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5 Steps for IR – Graphics Interpretation Questions

By posted January 12, 2012

If you’re familiar at all with the GRE, then Data Interpretation may not be a foreign concept. Data analysis is one of the four main tested Quantitative concepts on the GRE, so it’s no surprise that the GMAT has added it as one of the four new Integrated Reasoning question-types set to launch in June 2012. The Graphics Interpretation section will present you with a piece of data in the form of a graph, Venn diagram, scatter plot, etc. Below will be two statements, each with a missing portion. Fill in the blank with one of four choices presented to you in a drop-down menu.

STEP 1: Start with the big picture. In a general way, categorize the presented graphic. (EX: “This is a graph showing the change in the price of textiles per yard over the course of five years.”) Do not just skip the graphic entirely and go straight to the two statements! This will significantly decrease your accuracy as you must spend the majority of your time focusing on understanding the graphic thoroughly in order to later “interpret” it. Make sure you read every tiny piece of writing on or near the data, including titles, the labels for the x and y-axes, column names, and even footnotes. Scroll down or left/right if necessary to make sure you’ve caught everything.

STEP 2: Pay attention to symbols. Once you understand the big picture, take special care to note any units (mph, m/sec, cm2, etc.) on the graph, or any symbols provided. Are we dealing with seconds, minutes, or hours? Does one graph represent the month of June, while another graph represents the entire year? For example, if this Sample Graphics Interpretation question from MBA.com, it’s interesting to note that virtually the entire question hinges on your recognition that the hourglass symbol represents 10 students, and on your ability to apply that to the given Venn diagram.

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GMAT Analysis of an Issue: Use What You Know

By posted January 11, 2012

Admittedly, the toughest part of the Issue is coming up with ideas that you’re confident in. You might think that with all the possible prompts, you’ll have to read an encyclopedia, scour the newspaper, dust off an old history book, and exhume those half-read classics from high school English. I’m sure none of you wants to do that (though I bet it’s been done before), and, more importantly, the test writers doesn’t expect this from you. Though it seems certain issue prompts necessitate a thorough knowledge in some particular area, such is not the case. Students from all kinds of backgrounds take the GMAT; a former chemistry student isn’t expected to know Shakespeare, and a former English major isn’t expected to understand hydrogen bonding. Still, if you come across a prompt that could benefit from your expertise, by all means go for it.

Let’s look at a relatively esoteric issue prompt and explore varying avenues of analysis, some appropriate for the expert and others for the layman:

“The arts (painting, music, literature, etc.) reveal the otherwise hidden ideas and impulses of a society.”

What we have here is a veritable breath of fresh air for any humanities or arts major, but it’s a kiss of death for anybody without a predilection for the arts. In fact, I want to offer an often unheeded caveat for those art lovers: don’t get too excited. If you come across a topic that allows you to exploit your studies, don’t reproduce your senior thesis in 30 minutes. In other words, keep in mind that your readers may not be conversant with your academic discipline, so try to temper your genius, as hard as that may be.

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The above prompt is a somewhat confusing question, so let’s simplify it: do the arts always reflect social ideas? That is, is the aim of art to reflect and comment on society? Let’s look at some ideas from different perspectives

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GMAT Analysis of an Issue: The Brainstorm

By posted January 9, 2012

Your job on the Analysis of an Issue is to present your perspective on an issue. Brainstorming helps you organize what you think about an issue before you take a firm stance. Remember, your goal is to write a strongly written, persuasive essay regardless of your beliefs. The brainstorm process allows you to look objectively at the evidence you can think of and decide which argument would make a stronger essay.

Brainstorming largely consist of  jotting down some reasons for and against the issue. You may already have a personal opinion about the issue, but set that aside. Let your ability to reason an argument do the choosing for you. Based on the reasons you brainstorm, you may want to argue for the issue or against it.

When brainstorming, it is important to stay on track. Always keep the prompt in mind, and reread it to come up with new ideas. Before you jump into pro and con arguments, briefly sum up the statement’s argument on paper. For example, let’s look at an example: “Over the past century, the most important contribution of technology is that it has generally made people’s lives more comfortable.”

Need expert advice on the GMAT AWA essays? See how Grockit’s tutors can help.

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Issue Essay Template for AWA

By posted January 8, 2012

This is a sample outline for the GMAT’s Issue Essay. Here we are aiming for 5 paragraphs total. You may opt for a shorter 4 paragraph version, but aim for 5 paragraphs. If you have trouble completing 5 paragraphs, see if you can streamline your body paragraphs. They can often be bloated with unnecessary wordiness. Keep the introduction and the conclusion short and sweet.

For more great admissions advice check out this post by Stacy Blackman: Making your MBA Application Stand Out

Paragraph 1 – Introduction (3-4 sentences)

You will want to begin your essay with one of the following: a generalization about the topic, a quotation, a short anecdote to set-up the correctness of your position, a historical framework, a piece of news illustrating the contemporariness of the issue.  Admit the complexity of the issue.

You have two goals in the beginning part of the essay: introduce the topic, and provide the scope. In what context will you be discussing the topic? Your talent as a writer lies in your choice of scope. What aspect of the issue do you want to focus on?

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GMAT Graphics Interpretation: How to Interpret a Venn diagram

By posted January 7, 2012

The Graphics Interpretation section will present you with a piece of data in the form of a graph, Venn diagram, scatter plot, etc. Below will be two statements, each with a missing portion. You will be asked to answer by choosing one of four choices presented in a drop-down menu.  The mock questions released from GMAC have shown that Venn diagrams will appear in Graphics Interpretation questions. So, what is a Venn diagram? And how can we apply our knowledge of set theory to the new Integrated Reasoning section? Let’s take a look at how Venn diagrams are currently tested on the GMAT first. This is a classic, challenging GMAT question involving a Venn:

Question 1: In 1997, N people graduated from college. If 1/3 of them received a degree in the applied sciences, and, of those, 1/4 graduated from a school in one of six northeastern states, which of the following expressions represents the number of people who graduated from college in 1997 who did not both receive a degree in the applied sciences and graduate from a school in one of six northeastern states?

(A) 11N/12
(B) 7N/12
(C) 5N/12
(D) 6N/7
(E) N/7

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Why Integrated Reasoning is Coming to the GMAT

By posted January 6, 2012

Any major changes to a standardized test are usually met with groans from students who worry about now having even more content with which to familiarize themselves. But GMAC has been developing the new Integrated Reasoning section for quite some time, and we should ask ourselves, why? You may have noticed that with the move away from Idioms and more towards an overall understanding of meaning in the Verbal’s Sentence Correction questions, the GMAT has been trying to take a more “real-world” approach to its exam. The GMAT is attempting to help students build skills that are necessary to their business-school success, and to accurately represent to business school staff the students current abilities in those areas.

According to GMAC’s website, a survey of more than 740 management faculty identified the following bullet points as necessary to an incoming student’s success:

  • Synthesizing information presented in graphics, text, and numbers
  • Evaluating relevant information from different sources
  • Organizing information to see relationships and to solve multiple, interrelated problems
  • Combining and manipulating information to solve complex problems that depend on information from one or more sources

Currently, the GMAT did not offer questions that required synthesis, interrelated problems, or combining information from multiple sources. The Integrated Reasoning section, and its four new question-types (Two-Part Analysis, Multi-Source Reasoning, Table Analysis, and Graphics Interpretation), was designed to test these four bullet points.

In a world that has becoming increasingly smaller due to technology, the readily-available amount of data requires business school students to make decisions based on dense and often subtle materials. Integrated Reasoning is the first section that synthesizes Quantitative and Verbal skills, so the abilities you’ve been honing for those sections will definitely come into play!

The Integrated Reasoning can be thought of a “mini case-studies” and while Quant tests number properties and basic math skills, Verbal tests grammar, logic, and reading comprehension, Integrated Reasoning is directly testing your ability to analyze. Can you take a lot of information, and figure out what it “says”?

Just like the Verbal and Quantitative sections, it will take some time for all of us to “crack” Integrated Reasoning, but that doesn’t mean we should complain. The IR section is exciting and is the closest the GMAT has yet come to “real world” problems.

Looking for more help preparing for the Integrated Reasoning section? Contact one of the Grockit tutors for more information. Private tutoring starts at just $50/hr, and each lesson is fully customizable!

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5 Tips for GMAT Table Analysis Questions

By posted January 4, 2012

According to MBA.com, the new Table Analysis questions (one of four new question-types in the Integrated Reasoning section set to launch in June 2012), will present one large table with a drop-down menu that allows you to sort information from the table in four or more unique ways.  Each question will have four statements with opposing answers (yes/no, true/false, inferable/not inferable, etc), and you will be required to pick one choice for each statement. All four statements must be correct for the question to be correct.

  1. Start with the first sorted screen. Use the first screen to get an overall sense of the table. What would be the title of the table if it had one? Is it showing change over time, relationships between scores and percentiles, gross income versus adjusted income, etc.?
  2. Extrapolate trends. As you move through the remaining sorted-screens, pay attention to how each table’s variables relate to each other.  If one variable consistently increases as another variable increases, we can say they have a direct relationship. If one variable consistently decreases as another variable increases, we can say they have an indirect, or inverse relationship. Sometimes variables will have a more complex relationship and may have both types of relationship within a spread of data. Write these relationships down in shorthand on your scratch pad. You may want to use arrows or other symbols to simplify.
  3. Move efficiently through the screens. If a question has more than five or six screens and the table is vast, don’t waste time trying to understand every piece of data. Try to grab the overall gist of the relationships of each one, and keep an eye on the clock. You’ll need time to interpret the statements.
  4. Tie each statement back to the most useful table. Some statements will only require one table to answer. Ask yourself: which table would give me the clearest picture in order to answer this statement? It’s fine to flip between one or two sorted-screens, but trust your understanding of the variables. You’ll know where to look for the answer.
  5. Approximate whenever possible. If calculation are required, round the data presented in the tables to the nearest integer to make your calculation easier. Don’t feel like you have to use decimals or fractions. Especially with yes/no statements, a quick approximation may be all the math that’s required.

The launch of Integrated Reasoning is just a few months away! Need more help? Message one of Grockit’s GMAT tutors to set up a private lessons. Sessions are conducted via Skype and cost $50/hr. Find out more on the Tutoring tab in the Grockit GMAT Lobby!

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How the AWA is Scored on the GMAT

By posted January 2, 2012

The AWA section of the GMAT is made up of two essays – the Argument and the Issue essay. Each essay will be given two independent scores, one of which is done by an automated essay-scoring engine called the E-rater. The other is done by a human grader, and the two scores are averaged then rounded to the nearest half-point. For example, if the E-rater gave the essay a 4 and the human rater gave the essay a 5 it would have a final score of 4.5.

The E-rater is a computer program that checks for structural and linguistic features, such as (according to MBA.com) “organization of ideas, syntactic variety, and topical analysis.” It has hundreds of graded essays stored for each of the GMAT prompts, so it “knows” what a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 essay “looks like” for each prompt. Your essay is scored based on how closely it resembles other essays that is why good organization, clarity, and effective transitions are very important to your score.

It is rare, but occasionally the human and the E-rater differ by more than one point (For example, the E-rater gives an essay a 3, and the human rater gives the essay a 5). When this happens, a second human grader is brought it to determine the final score.

The main qualities that the readers look for are the organization of your ideas, the quality of the ideas themselves, the strength and relevance of the examples, and your grasp of standard written English. Readers are trained to take non-native speakers’ abilities into account when grading so that scores are fair. If you have any reason to believe your AWA scores are inaccurate, you can fill out an Essay Rescore Request Form on MBA.com to ask for a review.

To the left is the official AWA Scoring Percentile ranking from MBA.com. You can see that the mean score is a 4.4, and a perfect score of 6 places you in the 91st percentile, meaning it’s quite plausible to achieve such a score!

Make sure to check out the AWA topics for both the Issue and Argument essays on MBA.com. You will want to practice writing several of each before Test Day! Need more help? Contact a Grockit GMAT Tutor to set up a 1-hour AWA lesson. Review templates for each essay, get insider tips on what to include/leave out, and get graded feedback on your essays!

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Argument Essay Template for AWA

By posted December 31, 2011

This is a sample outline for the GMAT’s Argument Essay. Here we are aiming for 5 paragraphs total. You may opt for a shorter 4 paragraph version if you have trouble finishing 3 body paragraphs, but try for 5 paragraphs. If you are an adept writer, you may wish to place your “How to Strengthen” paragraph on its own right before the Conclusion, and then have a separate shorter Conclusion. This template is only a suggestion, so feel free to adjust it slightly into a version that best works for you! Remember to practice writing at least 2-3 full essays with the time constraint before Test Day!

Check out these articles for more MBA/GMAT essay advice!

Paragraph 1 – Introduction (3-4 sentences)

Like a Critical Reasoning passage, before you begin writing you will need to understand the Conclusion, Evidence, and underlying Assumptions in the argument. Do not use self-reference, or the words “I agree” or “I disagree” anywhere in your essay. You will absolutely use phrases like “the argument” and “the author” but you want your statements to come across as accepted fact, not the small opinions of once person. Your main task in your introduction is to show you understand the premise. Restate it in your own words.

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GMAT: 8 Rules of Diction for Non-Native Speakers

By posted December 23, 2011

Diction can be a confusing concept, especially for non-native English speakers. Though sometimes diction errors are also grammatically correct, there may be cases where you simply have to “know” which word is correct in a certain context. Here are seven sets of words that are frequently (and mistakenly) used interchangeably, along with their appropriate governing rules. Look out for them on your Sentence Correction practice questions, especially in Comparisons questions.

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1. It’s/Its. “Its” is the possessive form of the pronoun it. This is unique because usually an apostrophe is needed to show possession. Its’ is never correct. It’s is the contraction for “it is” or “it has.”

2. Whose/Who’s. “Who’s” is a contraction of “who is” or “who has.” “Whose” is the possessive form of the pronoun “who.” If “who’s” cannot logically replace “who is” or “who has.”
3. Among/Between. “Among” is used when dealing with a group of three or more. “Between” can only be used for a group of two.
4. Amount/Number. “Amount” can only refer to an uncountable noun. We can use “number” to refer to a countable noun.
5. Fewer/Less. “Less” refers to an uncountable noun, whereas “fewer” refers to a countable noun. Remember that some words can change from countable/uncountable depending on whether they are plural or singular. For example, “stone” is uncountable, but “stones” are countable.
6. Over/More Than. “Over” refers to location only and is a preposition. “More than” is only used to refer to a number or a quantity.
7. Much/Many. “Much” refers to an uncountable noun. “Many” refers to a countable one. Check out this practice GMAT question from Grockit’s database:

Records from the latter half of the 19th century show that in 1876 in Westbridge County there were 1,200 landowners, nearly 12 percent of the state landowner population, three times as many as 1852.

A   three times as many as 1852

B   three times as much as 1852

C   triple what it was in 1852

D   triple the figure for 1852

E   thrice the number that was recorded in 1852

We know that it can be three times as MANY as something countable, but “1852” is not countable, so A and B can be eliminated quickly. Ideally, we’d want an answer to say “three times as many as in 1852” but we aren’t given that option. In option C, we have an ambiguous pronoun. D and E have the same meaning, but D it much more concise and therefore correct.

8. Better/Best. This concept tests the comparative/superlative forms. Comparative forms like “better”, “more”, etc. are only used when two things are being compared. Superlative forms like “best”, “most”, etc. are used to compare three or more things.

For another great post on English proficiency for the GMAT check out this article.

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