GMAT For Dummies

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