A few GMAT tips

I am not a GMAT expert or anything but I think I can share some insights that helped me through the process. Although I don't know how many people is reading this blog, I think it might be useful, if not for current readers, at least for some of my friends (specially for non-English native speakers), so I'll try to summary some clues I learnt from my GMAT experience. Don't laugh at me if you think these things are really basic, I must confess I didn't know anything about the GMAT before I took the course.

I started reading in English many years ago, when I was a teenager; actually I like reading a lot (in any language). It's kind of relaxing to me, I think that helped me a little, because you get used to reading some grammatical structures and later on it's easier for you to identify whether a structure is right or wrong in a test. However, I think I can still improve my English a lot.

In addition to that, I've always been good at math. And math is like a special language, it doesn't matter if you speak English or not. Many times, when I looked at some GMAT questions I could see that math is a type of universal language. I mean, if you have a figure with the two legs of a right triangle and you need to find its hypotenuse, do you need to speak any particular language? So, I think the quant part is not that hard to beat because of English, but because of math itself. Besides, I agree with people who say that languages are a kind of math thing because they have rules and structures. In my case, reading habits and some ability with numbers helped me a lot in order to take the most of the GMAT course. My humble opinion: start with math and reading.

Regarding useful pieces of advice, don't forget the following:

Quant part

• Be careful with the easy-looking questions, read carefully and don't miss easy points. In every simulation, I failed in this type of questions.
• Don't take it personal if a question looks so hard for you, just guess and skip to the next. One question is not worth so much time.
• Use the AD / BCE strategy in data sufficiency, if it helps. In my case, it did help.
• Read the text carefully, you might find some clues like: "If x and y are positive numbers then ..."
• When facing inequalities: don't forget negative numbers can also be right answers (specially for DS part), unless the text goes on the contrary.
• Use diagrams and figures every time it's possible, it's more helpful than writing data.
• When you come up with a quick answer, check again. You might have missed some important data.
• Don't memorize formulas, it's better to understand the rationale underlying each solution.

Sentence correction

• When you see an answer using the word "being", most of the times it's not the right answer.
• "Not only" always come with "but also"
• Look carefully the subject-verb agreement thing
• When finding a modifier between commas, read and determine if it makes sense. Usually, It has to modify the noun right before the first comma.
• Don't get lost in long sentences, just identify the subject, verb and modifiers as fast as you can and solve the question.

Critical Reasoning:

• Read the question first, then carry on with the statement. This will let you focus on the answer while reading the statement.
• Read the questions carefully, don't miss the underlined words: EXCEPT, NOT, etc.
• Cause-effect-type questions can be solved easily if you identify first the cause and the effect. Most of them ask you to weaken the argument: "Which of the following... would undermine the most ... the conclusion?" The easiest way to solve this is to find an answer that states there's another cause to produce the same effect.
• Hardest questions (at least for me): logical comparison and strengthen the argument

Preparation

• Practice a lot
• Get used to reading in English, you can find tons of articles about almost everything on the Internet.
• Print your trial tests and do them over again. Share your wrong answers with friends or people online to get help from them. I still have all my failed questions printed.
• When you practice with a software-based test, only take timed tests, otherwise it won't help you a bit.
• If you want inspiring stories about how to outperform the test, go to Testmagic forums. I strongly recommend Clintonn's story: http://www.urch.com/forums/just-finished-my-gmat/57777-760-q50-v-44-a.html
• Some of my Testmagic questions posted:
• http://www.urch.com/forums/gmat-data-sufficiency/66213-hard-question-about-remainders-2-m-p-m-not-factor-p.html?highlight=dahz
• http://www.urch.com/forums/gmat-data-sufficiency/66264-help-x-y-positive.html
• http://www.urch.com/forums/gmat-data-sufficiency/66265-data-sufficiency-about-interest-rate.html

Finally, remember that GMAT is a world itself. That's why so many people talks about "The GMAT world". In your test, you might find some answers that make sense and are commonly used by people but remember that GMAT gives points to the best GMAT-like answer, not necessarily the best natural answer. You can find lots of these discussions in the Testmagic forum.

PS: I don't know if my teacher would like to receive some comments from anyone who reads this blog. He used to say he was constantly in touch with GMAT experts online and helping people as a way to improve his GMAT teaching methods. I'm going to ask him if he lets me put his email address here.