MBA admissions consultants

When it comes to the GMAT, raw intellectual horsepower helps, but it is not everything. In this biweekly blog series, Manhattan GMAT’s Stacey Koprince teaches you how to perform on test day by using some common sense.

Everyone struggles with some amount of anxiety when taking a test like the GMAT, but some people struggle more than others. Stress can also affect your preparation before you ever get to the test center—if you are too stressed out when studying, this will hurt your ability to make and recall memories. So what can we do to reduce studying and test-taking stress?

Know what is coming
If you have not already done so, read the first blog post in this series: In It to Win It. The nutshell: you are not trying to get everything right. Nobody gets everything right—including me and other 99th percentile testers!

Having the right attitude going into the test will help significantly. I like to pretend that I am playing tennis. Nobody expects to win every single point in a tennis match—that would be silly. But I do expect to win more points than my opponent, and I do not stress out when I lose some points.

You will of course need to know what is coming in terms of the formulas and rules and so on. But also know that you are not going to know everything and that is okay.

Manage your time well
When people try to get everything right, they often mess up the timing. Discovering that you are behind on time just compounds your stress and makes everything worse, so we have to know how to manage time well all the way through the test. We also need to know what to do if we find ourselves in trouble on the timing.

Read this article on time management and start incorporating its recommendations into your study right away.

Check back in two weeks to read Part 2!

At the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, two seemingly unrelated activities—recruiting and tailgating—come together in a mutually beneficial way.  Well-known for “Big Blue” spirit, the Ross School takes advantage of the University of Michigan’s football powerhouse to show off its MBA talent.  At each Michigan home game, 200 to 300 MBA students attend tailgates hosted by the Ross Student Association (RSA). The tailgates are sponsored by companies that recruit at Ross and provide a fun way for students to network with prospective employers.  At the same time, recruiters and company representatives—who are often Ross alumni—can get to know many students in a casual social setting. Regardless of who wins the football game, RSA tailgates are a win-win for students who mingle with highly sought-after employers and alumni, who in turn love any reason to return to campus!

For more information on Ross or 15 other leading MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Yesterday, Manhattan GMAT posted a GMAT question on our blog. Today, they have followed up with the answer:

Given the size of the answer choices, we should look for a way to simplify the task: testing that the product is divisible by 24. We could plug numbers; this method will eliminate all the wrong answers eventually, but it could take a while (and in fact will take a while in this case).

To be divisible by 24, the right answer needs to be divisible by one 3 and three 2’s (the prime factors of 24) under all circumstances. Let’s focus on the 3 first. To guarantee divisibility by 3 no matter what integer k is, we need to have at least one of the factors always be divisible by 3.

We need a “spread” of factors with respect to their possible remainders after division by 3. For example, what would be bad is for all the factors to differ by multiples of 3—say, k – 3, k, k + 3, and k + 6. Then all of these factors would be divisible by 3 when k itself is a multiple of 3, but if k isn’t a multiple of 3, then all the factors would be out of luck. So you want remainders of 0, 1, and 2 to be represented. Take each case, imagining k to be 0 for a moment (even though k is restricted to positive integers):

(A) -4, 0, 3, 7 gives us remainders of 2, 0, 0, and 1. Covered.
(B) -4, -2, 3, 5 gives us remainders of 2, 1, 0, and 2. Covered.
(C) -2, 3, 5, 6 gives us remainders of 1, 0, 2, and 0. Covered.
(D) 1, 3, 5, 7 gives us remainders of 1, 0, 2, and 1. Covered.
(E) -3, 1, 4, 6 gives us remainders of 0, 1, 1, and 0. Not covered. So E can be eliminated, because if k takes on say the value of 1, then there is no 3 in the product.

Now consider the three 2’s. We need them in all circumstances, whether k is even or odd.

Let’s first consider even and odds alone. Again, imagine that k is 0, for argument’s sake.

(A) even*even*odd*odd = two evens, might be enough.
(B) even*even*odd*odd = two evens, might be enough.
(C) even*odd*odd*even = two evens, might be enough.
(D) odd*odd*odd*odd = odd. Not enough. So if k = 2, for instance, then we get all odds.

Now, where do we go from here? The key is to notice that every other even is a multiple of 4 – so if you have a product of consecutive evens, then you’ll get one 2 from one of the evens and two 2’s from the multiple of 4. If the evens differ by a multiple of 4, though, then they’ll either both be multiples of 4 or both not be multiples of 4 – in which case, you’ll only get two 2’s.

(A) k – 4 and k differ by a multiple of 4. So they’ll both be multiples of 4 (or they both won’t be), in which case you’ll only get one 2 out of each of them. Bad.
(B) k – 4 and k – 2 differ by 2, so that’s good: consecutive evens. Likewise, k + 3 and k + 5 differ by 2, so we’d get consecutive evens from that product if k is odd. Looking good.
(C) k – 2 and k + 6 differ by 8, so they’ll both be multiples of 4 (or they both won’t be), in which case you’ll only get one 2 out of each of them. Bad.

The only case that always works to give you a 3 and three 2’s is (B).

The correct answer is B.

When you select an MBA program, you are not just choosing your learning environment, but are also making a commitment to a community. Each Thursday, we offer a window into life “beyond the MBA classroom” at a top business school.

Nearly 40% of the Class of 2012 at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business is made up of international students, and 50 countries are represented. The Duke International Office and the Duke International House offer many resources to assist international students with issues associated with acclimating to, studying in and working in the United States, including visa applications and processing. In addition, the Language Institute at Fuqua is designed to prepare incoming international students for the MBA experience at the school. According to the institute’s site, as part of the four-phase program, which is held before the MBA curriculum begins, “Students are given opportunities to refine their English language skills through practice and experiential learning. Students take part in a comprehensive ten-day program of lectures, case presentations, writing exercises and a variety of assignments that get them ready for the rigors of graduate school. This is followed by five weeks of monitoring students’ progress once they start school, with further opportunities for individualized support and learning.” One first year mbaMission interviewed whose time at Fuqua was his first experience in the United States longer than two weeks said, “We all bonded during the Language Institute and met many classmates who knew what we were all going through.”

For in-depth descriptions of social and community activities at Duke Fuqua and 15 other top MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Each week Manhattan GMAT posts a GMAT question on our blog and follows up with the answer the next day. Are you up for the challenge?

Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they select a program to attend, but the educational experience at business school is what is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Each Wednesday, we profile a standout professor as identified by students. Today, we focus on Katherine Schipper from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Katherine Schipper (“Financial Accounting”) is the Thomas F. Keller Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Law at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and usually teaches the MBA program’s core accounting course, “Financial Accounting.” Schipper was editor of the Journal of Accounting Research for many years and was also a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board from 2001 to 2006, before joining Fuqua. In 2007, Schipper was the first woman inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame, which has inducted only 85 people since it was established. A second-year student we interviewed who had taken the course “Global Institutions and Environment” with Schipper (co-taught by Professor Jennifer Francis) said, “She was outstanding. It was amazing to have professors of their caliber teaching the first class we experienced at Fuqua.” Another second year told us, “I was really nervous about accounting, but she made it very accessible, and even occasionally fun.”

For more information about Duke Fuqua and 15 other top-ranked business schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday.

Many candidates will work painstakingly on their essays, prepare rigorously for their interviews and endlessly contemplate their choices of recommenders. However, applicants tend to leave the short answer section of their applications to the last moment, and some will simply paste in information from their resumes or from their applications to other schools.

However, the short answer sections—meaning the actual questions within the application about your work and community experiences, hobbies, etc.—should definitely not be ignored, and should be completed with the same spirit of diligence that you would bring to all the other aspects of your application(s). We advise candidates to refrain from just pasting bullet points from their resumes into the short answer section, and to instead take time to truly contemplate the questions that are asked and write out the answers in full sentence form. (Further, bullets from a resume often lack the necessary context, so they rarely make effective answers for this portion of the application.) Although the information conveyed in the short answer section is important, we believe that what is really crucial is that candidates give care and thought to all aspects of their applications.

Sincerity. Honesty. Candor. We encourage candidates to incorporate these attributes into their application work, and when they do, successful essays inevitably follow. Yet, can one express too much of these attributes? The answer is actually “yes,” especially when candor turns to negativity. Sometimes, when candidates believe they are being candid, they are in fact revealing themselves to be predisposed to pessimism; as a result, the admissions committee has difficulty identifying with their file. Such situations are unfortunate, but fortunately, they are also typically avoidable, because an ostensibly “negative” idea can almost always be expressed in a positive and optimistic manner.

Example:

“In my current position, I am no longer learning and am afraid I will continue to stagnate without my MBA. I cannot achieve my objective of becoming a leader in the marketing department at my firm unless…”

Common sense would say that the admissions committee would likely not be very excited about accepting an applicant who has stopped learning or who believes that his/her career progress can be thwarted by basic obstacles.

Example Revisited:

“As I look to the future, I recognize that with MBA training, I could dramatically increase my impact on my firm. With an eye toward a leadership position in our marketing department, I am….”

In this revised example, the candidate is expressing the exact same need for an MBA in positive terms and is thus making him/herself a more warm and engaging prospect (while still candidly stating a need for further education).

Before submitting your file, check for unnecessarily negative statements. Although we would never suggest that every line in your essays needs to be full of sunshine, you should certainly take steps to avoid portraying yourself as a pessimist.