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Bell Curves Blog
Christmas Miracle
Every year about this time I get a few Christmas Miracle phone calls. The callers don’t see it that way, but that’s in essence what the calls are. These calls (or sometimes emails) usually start rolling in around mid-December, when people are nearing crunch time for second round b-school application cycles and frantic that their GMAT scores haven’t progressed to a point they feel will give them a reasonable shot at their schools of interest. Let’s take a look at the particulars of a couple such cases from this month.
Caller 1: We’ll call her Nunya Biznez
The first call was from a young woman who wanted to know how I could help her “get over the hump” and reach a GMAT score that would improve her chances of getting into the schools of her dreams. As I commonly do, I asked her to email me the relevant data (target schools, GMAT score history, GPA, etc.) so that I can be a bit more informed for the conversation. Here is what I received: (more…)
The PHD Project’s 1000th PhD and 15th Anniversary
As I’ve done the last 5 years or so, this past November I went to Chicago to speak at the PhD Project Annual conference. Each year this organization inspires and fascinates me. Its mission is profound and its reach is broad. While some elements were “business as usual” the event brought together about 400 potential doctoral candidates from around the country (and indirectly the globe) Â there were two significant milestones:Â the 15th year of the program and the 1000th doctoral candidate.
For anyone considering a PhD in business it’s a must that you check out this program!
My small contribution to the program was a presentation on how to prepare for the GMAT.
To Guess or Not To Guess on the GMAT?
A few weeks back we blogged about the latest news from GMAC as presented during their Test Prep Summit. One of the topics of discussion involved how unanswered questions at the end of the Quant or Verbal Section negatively impacted scores. The bottom line was this: the more questions you left unanswered at the end of the section, the lower your score was.
Turns out, there’s just a little bit more to the story. It’s important to take note of so you can maximize your score by understanding the best approach for you, and how end-of-test outcomes affect overall results.
I recently reviewed a GMAC-published research report (Talento-Miller and Guo) that closely examined the effect of guessing vs. omission on computer adaptive tests. For those of you with an aversion to statistics and tables and charts, this wasn’t a document you’d want to spend much time with. I battled through, so here’s the low-down from the research: (more…)
GMAT Practice Tests
Often, confusion exists about the uses and benefits of practice tests, and the role of practice tests in preparing for the GMAT. Let’s try and offer some clarity to the situation:
Practice Tests
Practice tests are evaluative tools and should be used as such. They are NOT learning tools. You use tests to asses what you have learned and your ability to apply that learning under conditions as similar to the real exam as you can make them. As such you should only be taking practice tests at most once per week (unless you are not working), and should seek to simulate the conditions of the actual test as much as possible when doing so (especially in the last few weeks before the real exam). In the larger preparation picture, you should take a practice test at the very beginning of your preparations to establish a baseline and determine your areas of strength and weakness. After that, it would be advisable to hold off on doing another practice test until you’ve had a chance to do some content review and focused, small-scale practice. Once you’ve gotten a sizable chunk of material and practice behind you, you should start incorporating full-length practice tests into your preparation regiment.
Key points for simulating practice tests: (more…)