT are often completely thrown by a correct answer on a sentence correction question that just “doesn’t sound good.” In their minds they think, “there is no way that can be the correct answer – that just sounds bad.” Even if that...
Why Isn’t My GMAT Score Increasing? Reason 1
In my years as a GMAT tutor I have had many students come to me complaining that although they have done a lot of prep for the test, their scores just are not increasing. There are many reasons that this could be the case, but in this post I would like to...
The Beginning and The End
Brain teasers and puzzles often have a more quantitative bent (and test-takers similarly obsess more about the quantitative sections of the SAT, ACT, GMAT, and GRE), so in this month’s newsletter we present a question that is more “verbal” in...
Why Isn’t My GMAT Score Increasing? Reason 2
In a previous post I discussed one of the main reasons that a person’s GMAT score can appear not to increase. In this post I will posit what I believe to be the second most common cause: a complete misunderstanding of the test and what it takes to do well on...
Why Isn’t My GMAT Score Increasing? Reason 3
In a couple of previous posts I discussed some of the main reasons that people don’t see much of a score increase when preparing for the GMAT. In this post I will turn to yet another common cause of artificially low GMAT scores: poor time management! Over...
How to Get Hard GMAT Question Right!
The scoring algorithm on the GMAT is such that in order to achieve a high score on the test you have to be getting hard questions right. As most people understand, the number of questions that you get right is not the major factor…your score is based on the...
Stuck Truck
Don was driving his tractor-trailer under an overpass when suddenly he came to a screeching halt. Don wasn’t paying enough attention and inadvertently drove under an overpass that was just barely as high as his truck. The tractor-trailer was wedged so...
What Do the GMAT and GRE Really Test?
Virtually everyone who begins studying for the GMAT and GRE (and even many people who are months into the process) tend to misunderstand what the tests are really about. The GMAT and GRE are not typical tests for which you just memorize a body of content...
GMAT Tips: Information Overload on Data Sufficiency
There are many things that tend to give people trouble on Data Sufficiency, but one of the most common issues that people face is the problem of “information overload.” One of the skills that Data Sufficiency tests is a person’s ability to simultaneously...
Data Sufficiency Strategy for GMAT: A Crucial Decision Point
In a previous post I discussed the tendency that people have to “go on a hunch” on Data Sufficiency questions. This is a big no-no because DS questions are designed to punish people for making unwarranted assumptions. Generally speaking it is best to try to...
Magical Lily Pads
In ancient Egypt, there were magical lily ponds. On these ponds, each flower doubled overnight. For example, if a pond had one flower on a certain day, the next day there would be two flowers (both the same size as the original flower). On March 1, a single...
What to Eat before the SAT and ACT
So you wake up the morning of your big test and staring at you is a plate full of runny eggs. Do you eat them? Of course not! Ok, that is a pretty easy call. But what should you eat then? Well, this is really a bigger question because it also involves what...
The ACT Science Section – An Understanding First Strategy
If you read the some of the test prep books on the market on how to ace the ACT Science, you’ll notice a strategy they all share in common: don’t read first. The basic idea is that you should read the questions first, and then let them guide you to the...
The Black Swan of Data Sufficiency
Many of you may be aware of the book The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In the book Taleb uses the analogy of a black swan in nature to describe the problem of predicting highly improbable events. He comments that just because one has never seen a...
GMAT Tip: Avoiding Obvious Answers on Data Sufficiency Questions
When I tutor I often like to ask my students, “what makes a hard question hard from the point of view of the test writers?” Invariably I get answers that point to specific techniques that are used to dial up the level of difficulty, such as abstraction,...
For more information, or to get started...