Bell Curves Blog

For many b-school hopefuls, we’re in

the thick of crunch time. Application deadlines are already upon us (Round 1) or right around the corner (Round 2), and people are diligently putting the finishing touches on their essays (okay, some people) and taking that final GMAT to give them the score they need. With the GMAT still “in play” for many prospective applicants, the news that GMAC was coming out with TWO new full-length practice tests for GMATPrep an unqualified boon. Well, it started out as an unqualified boon. The reality has been a little more qualified.

Many of our students have purchased the new GMATPrep exam pack to get in one or two more full-length tests before game day. Unfortunately, some ran into technical issues that they shared with us, and which we though we should share with everyone else so that they’re aware of the possibilities.

Here are a couple of the problems we’ve heard about:

Installation Issues

Difficulty installing the new Prep packs, despite following the directions to the letter. The difficulties were such that outreach to GMAC tech support were required.

Functionality/Tech Issues

A functionality issue that requires users to exit and reenter the test to access each question. Time is only lost (at least on the test) if you’re not aware what has to happen to get to the next question, but it’s surely an annoying waste of time overall.

Data Retrieval and Test Review

Naturally our team jumped at the opportunity to test drive the tests. You can read the full review here, which was largely positive. But when we tried to go back to review questions and data there wasn’t any of either to be found. Apparently if you don’t uninstall previous versions of GMATPrep you won’t be able to see the data or review the questions from the exam pack.

We contacted tech support and they told us about needing to uninstall older versions. You can read the full message from GMAC at the bottom of our review here.

So what does all this mean? Just that you should know that things

might not go smoothly. Many people experience no issues at all, but like a new rollout of any technology, there are bound to be some bugs. GMAC is surely collecting feedback and fixing them, but perhaps not in time for many people with test dates in the next few weeks. Consquently, just be aware that your testing experience may be less than ideal. If that should be the case, have a contingency plan, whether tests from other sources, or time to allow a fix or solution to be found. There’s no better testing software available than from the folks who make the test, so most people will want to get the tests, regardless of the possible tech issues.

That’s the scoop from us. Just trying to keep everyone aware of developments. Happy GMATing!

-The BC Team

With the end of one year and the start of a new one, people often take stock of what they’ve done and what they could have done. We at Bell Curves are no different, and one thing we are very pleased to have done this past year is visit many organizations and institutions to help their students understand how to prepare for standardized tests. The organizations and institutions we work with share our mission of increasing diversity in higher education, and we’re always thrilled when they invite us to speak with their members or students.

Today’s guest post is co-authored by Pauline Jennett, a Doctoral Candidate in the Educational Leadership Field. A former associate director of admissions from Harvard Business School, Ms. Jennett evaluated and interviewed domestic and international applicants. Prior to joining The MBA Exchange as an Admissions Consultant, she served as director of recruitment and admissions for non-profit career development organization Management Leadership for Tomorrow, an alumni officer for Boston University, and in sales and marketing management roles with Coca-Cola, Gillette, Procter & Gamble, and IBM. Ms. Jennett earned her MBA from The Wharton School, where she was a member of the Dean’s Graduate Student Advisory group and studied at Instituto de Estudies Superiores de la Empresa (IE). She has a master of divinity degree cum laude from Boston University, and bachelor of business administration degree from Baruch College where she was a Baruch Scholar. She has traveled to 36 countries on 5 continents and is conversant in Spanish.

In my educational leadership doctoral program, I am taking a fascinating class on Psychological Testing. In the textbook “Assessment Procedures for Counselors and Helping Professionals” (Drummond, 2010), the authors note that “despite the lack of a clear definition of intelligence, assessing intelligence typically encompasses measuring one’s ability to understand

complex ideas, adapt effectively to the environment, think abstractly, learn from experience, learn quickly, and engage in various forms of reasoning.” Any student who has ever taken the SAT, GMAT, GRE, or LSAT, among other school admissions exams, can see remnants of these factors in the testing sections and question paradigms.

Today we’re continuing our Q&A series with Bell Curves alumni who are currently pursuing or just recently finished their MBAs. Our last On the Record post was a Q&A with Goreleigh Willis. This time around Crystal Forde shares some of her insights and advice on the 1st year MBA experience.

Bell Curves fav Crystal Forde is currently in wonderful San Fransisco while doing a summer internship.

Crystal is currently an MBA candidate at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where she is focusing on Health Sector Management and Strategy. At Fuqua she is a cabinet member of the Healthcare Club and a daytime MBA blogger, and has led a Global Academic Travel Experience Trip to India and co-chaired the Admitted Students Weekend. Prior to business school she spent five and a half years in various sales roles at Pfizer and AstraZeneca, where she had a strong track record of transforming territories by increasing market share and exceeding sales goals. Crystal holds a BBA in Marketing with Honors distinction from Oakwood University.

What’s the most surprising aspect of your first year in an MBA Program?

As anyone who has taken or prepared for the GMAT realizes, there is a finite amount of general knowledge that we must do our best to master. There are however countless manifestations of questions that test this knowledge and therefore exposure to lots of questions from each general topic is highly beneficial to our preparedness for the as-of-yet-unseen manifestation we will surely encounter come test day.

In algebra, the more we practice with manipulating equations, simultaneous equations and quadratics, for example, the more likely we will be to recognize when the given information is sufficient to solve for x or not. In a geometry question, we are more apt to be able to solve for the area of a triangular region within a mixed shape if we’ve trained ourselves to spot vertical angles, similar

triangles, the diagonals of squares or whatever the case may be for the particular scenario. And on the list goes. We also know that certain topics are tested more often that others and thus, though all topics matter, spending more time on the higher frequency areas gives the most payoff come test day. The two key words here are knowledge and recognition. Those two components allow us to execute most effectively.

When I took my most recent official exam in June 2013 (click here to read Amphibious Assault, a post about my water-logged testing experience), one question caught my attention. The question caught my attention not because I got it right or wrong, but because I knew I wasn’t answering it as effectively as possible. This problem is a classic example of how the GMAT is not only a challenge to your knowledge but also about how well you recognize when the knowledge you have is being tested. The lesson for you here is that even someone like me, who has been teaching GMAT non-stop for 4 years and scores in the high-700s, will get stumped on the occasional problem. The key is to not let one problem prevent you from getting your best score, and to always use your knowledge AND recognition in concert!

So you took the GMAT and are not happy with your score.

First and foremost, you should not be feeling depressed by your score, even if that score is not what you wanted or what you expected. The GMAT is often difficult to do well on. Take the next few days to assess what you did to prepare, whether you did as much as you could or should have, and how you could have done more to ensure you have the score you wanted. Assess whether the course you took or tutor you worked with was really in line with your learning style and whether you should have recognized that earlier and done something to make the course or tutoring more effective. Finally, stop beating yourself up if you did not get what you wanted or expected. It often takes a couple stabs at the test before you settle down enough to achieve your best score. To provide you some perspective, the arithmetic mean (a little GMAT speak for you) score is 544 and 78% of test takers score below 650, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council.

The human brain is a miraculous organ. Neurons and synapses firing  so quickly, processing so much in the tiniest fractions of a second that even the most powerful of computers still have not matched its complex computing capability (even if IBM’s Watson can kick the best human butt at chess and Jeopardy). Together with your experience, your brain can be a powerful tool to avoid traps and tricks on the GMAT. That is, if you let it.

I tutor and teach and counsel hundreds of GMAT test-takers every year. And I’m consistently amazed by how often students ignore “warning signs” their brains are frantically trying to flag. I call these warning signs “mind bumps.” A mind bump occurs whenever you read something that, at first or second glance, strikes you as strange, odd, or nonsensical. Given that they’re almost always rooted in reading (just reading, not Reading Comprehension per se), these mind bumps are ubiquitous on the GMAT, occurring with enough regularity on both the Quant and Verbal that they should be used as a valuable tool to improve your score.

Some of the more difficult Sentence Correction questions for test-takers are those that have a lot words in the underlined portion, which can create confusion and indecisiveness. The difficulty can be compounded when the underlined portion doesn’t seem to have any obvious errors but nevertheless “sounds” bad. SC questions that have these characteristics can, however, be better managed with the right approach. Let’s take a look at an example and then outline how to tackle it:

Questions that involve the summation formula, whether on their own or one component of a more complicated problem, often trip test-takers up for the simplest of reasons: figuring out “how many items” are in the set can sometimes prove tricky. One way to avoid the headache of trying to remember the rule for each different kind of limitation (consecutive even/odd/other, inclusive vs. exclusive, whether the set starts/ends with an even/odd), is to simply employ a strategy that will quickly and consistently allow you to determine the number of items in the set: patterns.

Before we delve into how, let’s review the summation formula and when it’s used. The summation formula:

∑ = (# of Numbers in the Set)(Largest Number + Smallest Number)/2