Business-like approach to GMAT Math, Part Deux

November 30th, 2009

Nate Burke is a Content Developer at Knewton, specializing in GMAT prep.

In Part I of this series, I talked about approaching wordy GMAT questions as a businessperson would–by carefully reading these questions the first time around in order to absorb all information. The following GMAT problem has inspired me to expand this approach questions to include the actual process of decision-making:

A square countertop has a square tile inlay in the center, leaving an untiled strip of uniform width around the tile. If the ratio of the tiled area to the untiled area is 25 to 39, which of the following could be the width, in inches, of the strip?

I. 1
II. 3
III. 4

a. I only
b. II only
c. I and II only
d. I and III only
e. I, II, and III

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags:
Posted in GMAT, GMAT Tips, Quant Guide | No Comments »

Knewton Thanksgiving

November 25th, 2009
What else?

The term "supplementals" has a different meaning on turkey day.

Team members were asked to name their favorite Thanksgiving side dishes.

Some responses:

Chris H. — Yams with apples, walnuts, and marshmallows on top!

Cassie — Sweet Potato Casserole

David C. — Dumplings made from canned biscuits

Amy – I make an awesome Chinese-style T-day turkey. The turkey is marinated overnight in a soy/ginger/rice wine and baked with a sticky rice stuffing (contains glutinous rice, Chinese sausage, scallions, red peanuts etc). This sticky rice stuffing is the most popular dish on the table because it absorbs the flavors of the marinade and turkey.

Stacy — My grandma’s fried cornbread and collard greens cooked with fatback

John — Peg Bracken’s Spinach Surprise

Natalie – Candied yams

Devon — Fried turkey.  It’s great when you can get a really good marinade and inject it under the skin and into the meat.  The flavor ends up infusing the meat, which is fantastically juicy.

Alex S. — Stuffing

Dave I. — My dad makes the stuffing and my mom makes the yams. Can’t choose between those two.

Alex K. — Mashed Potatoes w/ Cheez Doodles

Ian — My mom’s sweet, walnutty, yammy, mashed sweet potatoes

David Y. — Butternut squash soup? With a little cream on top? Maybe?

Sara – Mulled wine!  Does that count as a side dish?  I’m counting it.  Warm red wine, cooked for an hour or two with cloves, cinnamon, ginger, honey, and some citrus zest… delicious!

Joanna — Sweet potatoes with a coating of marshmallows that are ever-so-slightly burnt

Brian — My 93-year-old Italian grandmother has always maintained that part of gathering as a family to give thanks was to give a nod to our peeps in the old country, too — so, before we dive into the traditional spread, we enjoy a hearty bowl of cheese ravioli with her homemade sauce.

Jon – Baked acorn squash

Michelle — Canned jellied cranberry with the turkey (ewwww!)

Josh — A mashed potato dish my mom makes that prominently features onions.

Pete — Not sure what it’s called, but it’s a casserole my mom makes involving broccoli, cheddar cheese and ritz crackers.  and it… is delicious! Does whipped cream drowned pumpkin pie count as a side dish?

Posted in Inside Knewton, Knewton | No Comments »

Karen Cator

November 23rd, 2009

Alex Sarlin is Lead Verbal Developer for Graduate Programs at Knewton, specializing in GMAT prep.

Karen Cator, the former Director of Education and Leadership at Apple, was just appointed as the US Department of Education’s new head of the Office of Educational Technology.

Combined with the fact that $650MM that has been committed to educational tech by the federal government, this means that she could have a LOT of say about the next generation of educational tech policy in public schools.
What’s exciting about this to me (and why I’m sharing it with all of you) is that the government seems to be getting in line with private educational tech companies’ vision of the future and putting money toward implementing it in schools.

Here’s the press release.

This is a scribd slideshow by Cator about her beliefs about educational tech. Some of the interesting things regarding our work here are her focus on

1) Student experience
2) User-generated content
3) 24-7 access to educational content
4) Communication and collaboration

Tags: ,
Posted in EdTech, Education, Education & Technology, Knewton, Technology | 2 Comments »

Optimizing Stubborn Tendencies on the GMAT

November 20th, 2009

Nate Burke is a Content Developer at Knewton, specializing in GMAT prep.

Are you stubborn? There are many situations in which stubbornness would help a human being. A stubborn nature can be extremely useful when trying to accomplish a complicated goal over an extended period of time. Building a house, traveling a long distance, hunting for food, and courting someone are all activities central to human history that require, at least to some degree, a knock-down, drag-out, brick-headed resolve to get the damn thing done NO MATTER WHAT.

It is natural, therefore, that you would want to spend 5 minutes on the first question in the GMAT quant section. It’s okay. Natural and cultural forces have optimized our problem-solving heuristics in a certain way; recognizing which ones actually are optimal in certain situations is the key to good performance. In any situation in life OTHER than the GMAT quant section, thinking really hard and creatively about a problem until a solution is found (even if it is for an extended period of time) will usually be of value. Not on the GMAT.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in GMAT, GMAT Tips, Quant Guide | No Comments »

What to read to help your Reading Comprehension

November 18th, 2009

Alex Sarlin is the GMAT Verbal Lead at Knewton, where he helps students on the GMAT Sentence Correction, GMAT Critical Reasoning, and GMAT Reading Comprehension sections of the test.

GMAT test-takers often ask about reading materials that help prepare them for the Reading Comp section of the test. While we always remind them that the reading comprehension section, at heart, is about reference and not real reading, we also acknowledge that for those who have been working too hard to pick up a book or magazine, it can be enormously helpful to re-catch the reading bug.

Here is a list of Knewton’s suggestions for real-world reading comprehension practice.

1. Magazines and Newspapers:

Magazines, newspapers and journal articles are closer in tone and length to the GMAT than are full-length books. Furthermore, each article is about a different topic, which means readers must pick up the main idea, purpose and attitude of the article within a few hundred words, a key skill on the GMAT.

As an added bonus, all of the magazines and papers listed below have websites or web archives that can be accessed without leaving the computer, many of which are free.

Science

Tags:
Posted in GMAT, GMAT Tips, Verbal Guide | 3 Comments »

Join Conference Call with Admissions Director at Booth (UChicago)

November 16th, 2009

Chris is the Director of Test Prep at Knewton.

As the admissions season rolls along, Knewton is excited to bring you a special event by way of our friends at APBM. Tomorrow morning (Tuesday 11/17) at 9am EST, you can join a conference call with Rose Martinelli, the Admissions Director at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The call will last an hour and feature a 20-minute Q&A session.

Please email confirm@knewton.com to reserve your free seat ASAP. You can also send in any questions you’d like to ask — any questions sent in will help direct the conversation and seed the start of the Q&A. The call is limited to 100 participants, so email us to receive the dial-in information. Enjoy!

Tags:
Posted in GMAT, MBA Admissions | No Comments »

Law school admissions and the LSAT

November 13th, 2009

This video from ace LSAT prep teacher Kristen Kennedy breaks down all you need to know to apply to law school.

Kristen explains the most important aspects of your law school admissions profile. You’re judged primarily on your undergraduate GPA and LSAT scores. Your personal statement is also important because it’s your best chance to differentiate yourself from the crowd, to emphasize your uniqueness. You can shape your undergrad transcripts to your advantage by taking challenging upper-level transcripts and keeping an upward trend in your grades. Kristen has some advice on building relationships with your professors so you can get good letters of recommendation.

The video goes on to break down your odds of being admitted to various law schools given different combinations of LSAT scores and GPA. To maximize your admissions chances, it’s good to spend several months prepping for the LSAT. You can submit multiple LSAT scores, but all of them count, so best to maximize your performance up front.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Law School Admissions, LSAT | 1 Comment »

Great GMAT Essay from Knewton student

November 12th, 2009

Josh Anish is Senior Editor at Knewton.

I read A LOT of GMAT essays. Alex Sarlin and I read every single essay sent in by every single Knewton student. More and more are coming in every day. We usually offer words of encouragement followed by a points of constructive critique — don’t use first-person pronouns in the intro, don’t pay too much deference to the other side of the argument, and so forth.

But last week we received an essay that was so good, we asked asked its author to let us share it with the world. So here it is, followed by a breakdown of why we like it so much.

Reprinted with Robbie M’s permission (thanks Robbie!). Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Essay Guide, GMAT, GMAT Tips | No Comments »

Video games and failure-based learning

November 9th, 2009

Ethan Hein is a content editor and social media guru at Knewton.

I used to teach afterschool in City of New York/Parks & Recreation’s Computer Resource Center program. Kids in the program spent a lot of time playing educational games like Logical Journey Of The Zoombinis and The Incredible Machine.

The kids would literally fight with each other to get to be the first to play these games, with an intensity that surprised me. I mean, the games are fun and everything, but they were nonviolent, with less-than state of the art graphics and no recognizable characters from TV or movies. The educational content was rarely disguised as “fun,” and yet, kids who snoozed through math class were riveted by the exact same content when it was presented in the context of Treasure Mathstorm. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in EdTech, Education, Education & Technology, Knewton, Technology | No Comments »

The Halls and the Oateses

November 6th, 2009

Try your hand at this question:

Two family reunions are happening at the same hotel, the Oates reunion and the Hall reunion. All 100 guests at the hotel attend at least one of the reunions. If 40 people attend the Oates reunion and 62 people attend the Hall reunion, how many people attend both reunions?

(A)  2
(B)  5
(C) 10
(D) 16
(E) 22

Answer after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ,
Posted in GMAT, GMAT Tips | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries
TELL YOUR FRIENDS   
© Copyright 2011. All Rights Reserved. Made in NYC


GMAT™ is a registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admission Council™. The Graduate Management Admission Council™ does not endorse, nor is it affiliated in any way with the owner or any content of this web site.