Erfun Geula

This author has written 45 articles

GMAT Timing Tip: The Sunk Cost Fallacy

When students call me to discuss issues they’ve been having in their preparation, one of the most common concerns I hear is timing. Be it on practice tests or on the real thing, basically all GMAT test-takers experience a time crunch at some point during the test, if not throughout the entire exam. Now, if…
Continue reading →

GMAT Anxiety: Your Worst Enemy or Your Best Ally

Everyone who takes the GMAT suffers from at least some anxiety. I’ve taken it three times and scored 760+ each time, but even at my last sitting, I remember feeling that rush of adrenaline and nerves as the test started. In the back of your mind, you will always wonder whether they will suddenly throw…
Continue reading →

GMAT Calculations: Avoid the Dirty Work!

If you’ve been studying for the GMAT, you’ve inevitably found yourself in a situation where you were thinking “If only I had a calculator!” Many of my students express this sentiment, especially when doing weird digits questions or when forced to evaluate seemingly impossible percentages or fractions. I’m going to say here what I tell…
Continue reading →

Meaning Issues in Sentence Correction

If you’ve been following the GMAT forums, you’ve probably come to learn that GMAC (the creators of the GMAT) recently announced that many of the Sentence Correction questions on the exam are trending away from Idiom and toward Meaning. Hearing of this news, many people studying for the exam have recently called me in a…
Continue reading →

Analyzing a 700+ Data Sufficiency Question

As a full-time GMAT geek, the question of what exactly constitutes a difficult GMAT question occupies more of my time than I’d like to admit. This curiosity was only reinforced two weeks ago, when I took my annual official GMAT. Much to my relief, I was able to again score a perfect 51 on the…
Continue reading →

How You Approach the GMAT and Why It Matters

Let’s face it. For most people, the process of preparing for the GMAT is long and grueling. The GMAT is like the SAT and GRE, except on steroids, and the test’s algorithm will make sure to expose any weaknesses in your conceptual knowledge or approach. For most people, these facts inevitably lead to a perspective…
Continue reading →

Factoring Exponential Expressions

Most of the time on the GMAT, manipulations with exponents are fairly straightforward. Usually, you’ll see two terms with a common base, and you’ll be expected to divide or multiply those terms (such as: 25 / 23 or 35 x 38). However, when you get to some of the higher-level questions, you’ll be expected to handle situations in which…
Continue reading →

Causality on the GMAT

One of the most common types of arguments you’ll see on the GMAT will be cause-and-effect. A cause-and-effect argument can best be thought of as one arguing that a certain fact or phenomenon directly brings about another one. One of the pitfalls of any causal argument is that the seemingly apparent causal connection might not…
Continue reading →

Additional GMAT Practice

As an independent GMAT tutor with a knack for the unconventional, I work with many students who, for whatever reason, couldn’t quite crack the GMAT by just working through the Official Guide or with a set of books from a given company. Often, the difficulties these students encounter are a function of impersonal classrooms or…
Continue reading →

GMAT Quantitative Concept: Disguised Quadratics

If you’ve been studying for the GMAT, you’ve probably encountered situations that require knowledge of quadratic equations and how they work. In so doing, you’ve also probably memorized the following three equivalencies: (x + y)2 = x2 + 2xy + y2 (x – y)2 = x2 – 2xy + y2 (x – y)(x + y) = x2 – y2 Knowledge of these…
Continue reading →
Back To Top