GMAT Preparation

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when lessons are released. You will have access to all lessons until the course ends. However, the interactive discussion area that accompanies each lesson will automatically close two weeks after the lesson is released. As such, we strongly recommend that you complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

The final exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson. Once the final exam has been released, you will have two weeks to complete all of your course work, including the final exam.

Lesson 1
You may have heard that you can't study for the GMAT. But that's just not true! There are a bunch of things you can do to prepare yourself, and the more time you spend, the better your scores will be. In our first lesson, you'll learn everything you need to know about the general makeup of GMAT so you'll know exactly what you're getting into come test day. You'll learn how to relax when you start feeling panicky, how to eliminate the wrong answers the tests try to entice you to choose, how to guess when you're not sure of the right answer, and how much time to spend on each question.

Lesson 2
If you're not familiar with the kinds of GMAT questions that test your verbal skills, you'll know exactly what to expect once we're finished with this lesson. You'll get a taste of the format of reading comprehension, sentence correction, and critical reasoning questions, as well as the analytical writing section. Then we'll go over the information in much more detail in upcoming lessons.

Lesson 3
You've been reading since first grade, but that's not enough experience to get you ready for the GMAT passage-based reading questions. There's more to these babies than just reading a passage and working through its questions, and after you finish this lesson, you'll have the tools you need to develop your own personal reading strategy. You'll learn how to glide through even the most sleep-producing reading topics by focusing on what's important and ignoring what's not. Then you'll find out how to eliminate answers that hook other unprepared test-takers and spot the distracters the test-makers use to make wrong answers seem right. Then we'll steer through GMAT reading comprehension passages that have appeared on past tests to give you a step-by-step approach for getting the most information from the passages in the least amount of time. We'll finish up the lesson by practicing these skills on actual GMAT reading questions, and you'll have the opportunity to discuss your efforts with your instructor and other classmates.

Lesson 4
The GMAT has some multiple-choice question types (called sentence correction questions) that test your grammar and English usage skills. In this lesson, we'll go over a detailed strategy for tackling each of them. You'll learn what errors crop up most commonly in the given sentences so you can focus your attention on what's important, and you'll find out what questions are best to skip if you notice that you're running short of time. Knowing the rules of grammar is essential to maximizing your score on sentence corrections, and this lesson gives you the goods. But it won't bore you with every grammar rule known (or unknown) to the English-speaking public. We'll only review the rules that are most commonly tested on the GMAT.

Lesson 5
You may not have seen the GMAT critical reasoning questions before. Even though they may be unfamiliar, by the time you've completed this lesson, you'll know just how to tackle them, and they may just end up being your favorite GMAT test questions! In this lesson, we'll review the elements of a logical argument and the major types of inductive arguments you'll see on the GMAT. Then we'll go through step-by-step instructions on how to examine each type of argument and pick the best answer to each question

Lesson 6
For years, MBA programs have complained that students don't know how to write. So you're going to give them a sample of the way you write before you even get to college. If the thought of writing a complete analysis of an issue or argument in about a half an hour has you running for the hills, don't despair. Today, we'll go over a specific plan for making the most of your time so you can prove to the admissions committee of your favorite graduate program that you can put your thoughts together in a cohesive and interesting essay. And before you impress the GMAT essay readers, you'll get a chance to wow your peers. During this lesson, you'll compose sample essays and share them with your instructor and classmates for review. You'll also get the chance to read what other test-takers write and provide them with your enlightened commentary!

Lesson 7
The GMAT math questions contain your standard-issue multiple-choice variety and a certain type of question you may not be familiar with. In this lesson, we'll go over the types of things that the GMAT quantitative section will test you on, and to the new question type call "data sufficiency."

Lesson 8
You learned arithmetic in grade school, but you may have forgotten some of the basics that you'll see on the GMAT math. Don't worry, we'll review all the essentials in this lesson. We'll go over a lot of the things you probably remember, like how to perform multiplication and division, as well as some of the things that might be a little fuzzy, like exponents and fractions. The GMAT also tests your knowledge of standard algebra. We'll go over variables, factoring, and a whole bunch of other fun stuff so that you know exactly what you need to answer the many algebra-related questions the GMAT has to offer.

Lesson 9
You knew you were going to see some circles and triangles. Geometry is a relatively minor component of the GMAT math questions, but we'll make sure you're prepared for the geometry questions you do encounter. This review will remind you of the properties of angles, triangles, squares, circles, and other shapes so that you can answer questions that ask for pesky measurements. A more commonly tested area involves statistics, but you don't have to take a statistics class to master the concepts the GMAT tests you on. Most of the statistics and probably questions on these tests are pretty basic. In this lesson, we'll make sure you're prepared for them all. By the time you're finished, you'll encounter everything you need about tendency, frequency, and probability to ace the GMAT.

Lesson 10
In today's lesson, we'll focus on the most common type of GMAT math question?the multiple-choice question. Through a thorough examination of GMAT math questions from previous tests, you'll learn how to work through all kinds of multiple-choice math. You'll be whipping through the answer choices in no time!

Lesson 11
The quantitative portion of the GMAT contains a question type that doesn't appear on any other major standardized test. It's called the data sufficiency question because instead of figuring out the answer to a math problem, you have to determine whether the information provided is sufficient to figure out the answer to the math problem. If this sounds a bit complex, don't worry! We'll go through a step-by-step chart to help you flow through these problems, and you'll get plenty of practice on prior GMAT data sufficiency test questions.

Lesson 12
We'll go over a lot of information in this six-week course, and you probably won't remember all of it, even with all of the additional work you put into each lesson. So in this last lesson, we'll go back over all of the tips and strategies you'll need to know to do your best on the math questions on the GMAT. And before finishing up the course, we'll spend some time in this last lesson making sure you understand what you need to know for each subject on the tests. We'll also review what you should focus on, and go over how to best spend your study time until you enter the exam site and strut your stuff on test day.