Rowan When do you try Smart Numbers with a GMAT Rates question? Hardly ever. Why? It just makes things twice as difficult. This question doesn’t need to take a long time to solve if you do it right, but as you’ll see, it’s not easy either way you cut it. The hard part, really, is to … Read More
Unless you are specifically told that something is the “best,” the “worst,” the “only,” etc. you can be sure that the absolute statement is incorrect on GMAT Verbal. This is a really quite important point. You’ve probably heard of answer choices being “too strong,” but what the hell does that mean? It’s almost certain that … Read More
How can you solve a GMAT Geometry question with no calculation? Simple: find one that’s based on spatial awareness. It’s just drawing loads and loads of pictures and you’ll get your answer! In this particular Geometry question, we see that you couldn’t really calculate even if you wanted to. Instead, this question requires two things: … Read More
When to answer by CONCEPT in GMAT Data Sufficiency questions… While it might be tempting to plug in numbers for most DS questions, here’s a case where you don’t really need to. In fact, plugging in might be counter-productive! It’s helpful to think about what a question is really asking and to work from there. … Read More
GMAT Sentence Correction idioms are a pain, I know. Most of the time, they aren’t even consistent, so I don’t actually recommend trying to memorize some sort of long list of them. A huge number of them are really just a waste of time because the GMAT Sentence Correction writers will simply come up with … Read More
GMAT Critical Reasoning Necessary vs. Sufficient — Can the Distinction Help You? Let’s start with a quick definition of what an “Assumption” is. If you’re from Midwestern America, like me, I’m sure you know that “to assume makes an ass out of U and ME.” You could say that on some level the GMAT feels the … Read More
WTF are Relative Primes in GMAT Properties of Numbers? Learn more here… This is a slightly different approach from a normal video for me. This isn’t actually the solution to an Official Question as I normally do. This discusses a particular topic within Properties: Relative Primes. In a technical sense, the term “Relative Primes” means … Read More
How to tell whether a GMAT Reading Comprehension answer fits: turn it into a question! It’s a really simple way to see whether this GMAT RC answer fits. Make it a question, then see whether you can answer this SPECIFIC question before you can comfortably select an answer: HOW specifically does this happen? WHO specifically … Read More