Reason Test Prep Articles
Welcome to Reason Test Prep Articles. 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!
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,...
Official GMAT Resources – Why Don’t People Use Them?
It never ceases to amaze me how few people use the official GMAT resources that are available. This is perhaps a credit to how good the major test prep companies have gotten at convincing people that their resources are an accurate representation of what is...
Does Attending an Elite College Matter?
In this post I would like to discuss something more general that I had actually planned to bring up in a later post, but the recent publication of an opinion piece in the NY Times by writer Frank Bruni has compelled me to discuss the issue now (Bruni’s piece...
SAT Reading Comprehension Exercises – Passage 4 Analysis
For anyone new to the posts in this series feel free to go back to the first post to get a little background about what is going on here….. Below is the link for the article that was the subject of the 4th installment of the series:...
Data Sufficiency: Going on a Hunch?
GMATers, especially newcomers to the test, tend to spend on average less time on Data Sufficiency questions than on the other Data Insights question types. This is in part because Data Sufficiency questions don’t require an “answer” in the same way that the...
SAT Reading Comprehension Exercises – Passage 4
Below is the link to the next article in the installment. This one is pretty hard in my opinion, but it is also pretty short so it should make for a fairly quick exercise. Happy reading!!!...
Data Sufficiency and the “Spectrum of Sufficiency”
Understanding the “Spectrum of Sufficiency” is a key advanced strategy on Data Sufficiency questions and yet very few people seem to be aware of the technique. Nevertheless, understanding the concept and how to apply it can really help you answer some of the...
SAT Reading Comprehension Exercises – Passage 1
So this is the first post in a series of posts aimed at helping both my students and any other interested readers learn to read more critically. For a more in depth discussion of my motivation here and why this skill is so important, both on the SAT and in...
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