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GMAT Sentence Correction: All-in-One Practice Question

This Sentence Correction exercise is much harder than anything you will see on test day. It relies on the following principle: namely, if a question testing some of the Sentence Correction issues listed in the Official Guide is a good addition to your practice arsenal, then a question testing all of them could be welcome variation […]

Applying “Necessary” And “Sufficient” To GMAT Assumption Questions

GMAT critical reasoning questions often ask you to identify the assumption of an argument. The first step in doing that successfully is understanding what, exactly, they mean by “assumption.” An assumption in GMAT-speak is the unstated link somewhere in the chain of evidence and conclusion. Finding the assumption means, basically, finding that gap in the […]

GMAT Quantitative: Complex Percent Questions

Really? First they tell us we can’t use a calculator, then they tell us we should average 2 minutes per question, and then they give us this: 67.5% of 812 is 15% of what number? This may seem impossible to solve in under two minutes without some outside help. In fact, there are many typical […]

GMAT Sentence Correction: Subject-Verb Agreement

Subject-verb agreement may seem very basic, but it will most certainly be tested on the GMAT sentence corrections. You can apply many of the same considerations as pronoun-antecedent agreement for these questions. For a more complete overview of subject-verb agreement let’s look at some examples below.   You must be careful to distinguish singular nouns from […]

GMAT Quantitative: Systems of Equations in Data Sufficiency

If the GMAT Quantitative section were 3 hours, all of our lives would be easier. We could take our time, work through each solution, check our choice, and sharpen our pencil before each question. Since we are not afforded this luxury, we must take back every second we can. Data Sufficiency questions are a great […]

GMAT Analysis of an Argument Prompts: Using Weaknesses

One area in which students often struggle is finding errors in the reasoning of an Analysis of an Argument prompt. People have different ideas on how to write this essay, like any other, but for our purposes here we’re going to assume that you’re writing a classic 5-paragraph essay, with an introduction, a conclusion, and […]

GMAT Sentence Correction: “Who” vs. “Whom”

There are some issues on which the GMAT sentence correction questions test for the specific preferred style of the GMAT as much as for the accepted rules of grammar. “Who” vs. “whom,” luckily, is not one of them. This is generally a straightforward issue, and is rarely tested in a complicated way. However, since even […]

Spotting Common Critical Reasoning Flaws on the GMAT

As we’ve seen, flaw questions on the GMAT follow predictable patterns: the flaw always in some way addresses either how the evidence is being interpreted to lead to the conclusion, or how the evidence was obtained. Let’s take a look at a few specific examples of common GMAT flaws.   There are actually two major […]

GMAT Sentence Correction: Semicolons

There are two absolutely central and simple rules for the use of the semicolon (“;”), and learning these will improve both your Sentence Correction skills and your writing in general — remember, in addition to getting lots of questions right on the GMAT, you will need to write actual sentences on your AWA, in your […]

GMAT AWA: Issue Essays and Sentence Structure

While there is no way to predict which topic you’ll see on test day, by following the same process and using the same template for each practice essay you write, you’ll be well-prepared. You can download a list of topics here. The topics may change, but your approach never will. Let’s look at one of […]