Announcing the New Advanced GMAT Quant Strategy Guide
Exciting news – our Advanced Quant Strategy Guide is finally ready for prime time! We’re also launching a Foundations of Verbal book; click on the link to read about that one.
Who should use this book? Great question. Are you already at the 70th-plus percentile (minimum) on quant and you’re looking to push yourself well into the 90s? This book is for you. In addition, please note that this book assumes that you have already worked through our five “regular” Strategy Guides (or the equivalent material from another company).
To give you an idea of what to expect, excerpts from the new Advanced Quant guide are below. The main point I want to make is that this book covers both advanced concepts / mathematical material, and advanced problem solving processes. Both are critical for a 90th-plus percentile test-taker.
Okay, without further ado, here’s excerpt #1, an introduction to a methodical solving style inspired by mathematician George Polya.
From Advanced GMAT Quant, copyright 2011 Manhattan GMAT; duplication or further distribution requires permission
Got that? Why don’t you try it out on this problem? Note: don’t set a time limit. This is likely tougher than anything you’ll see on the real GMAT!
From Advanced GMAT Quant, copyright 2011 Manhattan GMAT; duplication or further distribution requires permission
Think you got it? Here’s one way someone might think it through, using our Polya-inspired process:
Of course, a great student isn’t going to stop there. What are some other possibilities? Maybe there’s a better or more efficient way… (You’ll note that the text below refers to this solution as the “third” one – yes, there’s also a different, second solution in the book, but I didn’t excerpt that one here today.)
That was just one question. Plus, we don’t get to study test questions in advance – all of these questions we study will not be the exact, actual questions we see on the test. As a result, we need to learn how to derive generally applicable takeaways from any questions we study. What kinds of questions do we need to ask ourselves when trying a practice problem? What generally applicable lessons are we learning? And how will we recognize a similar-but-different problem in the future?
Let’s start with questions to ask while doing the problem:
From Advanced GMAT Quant, copyright 2011 Manhattan GMAT; duplication or further distribution requires permission
And don’t forget:
Finally, you’re not done studying until you’ve analyzed that problem (save this for after you finish trying it):
That’s all I’ve got for you today – let us know what you think below. If you’ve got any questions, ask away. And good luck with your quest for that 90th-plus percentile quant score!