GMAT Study Thread Forum

[LSAT Blog]

Khan Academy has a ton of free videos for 11th edition of the Official Guide:

https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/gmat

[Nova]

Khan Academy has a ton of free videos for 11th edition of the Official Guide:

https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/gmat

nice

[wingding]

For those taking it,

GMAT = SAT on steroids. Truth.

Bullfuckingshit. I took the GMAT 3 days after I first learned of its existence, and scored damn freaking high. It's been a while, so I don't remember my score, but I was in the 96th percentile for one of my scores, and the other wasn't far behind.

It's not "hard" math, you just have to put in some time/learn the tricks to cracking the problems.

not hard at all. You just need to refamiliarize yourself with high school algebra, and add a logic component to it. The trick with the math part is that some of the questions are more like the logic games on the LSAT, but numerically rather than verbally. As an example, one of the questions was for either a pool or a tennis court in a square area. Imagine a blue square with a green border, that's also square. It gave the length and width of the outer border, and the length and width of the inner square, then asked you to calculate the area of the border. OK, step one: figure out that you're basically calculating the area of a square, and then subtracting the area of the other square. Step two: width * length for each. Step 3: subtract one from the other. Fairly easy, but if you don't realize it's that simple, you could overcomplicate this in any number of ways.

It's also a self-adjusting test/computerized, so totally different than the old-school LSAT.

this is actually a major component, because your earlier questions are more important than the later ones, and you're better off getting the first few right, and not even answering the last few questions, than answering all the questions, but getting the first few wrong (unless they changed the system since I took it). The computer tries to guess your rank early on, so if you get the first question wrong, it assumes you're fairly dumb, and shoots you toward the bottom. You then need to work your way up to a higher score. Think of a spider chart - Q1: are you top half or bottom half? Q2a: are you 1st quartile, or 2nd quartile vs Q2b: are you 3rd quartile or 4th quartile?

As someone potentially taking the LSAT again and as someone who took and did very well on the GMAT, I can say it takes infinitely less hours overall to prep.

which one? the GMAT or the LSAT? I'm gonna say that if you are decent at math, the LSAT requires way more prep.

[Christine (MLSAT)]

this is actually a major component, because your earlier questions are more important than the later ones, and you're better off getting the first few right, and not even answering the last few questions, than answering all the questions, but getting the first few wrong (unless they changed the system since I took it). The computer tries to guess your rank early on, so if you get the first question wrong, it assumes you're fairly dumb, and shoots you toward the bottom. You then need to work your way up to a higher score. Think of a spider chart - Q1: are you top half or bottom half? Q2a: are you 1st quartile, or 2nd quartile vs Q2b: are you 3rd quartile or 4th quartile?

This advice is actually no longer true. I'm guessing that you took it a few years ago.

The first few questions are no longer more important than later questions, and leaving ANY blank at the end of a section is a massive, massive penalty. I strongly recommend that anyone who is going to take it make every effort to balance the time across the section and make absolutely certain that you are able to get to every question before the clock runs out.

Ideally, your incorrect answers would be fairly evenly distributed throughout the section, rather than clumped together in spikes and crashes.