Kolby - GMAT Prep Course

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ISBN: 9781889057637

GMAT is a registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admission Council.

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If you dont have a pencil in your hand, get one now! Dont just read this bookwrite on it, study it, scrutinize it! In short, for the next six weeks, this book should be a part of your life. When you have finished the book, it should be marked-up, dog-eared, tattered and torn.

Although the GMAT is a difficult test, it is a very learnable test. This is not to say that the GMAT is beatable. There is no bag of tricks that will show you how to master it overnight. You probably have already realized this. Some books, nevertheless, offer inside stuff or tricks which they claim will enable you to beat the test. These include declaring that answer-choices B, C, or D are more likely to be correct than choices A or E. This tactic, like most of its type, does not work. It is offered to give the student the feeling that he or she is getting the scoop on the test.

The GMAT cannot be beaten. But it can be masteredthrough hard work, analytical thought, and by training yourself to think like a test writer.

This book will introduce you to numerous analytic techniques that will help you immensely, not only on the GMAT but in business school as well. For this reason, studying for the GMAT can be a rewarding and satisfying experience.

Although the quick-fix method is not offered in this book, about 15% of the material is dedicated to studying how the questions are constructed. Knowing how the problems are written and how the test writers think will give you useful insight into the problems and make them less mysterious. Moreover, familiarity with the GMATs structure will help reduce your anxiety. The more you know about this test, the less anxious you will be the day you take it.

Behind any successful test-prep book, there is more than just the authors efforts.

I would like to thank Scott Thornburg for his meticulous editing of the manuscript and for his continued support and inspiration. I would also like to thank Kathleen Pierce for contributing the Writing Assessment section.

This book is dedicated to my parents

David and Mary Kolby

To whom I owe more than words can express.

Reading passages were drawn from the following sources:

The Two Faces of Eastern Europe, 1990 Adam Michnik.

Deschooling Society, 1971 Harper & Row, by Ivan Illich.

The Cult of Multiculturalism, 1991 Fred Siegel.

Ways of Seeing, 1972 Penguin Books Limited, by John Berger.

Placebo Cures for the Incurable, Journal of Irreproducible Results, 1985 Thomas G. Kyle.

Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, George Lakoff.

Screening Immigrants and International Travelers for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, 1990 New England Journal of Medicine.

The Perry Scheme and the Teaching of Writing, 1986 Christopher Burnham.

Man Bites Shark, 1990 Scientific American.

Hemingway: The Writer as Artist, 1952 Carlos Baker.

The Stars in Their Courses, 1931 James Jeans.

The GMAT is an aptitude test. Like all aptitude tests, it must choose a medium in which to measure intellectual ability. The GMAT has chosen math, English, and logic.

OK, the GMAT is an aptitude test. The question isdoes it measure aptitude for business school? The GMATs ability to predict performance in school is as poor as the SATs. This is to be expected since the tests are written by the same company (ETS) and the problems are quite similar (though the formats are different). However, the GMAT also includes two types of questionsArguments and Data Sufficiencythat the SAT does not. Many students struggle with these questions because they are unlike any material they have studied in school. However, the argument and data sufficiency questions are not inherently hard, and with sufficient study you can raise your performance on these questions significantly.

No test can measure all aspects of intelligence. Thus any admission test, no matter how well written, is inherently inadequate. Nevertheless, some form of admission testing is necessary. It would be unfair to base acceptance to business school solely on grades; they can be misleading. For instance, would it be fair to admit a student with an A average earned in easy classes over a student with a B average earned in difficult classes? A schools reputation is too broad a measure to use as admission criteria: many students seek out easy classes and generous instructors, in hopes of inflating their GPA. Furthermore, a system that would monitor the academic standards of every class would be cost prohibitive and stifling. So until a better system is proposed, the admission test is here to stay.

The GMAT is a three-and-one-half hour computer adaptive test (CAT). There are four sections in the test.

The writing sections begin the test. You will type your essay on the computer, using a very basic word processor.