GMAT For Dummies

Lisa Zimmer Hatch, MA is president of College Primers, where she applies her expertise to guiding high school students through the college admissions process. Scott A. Hatch, JD has prepared thousands of individuals for standardized tests and legal careers since 1980.

Introduction 1


Part 1: Getting Started with the GMAT 5


Chapter 1: Getting the Lowdown on the GMAT 7


Knowing Why the GMAT Is Important 7


Timing It Perfectly: When to Take the GMAT (And What to Bring) 8


When to register for and take the GMAT 8


Things to take to the GMAT (and things to leave at home) 10


Forming First Impressions: The Format of the GMAT 10


Getting familiar with what the GMAT tests 10


Understanding the computerized format 11


Honing your computer skills for the GMAT 12


Knowing Where You Stand: Scoring Considerations 13


How the GMAT testers figure your score 13


How the GMAT testers report your score 13


Why you should (almost) never cancel your GMAT score 14


Repeating the Process: Retaking the GMAT 15


Chapter 2: Maximizing Your Score on the GMAT 17


Discovering Strategies for Successful Guessing 17


Forcing yourself to guess so you can move on 18


Understanding the importance of completing each section 18


Winning the Race against the Clock 19


Giving each question equal treatment 19


Making time for the last ten questions 19


Keeping track of your pace 20


Getting Rid of Wrong Answers 20


Keeping track of eliminated answer choices for the computer test format 20


Recognizing wrong answers 21


Playing It Smart: A Few Things You Shouldn’t Do When Taking the Test 25


Don’t lose your focus 25


Don’t read questions at lightning speed 25


Don’t waste all your time on the hardest questions 25


Don’t cheat 26


Tackling a Case of Nerves with Relaxation Techniques 26


Devising a Plan of Attack 27


Chapter 3: Mastering Business-School Admissions 29


Choosing a Business School 29


Lining Up Your Ducks — Applying to Business Schools 31


When to apply 32


What to submit 32


Crafting Effective Business-School Essays 33


Part 2: Vanquishing the Verbal Section 35


Chapter 4: Applying What You Learned (We Hope) in Grammar Class: Sentence Correction 37


Building a Solid Foundation: Grammar Basics 38


Getting wordy: The parts of speech 38


Pulling together: The parts of a sentence 40


Pointing Out Mistakes: Common Sentence-Correction Errors 42


Can’t we all just get along? Errors in subject-verb and noun-pronoun agreement 43


Building code violations: Faulty construction 45


Follow the idiom: Correct use of standard expressions 49


Implementing an Approach to Sentence-Correction Questions 51


Spotting the error 52


Eliminating answers that don’t correct errors 52


Eliminating choices that create new errors 53


Rereading the sentence 53


Reviewing the process and guessing on sentence corrections 53


Sentence-Correction Practice Problems with Answer Explanations 53


Practice problems 54


Answer explanations 56


Chapter 5: Not as Enticing as a Bestseller: Reading Comprehension 59


Judging by Appearances: What Reading-Comprehension Questions Look Like 59


Approaching Reading Passages 60


Mastering the message: The main point 60


Absorbing the ambiance: Author’s tone 61


Finding the framework: The passage’s outline 61


Sticking to the Subject: Types of Passages 62


Experimenting with natural science passages 62


Gathering in social circles: Social science passages 62


Getting down to business passages 63


Approaching Reading-Comprehension Questions 63


Identifying the question type 63


Eliminating answer choices 66


Dealing with exception questions 67


Reading-Comprehension Practice Questions with Answer Explanations 70


Reading-comprehension practice questions 70


Answer explanations 74


Chapter 6: Let’s Think This Through Logically: Critical Reasoning 79


Focusing on “Critical” Concepts: An Overview 79


Understanding the structure of the questions 80


Figuring out how to answer the questions 80


Making a Case: Essentials of Informal Logic 81


Fighting fair: The elements of an argument 81


Getting from Point A to Point B: Types of reasoning 81


Thinking Inside the Box: Question Types 83


Stalking Your Prey: How to Approach Each Question Type 84


Strengthening or weakening arguments 84


Delving into drawing conclusions 88


Spotting those sneaky assumptions 89


Using your noggin to make inferences 91


Making your way through method-of-reasoning questions 92


Critical-Reasoning Practice Questions and Answer Explanations 94


Critical-reasoning practice questions 94


Answer explanations 98


Chapter 7: Bringing It Together: A Mini Practice Verbal Section 103


Working Through Verbal Reasoning Practice Questions 104


Understanding What’s Right with Answer Explanations 113


Part 3: Acing the Analytical-Writing Section 121


Chapter 8: Analyze This: What to Expect from the Analytical Writing Assessment 123


Fitting in the AWA with the Rest of the GMAT 123


Calling 411: Your AWA Writing Tools 124


Analyzing an Argument 124


Racking Up the Points: How the GMAT Scores Your Essay 125


Getting to know your readers 125


Interpreting the scores 126


Requesting your essay be rescored 126


Chapter 9: Present Perfect Paragraphs: How to Write a GMAT Essay 127


Avoiding Grammar, Punctuation, and Mechanics Errors 127


Punctuation errors 128


Sentence-structure problems 129


Faulty forming of possessives 129


Spelling issues 129


More dos and don’ts 130


Practice makes perfect! 130


Building a Better Essay: Ten Steps to a Higher Score 131


Chapter 10: Deconstructing Sample GMAT Essays 133


Defining GMAT AWA Scores 133


Taking a Look at Sample Essays 134


Sample essay #1 135


Discussion of sample essay #1 136


Sample essay #2 136


Discussion of sample essay #2 137


Sample essay #3 138


Discussion of sample essay #3 139


Sample essay #4 139


Discussion of sample essay #4 140


Chapter 11: Sampling a Series of Writing Prompts 143


Sample Prompt #1 143


Sample response to essay #1 144


Dissection of essay #1 144


Sample Prompt #2 145


Sample response to essay #2 145


Dissection of essay #2 146


Sample Prompt #3 146


Sample response to essay #3 147


Dissection of essay #3 147


Sample Prompt #4 148


Sample response to essay #4 148


Dissection of essay #4 148


Part 4: Conquering the Quantitative Section 151


Chapter 12: Getting Back to Basics: Numbers and Operations 153


Just Your Type: Kinds of Numbers 153


It’s Not Brain Surgery: Basic Operations 155


Adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing 155


Checking out the real estate: Properties of real numbers 157


Using Little Numbers for Big Values: Bases and Exponents 160


Adding and subtracting with exponents 160


Multiplying and dividing with exponents 160


Figuring out the powers of 0 and 1 161


Dealing with fractional exponents 161


Working with negative exponents 161


Checking Out the Ancestry: Roots 162


Order of Operations: Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally 164


Splitting Up: Fractions, Decimals, and Percentages 164


Defining numerators, denominators, and other stuff you need to know about fractions 165


Adding and subtracting fractions 167


Multiplying and dividing fractions 167


Calculating percent change 169


Taking it further: Repeated percent change 170


Making Comparisons: Ratios and Proportions 171


Playing the Numbers: Scientific Notation 172


Chapter 13: Considering All the Variables: Algebra 175


Defining the Elements: Algebraic Terms 175


Braving the unknowns: Variables and constants 175


Coming together: Terms and expressions 176


Knowing the nomials: Kinds of expressions 176


Maintaining an Orderly Fashion: Algebraic Operations 177


Adding to and taking away 177


Multiplying and dividing expressions 179


Extracting Information: Factoring Polynomials 181


Something in common: Finding common factors 182


Two by two: Factoring quadratic polynomials 182


Minding Your Ps and Qs: Functions 183


Standing in: Understanding function terminology 184


Taking it to the limit: Domain and range of functions 185


Putting On Your Thinking Cap: Problem-Solving 188


Isolating the variable: Linear equations 188


Bringing in the substitution: Simultaneous equations 189


Not playing fair: Inequalities 191


Solving quadratic equations 193


Reading between the lines: Word problems 194


Burning the midnight oil: Work problems 196


Going the distance: Distance problems 197


Chapter 14: Getting the Angle on Geometry: Planes and Solids 199


Fishing for the Answers: Lines and Angles 199


Trusting Triangles 202


Triple treat: Types of triangles 202


The area of a triangle 204


The Pythagorean theorem and other cool stuff about right triangles 204


A striking resemblance: Similar triangles 207


Playing Four Square: Quadrilaterals 208


Drawing parallels: Parallelograms 209


Raising the roof: Trapezoids 210


Showing Their Good Sides: Other Polygons 211


Eating Up Pieces of Pi: Circles 212


Ring measurements: Radius, diameter, and circumference 212


Blueprints for Noah: Arcs 212


Line ’em up: Chords, inscribed and circumscribed figures, and tangents 213


Getting a Little Depth Perception: Three-Dimensional Geometry 215


Chipping off the old block: Rectangular solids 215


Sipping from soda cans and other cylinders 217


Chapter 15: Keeping in Step: Coordinate Geometry 219


Taking Flight: The Coordinate Plane 219


Line dancing: Understanding coordinate geometry 219


What’s the point? Finding the coordinates 220


On all fours: Identifying quadrants 220


Slip-Sliding Away: Slope and Linear Equations 221


Taking a peak: Defining the slope of a line 221


Using the slope-intercept form to graph lines 223


Meeting in the middle 225


Going the distance 226


Considering other shapes on the coordinate plane 227


Fully Functioning: Graphing Functions 228


Passing the vertical line test 228


Feeling at home with domain and range 230


Chapter 16: Manipulating Numbers: Statistics and Sets 233


Joining a Clique: Groups 233


Setting Up Sets 235


Set terminology 235


Getting a visual: Venn diagrams 235


Making Arrangements: Permutations and Combinations 237


Positioning with permutations 237


Coming together: Combinations 239


Meeting in the Middle: Mean, Median, and Mode 241


Straying from Home: Range and Standard Deviation 243


Scouting out the range 243


Watching out for wanderers: Standard deviation 243


Predicting the Future: Probability 245


Finding the probability of one event 245


Finding the probability of many events 246


Chapter 17: It’s All in the Presentation: GMAT Quantitative Question Types 249


Enough’s Enough: Data-Sufficiency Questions 249


You don’t need the solution to find the answer 250


Steps to approaching data-sufficiency problems 250


Taking a Look at Data-Sufficiency Practice Problems 253


Practice questions 253


Answer explanations 255


Houston, We Have a Problem: Problem-Solving Questions 259


Trying Out Some Problem-Solving Practice Problems 261


Practice questions 261


Answer explanations 263


Chapter 18: All Together Now: A Mini Practice Quantitative Section 267


Tackling GMAT Math Practice Questions 267


Checking Out the Answer Explanations 274


Part 5: Excelling on the Integrated-Reasoning Section 285


Chapter 19: Best of Both Worlds: The Integrated-Reasoning Section 287


Understanding What the IR Section Is All About 287


Skills tested 288


Question format 288


Figuring Out How the IR Section Is Scored 290


Making the Most of Your Time 290


Approaching Each Question Type 291


Table analysis 291


Two-part analysis 294


Graphics interpretation 297


Multi-source reasoning 298


Chapter 20: Deciphering Data in Charts and Graphs 303


Approaching Integrated-Reasoning Data in Five Easy Steps 303


Translating Information in Tables 304


Making Comparisons with Bar Graphs 305


Simple bar graphs 305


Graphs with many bars 305


Segmented bar graphs 306


Evaluating Line Graphs 308


Basic line graphs 308


Scatter plots 308


Complex scatter plots 309


Clarifying Circle Graphs (Also Known as Pie Charts) 310


Extracting Data from Venn Diagrams 311


Part 6: Practice Makes Perfect 315


Chapter 21: GMAT Practice Test 317


Chapter 22: Practice Test Answers and Explanations 347


Part 7: The Part of Tens 379


Chapter 23: Ten Question Types You’ve Got a Good Shot At 381


Chapter 24: Ten Writing Errors to Avoid 385


Chapter 25: Ten Ways to Increase Your Chances of Getting into Business School 387


Index 391