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

If you are just getting started with the GMAT and are trying to figure out what to do, we have got several big categories of things to discuss: mind-set, devising a study plan, and learning how to study.

Mind-Set

If you do what most people do and try to prepare for this test in the same way that you prepared for tests in school, you are not going to get the best score that you could get.

If you are not sure what is tested on the GMAT or what the different question types look like, take some time to wander around this section of the official GMAT website.

Next, read this short article: “In It to Win It.” This will help you to start to adjust your mind-set so you can maximize your GMAT score. Okay, we are essentially done with the mind-set category, but I have to say one more thing. I put mind-set first for a reason: if you have the wrong mind-set, it will not matter how much you learn or practice. You still will not get the best score that you are capable of getting.

Devising a Study Plan

Get started with this article: “Developing a GMAT Study Plan.” Note: make sure to follow the instructions about taking and analyzing a practice test.

Next, read this article about time management. As you will have already learned from our discussions of mind-set and scoring, effective time management is crucial to your success on this test

How to Study

One key GMAT skill is learning to recognize problems. “Recognize” means that we actually have a little light bulb go off in our brain—“Hey, I’ve seen something like this before, and on that other one, the best solution method was XYZ, so I’m going to try that this time, too!”

When you recognize something, you have given yourself two big advantages: you save yourself time, because recognizing is faster than figuring something out from scratch, and you are more likely to get it right because you know what worked—and what did not—the previous time. You will not be able to recognize every problem, but the more you can, the better.

Read the “How Do I Learn?” section in the second half of the “Developing a GMAT Study Plan” article. Make sure to follow the links given in that section—those links lead to the tools that will help you learn how to learn from GMAT questions.

If you want to take advantage of online forums to chat with teachers and other students (and I strongly recommend that!), learn how to make the best use of the forums.

Finally, ask for advice! So many resources are out there that it can be overwhelming, but most companies offer free advice (Manhattan Prep does here!), and you can also benefit from talking to fellow students.

Already well known as a finance powerhouse, Columbia Business School (CBS) stepped up its finance game in 2010 with the establishment of the Program for Financial Studies. This umbrella initiative connects faculty who approach financial studies from a variety of disciplines with students, alumni, and external organizations. The program’s main goals are to support research, to enhance the CBS finance curriculum and related resources, and to create opportunities for the exchange of ideas between CBS students and faculty and members of the external finance community. The program’s recent studies have included “ABC Coalition Game: Relationships and Bargaining,” “Amazon: Taking on India,” and “Anheuser-Busch InBev and ZX Ventures: Thirst for Self-Disruption.”

The structure of CBS’s core curriculum has also evolved throughout the years and now includes an increased emphasis on cross-disciplinary thinking. The program’s core courses utilize online teaching tools in an attempt to “free up more classroom time for deeper dives and discussions,” as a 2013 Poets&Quants article explained. In addition, students may take exemption exams in areas in which they are already proficient, thereby accessing the option to replace core courses with electives. This revised curriculum was developed in response to student feedback that a full term was not needed to cover the “core” elements in certain courses, and the change has given students significantly more flexibility in the first year.

CBS has attempted to find a middle ground where students learn what the school considers fundamentals while having the latitude to specialize, and anecdotally, students have responded favorably.

For a thorough exploration of what CBS has to offer, download a free copy of the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to Columbia Business School or one of our 16 other complimentary Insider’s Guides.

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

What is the “80/80”? All schools look at your overall three-digit GMAT score (the one given on the 200–800 scale). In addition, a few of the very top business schools, such as Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton, look for the 80/80 score: an 80th percentile score or higher on the individual Quant and Verbal subsections. Essentially, if someone hits a 700 but does so by scoring 99th percentile in one subsection and only 60-something in the other, the schools might be concerned about the lower-scoring area. From their point of view, an “80/80” minimum ensures that you have got a solid base in both areas.

What if I score in the 75th percentile?

The 80/80 guidelines are just that—guidelines. The schools do not use these parameters as a hard cutoff. In other words, a score in the 70s is generally fine, as long as the overall score is also within a school’s desired target range. If, on the other hand, the overall score is a bit low, the GPA is a bit low, and one or both of the GMAT subscores are low… Well, you still might get in, but doing so just became a lot harder.

What if I score in the 60s?

Unless there is something else that is stellar in your profile and can therefore offset this lower score, the 80/80 schools will likely be concerned about a Quant or Verbal percentile in the 60s—particularly so for Quant. For Verbal, they have a whole host of other tools with which to assess your communication skills, starting with your essays. A 60s (or lower) Quant score, though, could indicate that you will have trouble handling the quantitative portions of the MBA curriculum. You might be able to offset this concern if you can demonstrate that your current job involves significant quantitative components; make sure that your recommendations highlight your quant skills. Alternatively, perhaps you excelled in quant-focused classes in school (calculus, accounting, physics, statistics), and your transcripts show A grades.

If not, then something needs to be done. Two paths are possible here, and you can follow just one or both. First, the no-brainer: take the GMAT again and get a score in the 70s (or higher!). I call that a “no-brainer” in the sense that there is no question that you should try to do this. You might not succeed, though. An alternative, then, is to take a calculus or accounting class at a local university. If you do this, you must get an A; getting a B at this stage will not inspire confidence in the admissions staff. In addition, taking such a class will involve a decent amount of lead time; these classes often run over a period of two to four months, so this is not a last-minute solution.

The big picture? Ideally, get the GMAT done well in advance of admissions season so that you have ample time to address unexpected or unwelcome surprises during the process.

Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school. However, the educational experience you will have is what is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Today, we profile Barry Nalebuff from the Yale School of Management (SOM).

Perhaps best known as one of the founders of Honest Tea, Barry Nalebuff is the Milton Steinbach Professor of Management at the Yale SOM. An expert in game theory and strategy, Nalebuff has been a professor at the SOM since 1989. A second year told mbaMission that in the classroom, Nalebuff “is a favorite for his sharp wit and insights.” Nalebuff is also an accomplished author with more than 400,000 copies in print. His book The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist’s Guide to Success in Business and Life (W.W. Norton & Co., 2008), for example, explores how almost all interactions—business and personal alike—have a game theory component. Nalebuff’s new book, Split the Pie: A Radical New Way to Negotiate (Harper Business), explores the art of negotiation and will be released in March 2022.

Nalebuff and Adam Brandenburger, a professor of business economics and strategy at New York University’s Stern School of Business, developed the concept of a new business strategy called “co-opetition,” which they write about in the book Co-Opetition: A Revolutionary Mindset That Combines Competition and Cooperation: The Game Theory Strategy That’s Changing the Game of Business (Crown Business, 1997). The book’s listing on Amazon.com describes co-opetition as “a business strategy that goes beyond the old rules of competition and cooperation to combine the advantages of both. Co-opetition is a pioneering, high profit means of leveraging business relationships.”

A first year noted in a SOM Community Blog post, “Prof. Nalebuff never misses an opportunity to illustrate the ways in which companies can cooperate to grow the PIE (potential industry earnings). Of course, he then always reminds us that these same companies should compete aggressively to secure the biggest piece of that newly expanded PIE.”

For more information about the Yale SOM and 16 other top-ranked business schools, check out our free mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

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

Remember those times when you were sure you got the answer right, only to find out that you got it wrong? For a moment, you even think that the answer key must have a mistake in it. Then, you take another look at the problem, check your work, and say, “I can’t believe I did that!”

By definition, a careless mistake occurs when we did actually know all of the necessary info and we did actually possess all of the necessary skills, but we committed an error anyway. We all make careless mistakes; our goal is to learn how to minimize these mistakes as much as possible.

A lot of times, careless errors are due to one of two things: (1) some bad habit that actually increases the chances that we will make a mistake or (2) our own natural weaknesses.

Here is an example of the former: they ask me to find how long Car B takes to go a certain distance, and I do everything perfectly, but I solve for Car A instead. So, what is my bad habit here? Often, I did not write down “Car B = ?” I also noticed that I was more likely to make this mistake when I set up the problem such that I was solving for Car A first; sometimes, I would forget to finish the problem and just pick Car A’s time.

So, I developed several different good habits to put in the place of my various bad habits. First, I set up a reminder for myself: I skipped several blank lines on my scrap paper and then wrote “B time = ______?”

I also built the habit of solving directly for what I wanted. Now, while I am setting up the problem, I always look first to see whether I can set it up to solve directly for Car B, not Car A.

So, what did I do here? First, I figured out what specific mistake I was making and why I was making it. Then, I instituted three new habits that would minimize my chances of making the same mistake in the future. Incidentally, one of those habits (solving directly for what is asked) also saves me time!

Happy studying, and go start figuring out how to minimize those careless mistakes!