Since of course you’re doing the College Board QOTD every day, you should focus on learning as much as you can from doing those questions. Prepping for the SAT is not just about learning rules and facts, but it’s also about learning what the SAT likes and what the SAT tests. Knowing what the SAT will test most frequently will give you an edge and make you more efficient on the test.

The Question of the Day from June 14^th, 2013 was a great example of a common rule the SAT loves to test: modifiers! If you understand modifier rules, you’ll easily be able to pick up 4 – 8 questions every test, and that could translate to 80 more points for your Writing score.

So here’s the rundown on modifiers:

1. Descriptive phrases indicate modifiers are probably being tested (especially descriptive phrases at the beginning of the sentence).

2. Modifiers must be placed as close as possible to what they actually describe.

Example: Famous for his role in Spike Lee’s He Got Game, Ray Allen’s acting skill is far surpassed by his amazing jump shooting.

In the above sentence “Famous … Game” is the descriptive phrase that should be describing a person since only people can play a role. However, what follows the phrase is Ray Allen’s acting skill, which would indicate that the phrase is actually (and incorrectly) describing his skill rather than the man himself.

If you understand how modifiers are tested and know what to look for, you’ll be able to ace questions like the one above. Go ahead and give it a try and let’s hope you land in the 52% that got it correct!

Best of luck on your SAT, and if you need help preparing for the test check out Bell Curves courses and tutoring, sat.bellcurves.com.

Image by Robert S. Donovan on Flickr

Editor’s Note: Bell Curves periodically enlists our teachers to take the official GMAT to keep themselves sharp, help them better inform their students about current testing trends and procedures, and provide additional insight for materials development and instruction. Recently, one of our teachers did just that. Today’s post comes from Hany ElDiwany, one of our NYC-based instructors. Below, he provides some insights on overcoming different hurdles to make your GMAT test day experience a success. Keep an eye out for his next post discussing some keen insights gleaned from a particularly challenging Quant question he saw.

Friday, June 7th, 2013, the date I had scheduled for my GMAT exam, was an incredibly rainy day in New York City. Despite breaking down and finally buying one of those high quality umbrellas that don’t buckle and break after the first gust of wind (this after almost five years of living a predominantly pedestrian lifestyle and being exposed to the elements on a daily basis) , my shoes, socks and bottom of my pants were nonetheless thoroughly soaked by the time I reached the exam center in mid-town Manhattan. I guess sometimes rain just comes at you sideways and, well, maybe the can of leather waterproofer I used to spray my shoes was a lemon.

I preface my experience with this because, if you have ever suffered from soggy-sock syndrome, you can empathize with the condition I was in when I sat to take the test. Moreover, this was not a mere pit stop on my way home but, rather, four hours of sitting at a desk without any opportunity to change into drier clothing.

But there I was. It was, at that point, mind over matter. And that’s the reality of the exam, after all. Given the experience, it’s probably an ideal time to point out a valuable testing insight: Accept the wild cards.

Prepare all you can to be your most relaxed, stress-free and sharpest self the day of the exam. But, while it is important to control these stress factors to the best of our ability, life does throw a wild card at us sometimes and we just have to roll with it. To this end, learn to expect the unexpected and go in with an attitude of extreme tolerance. Whether it’s wet feet, a smelly neighbor, bad climate control or the like, it’s not necessarily going to be exactly how we hoped it would. You can still show your best stuff under less than ideal conditions.

The first section of the test, as usual, was the Analysis of an Argument Essay. I took up most of the thirty minutes for this section. I’ve nothing substantial to report except that I recognized this time around that most of the tools I used to formulate my answer came from my knowledge of assumption-based arguments, which comprise about 20% of the verbal section.

Feet still wet. I can feel my toes turning into prunes.

Next came the newest section of the test – Integrated Reasoning. Again, I took up the whole thirty minutes for this section, though finished feeling fairly confident. As this section has caused a lot of concern amongst prospective test takers, I’d like to share some insights here too: Integrated Reasoning? Know your Quant and Verbal.

Taking the test confirmed once again that 95% of what is needed to perform well on this section comes from the quantitative and verbal sections of the exam. The remainder is the ability to analyze graphics. Reading the information carefully and applying the skills learned to answer other parts of the test is what this really came down to. I’d like to also add that, at present, the significance of this section is still being defined, so this should NOT be a major source of worry for anyone.

My first eight minute break. I chose to get up and walk to the bathroom. Yup, my lower extremities were still no drier than when I had walked into the exam center one and a half hours prior. What to do? Be a master of my environment is what my yoga gurus would tell me. Alrighty then. Let’s do this.

Ahh, the beloved quantitative section. I am a math geek at heart so this was the section I was most looking forward to taking on. First four questions seemed quite manageable. Then I got a data sufficiency question that combined negative exponents and inequalities in a way that had me really racking my brain. I went through it as methodically as possible and picked the answer I arrived at with reasonable confidence.

Now we’ve all learned that this is a computer adaptive exam, meaning that a right answer begets us a harder question, whereas a wrong answer begets us an easier one. After I answered this moderately challenging question, I received what I thought was an easier question to follow. At that point, a voice in my head suggested that I MUST have answered the previous question incorrectly in order to encounter its apparently straightforward successor.

“Stop right there” I said to myself. It was imperative for me to check the impulse to analyze my first few questions. Doing so often undermines test-takers’ confidence and provides ample room for distraction. There’s an important take away here from my own experience: Don’t over-analyze computer adaptive difficulty fluctuation.

On an intellectual level, the reason for difficulty changes not necessarily matching our expectations  is simply that our strengths may not vary across all topics in the same way that the mean strengths vary across all topics. Thus, the exam is simply giving a harder question based on this larger sample size and not its assessment of your particular specific strengths and weaknesses – which is quite difficult to resolve. All the test has learned about you is how you’ve answered a handful of questions.

But forget the intellectual for a second. The point is it doesn’t matter. It’s water under the bridge. That self-speak may be great in other capacities, but right now the sole purpose is to rock that test to the best of your ability. There’s no direction to move in but forward.

“Okay brain,” I said to myself, “let’s focus on the questions here and stop pondering the inner workings of the GMAT command center.”

There were two more questions of note that had me feeling rather challenged. One was a problem solving question that had me multiplying two terms, one including a radical within a radical where none of the radicals were perfect squares (I cover some key insights from this question in this post). The other, towards the very end of the section, had to do with the plot of two circles on a coordinate plane and the equation of a line that formed from the intersection of these two circles at exactly two points. By this time, my mental stamina was wavering a bit. I guessed. Section complete.

Break Number Two. What wet feet? I’m in the zone now. It doesn’t matter anymore. This is the home stretch. Soon I’ll be warm and dry inside my home. A quick bathroom stop and a cup of water and back I go.

Finally, 75 minutes of verbal begins. It was this section of the test where I most felt that the strategies I’d been learning, and teaching, over the past four years really helped me the most. After seeing a bazillion critical reasoning questions, I’ve learned enough of their sneaky methods of attack that what would have evaded my radar on past examinations became far more plain for me to see. (Language shifts really come to mind here.) Ditto on the reading comprehension section. The sentence correction questions also came to me with a higher sense of surety. Sure, there were a couple of doozies throughout these sections. But on these, I was usually able to narrow down to the best choices, commit to one and move on.

Finished. I see my unofficial score. I got a 770 – 51 quant and 44 verbal. I’m mostly pleased.

I walk outside the exam center and that rain is still coming down like there’s no tomorrow. One last drenching before I get to dry off. But somehow during that four hour period, I’d adapted to an amphibious existence and such things as water no longer seemed a nuisance. I think a swim to my home sounds rather nice actually. Now if I only had a pair of flippers…

For information on Bell Curves courses or tutoring that could help you take the next step in your GMAT score, visit us at gmat.bellcurves.com.

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.

What this should tell you is that you are not that unique in your struggles. You should also take heart from how much you’ve improved from your initial GMAT score or your initial diagnostic test. If you’ve improved, it shows that you are moving in the right direction and all you need to do is figure out what steps you need to take to get over the final hurdles. It also tells you that you can improve, though it might not have happened as quickly as you would like. The only steps left are to determine how to make that improvement happen.

You should critically assess what influenced your score improvements (or lack thereof).

If you took a course and saw good improvements you should consider a private tutor. If your results were disappointing, you should consider whether the teaching style or philosophy of the company was the problem, whether you did not commit to following the approach, or whether you were not able to complete the work due to work or family concerns. If the problem was the teaching style or philosophy then it is best to look into other course providers. If the problem was with your work then you haven’t really taken a course and you should take one when you have the time to dedicate to the work.

If you hired a tutor and saw a good increase in your score, you should assess whether that tutor can take you further or whether you need a new voice. If you work well with that tutor and he or she offers the resources and information to take you further, then you should be working with them. If you didn’t find the tutor effective or felt you exhausted the resources and materials he or she had to offer, then you should look for a new tutor or a course.

If you did self-study and you saw a great improvement you should look into tutoring. If you saw little or no gain then you should get into a course or hire a tutor as soon as possible.

The GMAT is among the most competitive entrance exams given for post-graduate programs and nobody would dispute that the test has become one of the biggest factors for gaining admission to b-school. By maximizing each learning opportunity, you can realize your highest potential GMAT score and bring yourself closer to your dream schools.

For information on Bell Curves courses or tutoring that could help you take the next step in your GMAT score, visit us at gmat.bellcurves.com.

Last year we posted several Q&As with former Bell Curves students (Lauren Sickles, Gabe Perez, Rhomaro Powell, Denitresse Burns, and Radina Russell) in which they shared their experiences in business school and how it benefited their careers. The insights were well-received, so we decided to conduct a few more with a slightly different focus. This time around we were interested in hearing from MBAs that recently completed their first year.

For our first offering in this installment, Goreleigh Willis shares his experiences and insights.

Prior to pursuing his MBA at Cornell University’s Johnson School, Goreleigh was an Associate with the Private Bank at J.P. Morgan in New York City. For five years, he worked with families to manage their wealth, as a Banker Analyst, and more recently as a Trust Officer. Previously, he spent four years in management consulting within the firm. At Johnson, Goreleigh is a Vice President of the Old Ezra Finance Club. He is also the Vice President of Alumni Affairs for the Black Graduate Business Association and a Vice President of the Johnson Soccer Club. Goreleigh will be an investment banking Associate at Lazard this summer.

Goreleigh holds a B.A. in Economics and Political Science with Honors distinction from Swarthmore College.

What was the most surprising aspect of your first year in an MBA Program?
The most surprising thing for me was the pace of Johnson. Many of the core courses are 8 weeks long, so there is no time to fall behind.  Even though I heard from the second year students beforehand, it was still a challenge to balance academic work with recruiting. Efficient time management is crucial!

If you had to tell prospective MBAs one thing about your school or about business school, what would be it?
Johnson is one of the best places in the country to go if you have a focused career plan. The immersion programs are fantastic and have far exceeded my expectations.

What’s the best way to get ready for the rigors of business school?
The more you can focus your career plans early, the better. If you have time to review accounting and finance before starting school, I would recommend it. You may have taken these courses in college, but business school teaches them in more depth and at a much faster pace. If you haven’t taken them, enroll in undergraduate level courses at a local college – you won’t regret it! If anything, you may be able to test out of certain core classes. Exempting core classes allows you the flexibility to further tailor your MBA program to your needs.

Did preparing for and taking the GMAT get you ready to tackle your classes?
Absolutely. All business school programs require the same base knowledge obtained from GMAT preparation. GMAT preparation forces you to return to serious study mode, which is essential to acclimating to a rigorous academic environment. Balancing your GMAT study with work and other activities is a preview of the time management challenges you will experience during business school.

For more information on how Bell Curves courses and tutoring could help you maximize your GMAT score to improve your graduate business school prospects, visit us at gmat.bellcurves.com.

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.

To illustrate what I mean, let me first offer an analogy (its long, so maybe it’s more a conceit). You’re on a first date. You’ve been on countless dates before this one, and out in social settings with others. Those experiences have already primed you for what to expect. Your date kicks off. You’re drinking. You’re eating. You’re both having a good time. Out of nowhere, the person you’re with belches. And he/she doesn’t say ‘excuse me’ afterwards. Just keeps on keeping on as though nothing happened. Now, whether you think this okay or not, your EXPERIENCE tells you this is a little out of the ordinary. Does it mean you should end the date right there? No. Does it mean you should propose marriage? Absolutely, positively not. But…it does mean that in all likelihood you’re going to be on the lookout to see if that burp was an anomaly, or an indication of things to come. That burp was the first date equivalent of a GMAT (or GRE) mind bump.

If you’ve been prepping and practicing for the GMAT, your experience with it, coupled with the years and years and years of reading and doing math elsewhere in your life, has primed your brain to rather quickly makes sense of words on a page or screen. If at any point your brain balks at what it’s reading, that’s an alarm you should heed. Chances are the words or concepts are presented in such a way that diverges from what your brain expected, and this is a clue that you should slow down and pay very close attention to understanding exactly what is being said. Here’s an example:

For all positive integers x, the function g(x) is defined as the number of positive integers less than x that each share exactly one factor with x. What is g(y) if y is a prime number?

(A) 1

(B) 2

(C) y – 1

(D) y – 2

(E) (y – 1)\2

Many people that read this question the first time (and even the second) experience a mind bump. The concepts seem familiar enough , but the phrasing makes you go ‘huh?’ For those that heed the mind bump and dig in to understand what was required, they have a good chance of getting this question correct. For those who ignore the mind bump often solve for the wrong thing and get the question wrong (the correct answer is at the end of the post).

So, when you’re reading something on the test, whether a quant problem or a verbal question, be alert to any of the following symptoms:

a) head shaking (your own)

b) confusion/disorientation/vertigo

c) leaning closer to the screen (not because you can’t see, but because what you just read doesn’t seem to make any sense)

d) mumbling to yourself

e) bleeding from the eyes and/or ears

Okay, so that last one is a touch of hyperbole, but the rest of them are all possible symptoms of a mind bump in progress. Keep in mind that we’re not talking about questions that are super difficult, or necessarily those that are just complex. We’re talking about words/phrases/sentences that at first glance seem pretty straight forward, but after reading them you get one of those “huh” or “wtf” moments. Also know that the mind bump doesn’t pertain to most questions, and won’t arise with most questions (and no, this isn’t just a GMAT expert talking, this is for all levels of test-taker). Most questions, whether hard or not, you read them and at least understand what they’re saying (even if you’re not sure how to do it). Your mind will often realize that the hard ones are hard and the easy ones are easy and you (and your brain) act accordingly. It’s the ones that have a mind bump, that seem straightforward but nevertheless give us pause that we’re talking about. And usually, if we heed the mind bump, these are questions that we can and should get correct!

I cannot tell you how often I’ve sat with students reviewing questions, and asked them on certain ones whether, when reading, they didn’t feel weird. Whether a sort of bump in the road occurred. When they say ‘yes’, I ask them if they did anything differently. Usually the answer is no. That’s a mind bump question! They just got mind-bumped!

So, what should you do in a mind bump situation? Well…

1) Heed the bump.

2) Slow down.

3) Re-read.

4) Articulate (then analyze) what’s strange about the situation.

5) Proceed to answer.

As anyone who’s prepared for or taken the GMAT knows, it’s one big mind game. Give your mind a break, and your score a boost: heed the bump!

The answer to the example question is…C.

I’m always stunned by the lack of clarity that people have about what test prep is and what test prep isn’t. Many people seem to believe that test preparation involves sprinkling pixie dust on a test-taker and waiting for the score to soar to new heights. Think about how often you’ve heard of “tricks” to “beat the test.” Now don’t get me wrong, I know it’s largely the test preparation industry that sold the nation this bill of goods (thanks Joe Bloggs), but the impact of this thinking is being compounded by the current atmosphere in education of over-testing, misuse of testing, and over-reliance on test results. This post will clarify “once and for all” what test prep is and what it isn’t. I hope after this post that I’ll never again hear the phrase “just a few tricks” combined with “get me a great score.”

“I just need a few tricks to boost my score.”

What test are we talking about?

First, let’s clarify what we’re talking about when I say test. I mean standardized admissions tests. These tests are very different from tests in class by the teacher and even from standardized statewide tests (which are generally “achievement” tests). Admissions tests are most often the target of those who hope for Tinkerbell’s Pixie Dust cures or the magical elixir of score improvements.

Admissions tests of this type (and there are a lot of them: SSAT, ISEE, TASC, COOP, SHSAT, SAT, PSAT, PLAN, ACT, GRE, GMAT, LSAT, and even the MCAT) are in a category by themselves with a unique purpose and thus specific predilections and foibles. Admissions tests are not primarily designed to show what you learned. Instead, they are designed to (help?) predict how well you’ll do in some future educational space (the SAT, for example, is supposed to predict FIRST YEAR COLLEGE performance). This means they are by nature going to be different than the test given in school. This also raises questions about exactly what these tests show (they do show and predict something), and how reliable that information is, but that’s a different post.

What is test preparation? 

So now that we know a bit about what we are dealing with, we have to learn how to deal with it. Test preparation is the act of preparing for a test. That’s it. Shocking, I know. Most people would give you that answer and, unfortunately not much more. Or you may get the ubiquitous answer that test prep is “learning the tricks of the test.” However, those answers, while correct, are too vague, overvalued, and generally unhelpful (except for marketing a test prep business, in which case they are awesome!). So let me break it down for you, with specificity, nuance, and accuracy.

Test preparation is (in no particular order):

1. Gaining familiarity with the directions, structure, question types, and timing of the test in order to build comfort and relieve anxiety on test day.
2. Learning to use the specific patterns and tendencies of the test in order to answer questions more quickly.
3. Reviewing the content that will be tested on the specific exam, in the way and to the extent it will be tested.
4. Developing content knowledge to ensure that the test-taker knows all of the information tested and the exceptions to and nuances of rules that usually lead to mistakes.
5. Learning how the specific test will present the information it tests, from wording of the question to level of subtlety to number of steps necessary to solve a problem.
6. Learning personal habits and tendencies so you can control, mitigate, and prevent unnecessary mistakes during a test.

How much of the above list do you ever hear about? How many of those items do you hear in the news? In the marketing materials of test prep companies? Probably not much. It’s just not sexy to say, “our test prep strategy is to teach you stuff you should have learned in ways you didn’t learn it.” But that’s often what test prep is. It’s teaching. It’s teaching rules, formulas, and facts that the test-taker should have already been exposed to and then teach them the way it will be tested that they have probably not learned, and if you’ve never learned those things than it’s teaching you the things you didn’t learn. It’s most certainly not “teaching a few tricks,” or if it is than those few tricks will probably give you just a few points. Doubt me? Then give the following SAT-ish question a try:

Many cultures seek to —- morals to their young by using apologues and parables .

 

(A) vitiate

(B) defenestrate

(C) inculcate

(D) dupe

(E) cully

When you consider why you might not have gotten the correct answer (which is the third letter of the alphabet, oh and the question was intentionally written with harder vocab that the SAT normally uses), do you think it was due to some trick? Due to timing? Is it the multiple choice nature? Probably not. If you knew the meaning of all those words you’d probably get it right. Now clearly there are things you can do to improve your guess, but it would still be a guess. “Tricks” will often only allow you to make a better than 1 in 5 guess and for most people a 1 in 4 or 1 in 3 guess isn’t going to improve their score much (especially on a test like the SAT that specifically has a “guessing equalizer” built into the scoring).

The key to test preparation is figuring out what skills or knowledge the test-taker lacks and developing those skills, not measured against what you believe a student should be (so let’s not argue whether you think these tests should exist or are valued), but rather measured against a specific test and it’s limited knowledge base. The key to many of these tests is preparing, and preparing properly.

In parting I’ll leave you with this analogy.

Think of standardized tests as a round of competition on Dancing with the Stars. We’ve been dancing all our lives and some of us do it better than others. Most people will go on to live highly productive lives without learning to properly do an Argentine Tango, but if you want to go on Dancing with the Stars, you better learn to tango. And if you want to learn to tango so that the judges will call it a tango and give you high points for the tango, you better get a coach to prepare you. Not a person who’ll teach you what they think the tango is or what your parents have said the tango is, but for what the judges say the tango is. If you aren’t able to learn the tango it doesn’t make you a worse person or maybe not even a bad dancer, but it will probably keep you off of Dancing with the Stars.

Good luck and good prepping!

ACT is to SAT as Wedges is to Fries

In our continuing ACT vs SAT series (if you’ve not been following you might want to click this link and check out the others), we break down the difference in pacing on the two tests. We’ll help you make sense of pacing and timing on the SAT versus the ACT. You’ve probably already read or heard that the ACT is a faster test than the SAT, and we’re here to give that a little more context and help you figure out what that means to you.

Timing

When people say “The ACT is a faster test” what they really mean is that the ACT overall allots less time per question.  This means that it generally feels more like you are rushing headlong down a hill while taking the test. Let’s check that out a bit more numerically. Below is a breakdown of the time per question for each section. We’ve lumped all multiple choice questions for the SAT together in one block to make the comparison easier. Here’s what it looks like:

As you can see, the SAT gives quite a bit more time per question than the ACT does. This is probably even more drastic than it appears in Reading because on the SAT there are Sentence Completion questions (which take very little time) and Short Passages to go with the Long Reading passages, while on the ACT there are only long passages for all questions. In the Writing section, it’s a similar situation. ACT English questions generally have more words to read than do SAT Writing questions. If you’re a student who tends to work slowly but accurately, the SAT would probably be a better test for you. If you’re a quick confident student, then you should definitely give the ACT strong consideration.

Endurance

Another factor that will impact your SAT vs ACT test-taking experience is the endurance factor. The ACT has fewer sections, but each one is longer than any individual SAT section. If you have trouble concentrating for extended periods of time, you might prefer the SAT since its sections are a maximum of 25 minutes. Also, if you prefer variety, the SAT is probably for you, since it alternates back and forth between topics and you are not likely to be required to sit for an hour looking at the same kinds of questions.

ACT Structure

The ACT is a very rigid and predictable test. Its sections will always be in the same order.

SAT Structure

SAT sections are not only shorter than the ACT, but they are also in a less consistent order. In each grey area they will switch the order from one test to the next. So while on the example below the first section is math, this will not always be the case. For example, Section 2 could be a 35 question Writing section. The only predictable things about SAT section order is that the Essay will be first and the 10-minute Writing section will be last.

A student who is more comfortable with a predictable test would probably prefer the ACT. You should also see that the ACT will require you to focus more on the same topic for longer and thus might be harder to concentrate on.

Hopefully this helps you make this important choice. If you have questions, we’d love to hear from you, so just send an email to support at bellcurves.com and we’ll get right back to you. You can also click here and sign up for one of our free workshops and learn more about preparing for the ACT and SAT.

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:

Recent evidence has suggested that when communicating, people who have been deaf from birth and have consequently never heard anyone speak nevertheless utilize vocal cord muscles just as regularly and in the same manner as non-deaf individuals do, and that they will use vocal cord muscles even when communicating with another deaf person.

(A) have consequently never heard anyone speak nevertheless utilize vocal cord muscles just as regularly and in the same manner as non-deaf individuals do, and that

(B) have consequently never heard anyone speak but nevertheless utilize vocal cord muscles just as regularly and in the same manner that non-deaf individuals do, and

(C) have consequently never heard anyone speak, that they nevertheless utilize vocal cord muscles just as regularly and in the same manner as non-deaf individuals do, and

(D) consequently they never heard anyone speak, but nevertheless they utilize vocal cord muscles just as regularly and in the same manner that non-deaf individuals do, and that

(E) consequently they never heard anyone speak nevertheless utilize vocal cord muscles just as regularly and in the same manner that non-deaf individuals do, and

Now, you may be looking at this question and thinking, “this is easy” or that you see the correct answer. If so, kudos! Not every question is difficult for everyone, but for many people this question would present a challenge for a few reasons:

• Lots of words/long underlined portion
• The relatively uncommon “nevertheless”
• The awkward construction of “never…nevertheless” and “just as regularly and in the same manner as…”
• The actual content/subject matter of the sentence

For these reasons, and perhaps others, test-takers might read this three or four times to wrap their head around it. One thing that happens in questions like this is that with so much going on its hard to figure out where to start. Usually, when tackling SC you want to identify an error in the underlined portion, make a determination on what’s wrong, and then get to POE lickety-split (yes, I just used the word lickety-split). If you’re looking and looking and feeling overwhelmed to the point of inaction, here are some strategies to get moving:

1. Narrow your focus – instead of looking at the underlined portion in total, look for discrete recognizable error types among its parts. In the above example. looking at specific pieces reveals “do, and that” near the end, which is indicative of a list. Also, “just as…” should be a dead giveaway for a comparison. Both lists and comparisons are parallelism error types very common on the GMAT.
2. Look beyond just the underlined portion – if you focus too closely on the underlined portion, you may have missed that it actually starts with the second half of a list (“people who have been deaf from birth AND have consequently…”)
3. Don’t see anything wrong? Don’t despair – remember that about 1/5 of all SC questions are right as written. Your goal is to always use your knowledge to eliminate answer choices; whether one of those choices happen to be (A) is irrelevant.
4. Still stuck? Compare the answer choices. When you compare them either start with an obvious difference that you’re sure of (like in the example, where A, B, and C start with “have consequently” and D and E start with “consequently”) or just compare the choices 2 at a time and identify differences you can address with certainty.

So, back to our example. For our purposes here, we’re going assume that we’re still stuck on the long and confusing underlined portion, and tackle this example with strategy 4) from above. Let’s compare the answer choices a pair at a time.

Compare A to B

Differences: “nevertheless” vs “but nevertheless”; “just as…as” vs “just as…that”; “and that” vs “and”

Problems: “but nevertheless” is redundant; “just as…that” is not the correct construction for the comparison; “and” does not provide a parallel construction to end the list.

Winner: A

Compare A to C

Differences: “nevertheless” vs “, that they nevertheless”; “and that” vs “and”

Problems: The construction “, that they nevertheless” makes the sentence and meaning less clear.

Winner: A

Compare A to D

Differences: “have consequently” vs “consequently they”; “nevertheless” vs “but nevertheless they”; “just as…as” vs “just as…that”

Problems: “consequently they” creates a parallelism issue for the list; “but nevertheless they” also creates a parallelism issue and is redundant;

Winner: A

Compare A to E

Differences: “have consequently” vs “consequently they”; “just as…as” vs “just as…that”; “and that” vs “and”

Problems: take your pick.

Winner: A

As you can see, the focused pair-by-pair comparison gives us a way to more easily identify and deal with differences. If you focus on using what you know is wrong to eliminate choices you can feel good about choosing A, even though it probably “sounded” a bit weird at the beginning (and was confusing to boot). A few more important strategy points to take a away from this question:

Don’t Force It - often people find a difference and force themselves to make a choice based on it. Why? In each of these instances, there were multiple differences between the pairs of answer choices. Any one of them could be used to make the decision. If you can’t explain or don’t understand a particular difference, use another one.

Sometimes Grammar, Sometimes Not - Don’t feel like you always need to have clearly articulated grammar explanations for choosing one over the other. GMAT sentence correction is NOT a grammar test. Yes, it uses grammar as the framework, but it’s not a grammar test. Grammar is expansive, fickle, and rife with exceptions to rules. Very few people know enough about grammar to make all their decisions based on that. When you’ve gotten rid of all the answer choices you can based on rules you’re sure of, don’t try to talk your way into a making up rules for things you don’t know the grammar on. Instead, use meaning and clarity to make your choice.

Meaning – the correct answer should offer the most logical meaning. The most basic example of this rule is modifiers, which are not grammatically wrong but are logically unsound. If you can’t tell which choice is most logical than go with the one that’s closest to the original in meaning.

Clarity – the correct answer is the one that most clearly and logically expresses the thoughts of the author.

Very often at the end of SC POE, the “soft skills” (clarity and meaning) are far more effective than trying to engineer a grammatical reason for choosing one choice over the other. From our question above, a good example presents in nearly every comparison between two choices. There was a place where the differences could be explained by grammar, or you could look closely and see that, you know what, one of these choices does what its supposed to do more clearly than the other. For example, in comparing A to C, maybe you could provide a grammar reason for why “nevertheless” is better than “, that they nevertheless.” If not, ask yourself which one says what the sentence intends most clearly. The answer? A.

Again, use the rules where and when you can, but if you don’t know rules for the difference you’re looking at, give meaning and clarity a shot.

We hope that helps you over the hump on your SC.

Best of Luck,

-The BC team

If you need more advanced insights on SC, consider joining one of our classes or enlisting the help of one of our excellent tutors. They can show you all these and much, much more.

Darth SAT vs Darth ACT

In our continuing quest to put to rest the fruitless debate between the two college entry behemoths, we give you the definitive answer to which test you should take.

After all talk is over and after all the pros and cons have been listed, the one and only difference you need to worry about is which test you do better on!

No matter what the group statistics imply, no matter what your friends have done, no matter who was admitted with which scores last year, all that matters is which test provides you the best opportunity to demonstrate to colleges your ability to do well at their school.

How to find out which you’ll do better on

The best way to figure out which test you’ll do better on is to take a full length official practice test of each. I know it sucks and is a lot of work but there is no better way to find out how you’ll perform. The good news is that you can do it for free. The College Board posts a PDF of a practice test you can download here and ACT puts a free one in the registration booklet which can be downloaded here. You can also get a free registration booklet in the college office of most high schools.

If you really can’t bring yourself to take a full test and you’ve taken the PSAT, you can just take the ACT and compare your ACT score to your PSAT score (or do the same with the PLAN and the SAT). But remember that the PSAT and the PLAN are not exactly the same as their “older brother” tests, which makes the comparison a little more dubious.

Also remember to try to simulate the testing environment as much as possible or even go somewhere and have the test proctored if you can (if you’re in NYC you can arrange to come to our office).
 
How to compare the ACT and SAT

Comparing the tests should be a pretty simple process. All you need has already been provided for you in this post. Let’s just put the steps together:

1. Wake up early one weekend morning (hopefully in the summer before your junior year) and take that full length ACT you downloaded. Write down your scores. (You should go back to bed at that point).

2. Wake up early a week or two later and take your full length downloaded SAT. Now you know how you did on each test and all that remains to do is compare them.

3. To compare the tests, just click here to view the “concordance” chart developed by the makers of the test themselves.

When you compare the scores, look at them in terms of the test you know best. Since we’re based in NYC, we’ll look at SAT numbers. My ACT score is 1030 and my SAT score is 950. This tells me that if I do no additional preparation, I can “expect” to do 80 points better on the ACT and that the ACT is clearly the “better” test for me.

Decision made! Prep for and take the ACT.
 
Other factors to think about

Since its not always that cut and dry, we do have to point out a few things to consider:

1. If your scores are less than 50 points apart on the two tests, you don’t really have a performance difference. You should just take the test you like better and feel more comfortable with.

2. If you have no access to prep. Some areas still only have prep for one of the two tests available (or available in your budget). It’s usually better to go with the test you can get help prepping for, unless you have more than 200 points difference between your two scores. If we assume that you’ll get about 50 – 100 points out of a typical SAT prep class (or 120 – 180 from one of ours), then if your initial SAT score is 100 points lower than your initial ACT score, I’d still plan to take the SAT (along with the prep).

3.  If you have to take a particular test anyway, then just prep for and take that test. Some school districts give one of the tests to all high school juniors and seniors free of charge and during the school day. If your school district does this, it will be more convenient to just take the test the school gives.

4. Finally, if you are applying to schools that require SAT Subject Tests, you might be better off taking the ACT. Some of those schools waive the subject tests requirements if you take the ACT.

Good luck!

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

 The formula is used to quickly calculate the sum of a relatively large set of consecutive integers. It is important to note that the formula only works for consecutive numbers, and that you need to be able to determine the total number of numbers for which you’ll be finding the sum.

That calculation, the number of numbers in the set, is usually the trickiest part. I’ve seen students try to memorize a specific rule for each different kind of permutation that can arise. There’s a better, more consistent way:

1. Use a much smaller, though representative set.
2. Count the number of items that would be included based on the parameters of the problem.
3. Create a simple formula or equation using the first and last numbers in your small set (usually some combination of subtraction, division, and addition/subtraction) that can be applied to the larger set.
4. Apply to larger set.

Let’s use an example to see how it would work:

If p is the sum of all the even integers between 91 and 499, what is p?

To solve this question using the summation formula we would need to know how many even integers there are between 91 and 499.

To determine this we’ll figure out a quick, easy formula using a smaller representative set.

1. The parameters in the question are two odd numbers. So, let’s say 1 to 9.
2. We need all the even numbers, which would be 2, 4, 6, and 8. So 4 numbers in total.
3. Using the end numbers 1 and 9 we could take the difference and divide by two to get the number of numbers in the set. 9 – 1 = 8  8/2 = 4.
4. Doing the same with the original end numbers we get 499 – 91 = 408  408/2 = 204. Thus, our original set has 204 numbers in it. We can now use this in the summation formula to determine the sum.

This method is effective for any situation whereby you need to find the number of numbers in a consecutive set of numbers. For example, in a problem that requires you to find the probability of selecting a number from a set of consecutive numbers:

Raffle tickets numbered consecutively from 60 to 405 have been put into a bin for a raffle. What is the probability that the number of the ticket selected will be divisible by two?

In order to find probability, we need the number of items that satisfy the condition (divisible by 2; i.e. even), and the total number of items. To find the number of evens, you could count them (Not!) or you could use the strategy we used above (Ding-ding-ding!).

Patterns are one of the keys to GMAT success. Developing efficient, applicable methods to expedite calculations or avoid tedious memorization also help to sharpen your higher order thinking skills, the hallmark of a high scorer.

Best of luck!

If you think your higher order thinking skills could use a boost, consider signing up for a course or tutoring with us. Our materials and instruction not only teach you the rules you need to know but help you recognize when and how to use them!