GMAT For Dummies

Your appointment confirmation letter: When you schedule an appointment for the GMAT, Pearson VUE sends you a confirmation letter that you should bring with you to the test. It proves you’re registered. Don’t despair if you can’t find yours, though. They’ll let you in if you have an appointment.

A photo ID: You have to prove that you’re you and not your really smart neighbor who looks a little like you coming in to take the test for you. Any form of identification that doesn’t have your picture on it is unacceptable, but government issued picture IDs like driver’s licenses, passports, identification cards, and military IDs are great.

The names of up to five of your favorite MBA programs: Pearson VUE sends your GMAT scores to five programs of your choice, so have a list of your five favorites with you on test day.

Know math formulas before you take the GMAT, because the test doesn’t provide them for you.

Remember that easy questions are worth the same number of points as hard questions, so don’t rush through the easy questions and make careless mistakes.

Eliminate answer choices that don’t make sense.

Memorize the chart for answering data sufficiency questions. As soon as you’ve determined whether a statement has enough information to answer the question, eliminate answer choices and move on. Don’t waste time solving the problem unless you have to do so to make your determination.

Take advantage of your notepad. Use it to draw pictures, work out formulas, and cross out wrong answer choices.

Read the question first so you know what kind of question you have to answer before you read the argument.

For strengthen- or weaken-the-argument questions, determine what type of reasoning the author uses and choose an answer that either helps or hurts that way of reasoning.

For questions that ask you to draw conclusions, choose an answer that contains an element of all of the author’s premises.

Remember that the correct answer to an inference question usually concerns just one of the argument’s premises.

Assumption questions ask you to choose an answer that states a premise the author assumes to be true but doesn’t state directly. The right answer often links the last premise to the conclusion.

For method-of-reasoning questions, figure out how the author makes the argument. Usually the author uses inductive reasoning, and the GMAT focuses on these specific ways to make an argument through inductive reasoning:

• Cause and effect

• Analogy

• Statistics

Read the sentence and check the pronouns and verbs in the underlined part for agreement. If the verbs and pronouns check out, look for problems with parallelism or word choice.

If there are no obvious errors, the answer is probably A, but skim through the answer choices just to make sure you didn’t miss anything.

If you spot an error, eliminate answer choices that don’t correct the error. Then eliminate answer choices that correct the error but make a new one.

Reread your answer choice within the sentence to make sure it makes sense before you commit to it.

Read through the passage before answering the questions.

As you read, focus on main theme, author’s tone, and paragraph topics rather than the specific details of the passage.

Eliminate answer choices that don’t pertain to the information in the passage.

Remember that the author of a GMAT passage is usually pretty neutral and objective.

Choose general answers for main theme questions.

Don’t infer too much for inference questions.

Note that the answers to specific information questions may be a paraphrase of information in the passage.

Choose your thesis immediately. There’s no right answer to the question prompts, so don’t waste time trying to find it.

Spend at least two to five minutes constructing a quick outline of your ideas. Make sure you have a general thesis for the essay and a topic statement for each paragraph.

You should have an introductory paragraph, at least two or three supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion.

Get specific with your supporting evidence. Draw from your own experience or knowledge. It’s okay to get personal.

Leave a couple minutes at the end to read through your essay and correct any glaring errors.