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Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they select a business school, but the educational experience you will have 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 profile Vijay Govindarajan from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

Vijay Govindarajan (“Implementing Strategy: Management Control Systems,” “Managing Corporate Entrepreneurship,” and “Global Strategy and Implementation”), affectionately known by students as simply “VG,” has been cited by Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, and The London Times as a top-ten strategy professor. His research focus includes global strategy, strategic innovation, strategy execution, and strategic controls. VG has been a consultant to several well-known companies, including Walmart, FedEx, and Microsoft, and in 2008, he served as chief innovation consultant to General Electric. In addition to his residency at Tuck, VG was named a Marvin Bower Faculty Fellow at Harvard Business School in 2015 for a two-year period. He was also the 2015 recipient of the Association of Management Consulting Firms Award of Excellence.

One alumnus told mbaMission, “VG’s class is great, and the cases have been interesting. Most of the cases are about manufacturing companies; however, they are not boring at all. He’s a great speaker and great lecturer.”

Another graduate described Govindarajan’s classroom style to mbaMission by saying, “VG maintains a balance between lecture and class participation. He never cold-calls because he believes that students will be prepared. He doesn’t want students to comment for the sake of commenting and wants people to say something meaningful, which might be different from the approach at other schools.” Another alumnus shared that VG often brings great speakers to class.

For more information about Dartmouth Tuck and 15 other top-ranked MBA schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

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

In Part 1 of this article, we talked about the five-step process to answer Sentence Correction problems, and in Part 2, we discussed some drills to build the needed skills. Make sure to read both of those before continuing with this third article in the series.

Drill Number 3: Find a Starting Point

Once again, open up your Official Guide and look at some problems you have done before. This time, do NOT read the original sentence. Instead, cover it up.

Compare the answers and try to articulate all the things that the problem is testing. Note that you can tell what is being tested even if you cannot tell how to answer. For example, you might see a verb switching back and forth between singular and plural. If the subject is not underlined, then you have no idea which verb form is required, because you literally have not even seen the subject. You do, though, know that subject-verb agreement is at issue.

Drill Number 4: Eliminate Answers

Once again, this drill involves problems you have already done. (Sensing a pattern? We learn the most when we are reviewing things we have already done!) This time, though, you are going to get to use the whole problem.

Right after you finish a problem, add the following analysis to your review:

(1) Why is the right answer right? Why is each of the four wrong answers wrong?

(2) How would you justify eliminating the right answer? What is the trap that would lead someone to cross this one off?

(3) How would you justify picking any of the wrong answers? What is the trap that would lead someone to pick a wrong answer?

You are probably already doing the first one, but most people skip the second and third steps. The first is important, but you can learn more! When you learn how you (or someone) would fall into the trap of thinking that some wrong answer looks or sounds or feels better than the right one, you will be a lot less likely to fall into that same trap yourself in future.

Next Steps

Practice these steps until they start to feel like second nature to you. At the same time, of course, learn the grammar rules that we all need to know. Put both pieces together, and you will master sentence correction!

Getting to write your own recommendation letters can seem like a blessing. Suddenly, you have the power to control an aspect of the application process that was previously out of your hands. So, your downside risk in these letters is mitigated and your upside is infinite, right? Well, not quite.

Admissions committees are not seeking blustery rave reviews but instead want recommendations that are detailed, personal, intimate and sincere. Can you really write about yourself with dispassionate veracity? And even if you are a master of “dispassionate veracity,” are you able to capture the subtleties that make you stand out? For example, let us say that among the many important things that you do at work, you also perform thoughtful acts without even realizing their significance—for example, you take new team members out to lunch. While you may regard “closing the big deal” as significant, others may appreciate and admire the small but significant act of inviting newbies to lunch, which helps to forge team unity. Unfortunately, you may lack the objectivity necessary to ensure that this positive detail is included in your letter.

This is but one simple example, but our point is that you probably will not know what important elements are missing from your recommendation letter if you write it yourself. So, when you approach your supervisor for a recommendation, go in ready to push back a bit if he/she ask you to write your own letter. Some individuals may be busy or lazy, while others may think that they are doing you a favor by giving you control. Be prepared to impress upon all your recommenders that you cannot help yourself but that they can. After all, that is why you are asking for their input in the first place!

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

In the Part 1 of this article, we talked about the five-step process to answer Sentence Correction (SC) problems:

1. Take a First Glance
   2. Read the Sentence
   3. Find a Starting Point
   4. Eliminate Answers
   5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4

If you have not already learned that process, read Part 1 before continuing with this article.

Drills to Build Skills

How do you learn to do all this stuff? You are going to build some skills that will help at each stage of the way. The drills are summarized in this post; if you want the full description of each, check out the original article on the Manhattan GMAT blog.

Drill Number 1: First Glance

Open up your Official Guide (OG) and find some lower-numbered SC questions that you have already tried in the past. Give yourself a few seconds (no more than 5!) to glance at a problem, then look away and say out loud what you noticed in those few seconds.

As you develop your First Glance skills, start to read a couple of words: the one right before the underline and the first word of the underline. Do those give you any clues about what might be tested in the problem? For instance, consider this sentence:

Xxx xxxxxx xxxx xx and she xxx xxxxx xxxx xxxx xxx xxx xxxxx.

I have a strong suspicion that this problem might test parallelism, because the word and falls immediately before the underline. When I read the sentence, I will be looking for an X and Y parallelism structure.

Drill Number 2: Read the Sentence

Take a look at some OG problems you have tried before. Read only the original sentence. Then, look away from the book and articulate aloud, in your own words, what you think the sentence is trying to convey. You do not need to limit yourself to one sentence. You can also glance back at the problem to confirm details.

I want to stress the “out loud” part; you will be able to hear whether the explanation is sufficient. If so, try another problem.

If you are struggling or unsure, then one of two things is happening. Either you just do not understand, or the sentence actually does not have a clear meaning, and this is precisely why the choice is wrong! Decide which you think it is and then check the explanation.

Next Steps

Spend the next week drilling these skills for steps 1 and 2. Then come back here to join us for the third part in the series, in which you will learn two more drills for the later steps of the SC process.

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

Manhattan GMAT has developed a special process for Sentence Correction (SC). Some students and classes have seen it, but here we are sharing it publicly! Read on and let us know what you think.

The Five Steps for Sentence Correction

The full article on the MGMAT blog goes into more detail on each step.

1. Take a First Glance
   2. Read the Sentence
   3. Find a Starting Point
   4. Eliminate Answers
   5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4

As with any process, you will sometimes decide to deviate for some good reason. For most questions, though, you will follow this basic process.

In this post, I briefly introduce each step, but the full article goes into more detail, so make sure to follow up by reading that.

1. First Glance

The idea here is to take a “holistic” glance at the entire screen: let your eyes go slightly out of focus (do NOT read!), look at about the middle of whatever text is on the screen and take in three things:

– the problem type (in this case, SC)
– the length of the whole sentence
– the length of the underline (or the length of the answers)

This first glance will help you formulate a plan of attack.

2. Read the Sentence

Next, read the sentence as a complete sentence, not just a collection of potential grammar issues. Pay attention to the overall meaning that the sentence is trying to convey.

3. Find a Starting Point
4. Eliminate Answers

When you spot something you know is wrong, immediately cross off answer (A) on your scrap paper. Check that same issue (and only that issue!) in the remaining answer choices; eliminate any answers that repeat the error.

5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4

SC is a bit annoying in that your initial starting point often will not allow you to cross off all four wrong answers. You usually have to find multiple starting points.

Once you have dealt with one issue, return either to the original sentence or to a comparison of the answer choices, wherever you left off.

What to Do When You Are Stuck

In general, once you get stuck, give yourself one shot to “unstick” yourself. Try comparing different answers to see whether anything new pops out at you. If not, guess and move on.

Half of the battle on the GMAT is knowing when to stop trying. Set explicit “cutoffs” for yourself—rules for when to let go—and stick to them!

Next Steps

Got all of that? Good!

In the second and third parts of this series, I will give you some drills that you can use to build the different skills needed to get through a sentence correction problem. Until then, go ahead and practice the overall process until you internalize the different steps. Good luck!