The Data Insights section of the GMAT Focus imposes such significant time constraints that test takers must find ways to make up time, but most of the question types present so much information to be processed that it can be very difficult to find ways to...
Knowing how to guess well on GMAT and GRE Quant questions is a tremendously important factor on the test. Most people just don’t do it – they guess of course, but not well! But even if it is something that you are not doing it is a skill that can be acquired...
Back in the old days the GMAT Prep tests did not break down your performance by question type on the Quant and Verbal sections. Nor was there an Enhanced Score Report that did so on the actual GMAT. Now, with the existence of practice tests that indicate...
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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