One type of question that you are bound to see on the GMAT is a function question. It can show up in a variety of ways. The question may ask for you to evaluate the value of the function, or the output. It may also ask you to find what x is when given a value for the output.

So here we go.

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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.

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One of the key things to remember with circles is that once you know one piece of information, you know everything about the circle itself. Additional angles and lengths inside are not always so simple, but it is possible to convert circumferences to areas, to radii and diameters without intermediate steps. This will save you time in Data Sufficiency questions.

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Here is a Q&A guide to answer your burning questions on applying to a safety school.

Q: What is a "safety school"?

A: A safety school is one where you are highly competitive and that is strong in your area of interest, but it not as highly regarded overall. Your goals are clearly supported by this school.

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Often, when speaking to a student interested in applying to an MBA program—any MBA program—I find myself doing a bit of psychological counseling when we get to the undergraduate record evaluation. This is not necessarily because the student has a below-average UGPA, which sometimes is the case; no, what I find myself doing the most is arguing with the student as to the validity of their undergraduate major. Oftentimes, the first words out of a student’s mouth will be, “Okay, we need to do some damage control. I was an English major in college,” or “I know this is going to hurt me, but I was a psychology major.” These humanities, liberal arts, and social sciences students start committing academic hara-kiri before I even look at their transcripts. On the flip side, most students with economics, business, or business administration majors soar in to the process with an over-inflated sense of the merit of their academic credentials: “I know my GPA’s a little low, but I was a business major, so I’ve got that going for me.” Of course, this is not the case for all of my students, on either end of the spectrum—but I see this often enough that I thought it would be interesting to do a brief study and actually see if I could pinpoint that ever-ephemeral answer to the age-old MBA question: Which undergrad major or majors actually improve admissions chances—and which don’t?

What I found out was very interesting.

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Last week, we tackled two GMATPrep® questions; if you missed that article, go read it before continuing with this one. Make sure you try the two sample problems and take the time to master the concepts before you try the super-hard question below.

Okay, this sample problem is from our own archives. Set your timer for 2 minutes…. and… GO!

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The following is an excerpt from The Princeton Review’s best selling title, Business School Essays That Made a Difference.

Being a great storyteller and a gifted writer can be a major advantage to the prospective b-school student. But be forewarned: A wonderful answer to a question not asked will not help you here. We can’t stress enough that you must answer the question.

Each school has its own set of questions. Although posed differently, all search for the same insights. Here’s one commonly asked question and what’s behind it.

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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

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To start off, let’s quickly review the essentials. These are formulas/concepts you must know:

1. a² + b² = c², but only when a right triangle. If you don’t know it’s a right triangle, Pythagorean theorem does not apply!
2. Common special right triangles include 3-4-5, 5-12-13, 8-15-17, 7-24-25 (and their multiples.)
3. 45-45-90 triangles are ALWAYS in the ratio 1:1:√2
4. 30-60-90 triangle are ALWAYS in the ratio 1:√3:2
5. Angles and opposite sides are in the same relative size order, but are NOT proportional.

Let’s continue with a standard diagram in which we have an equilateral triangle inscribed in a circle, which is inscribed in a square.

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The following book review was written by Dana Jinaru.  Dana is currently a finance student in Europe and also serves as a moderator for Beat The GMAT.  On May 13, 2009 she scored a 770 on the GMAT.

Here is Dana’s analysis of The Princeton Review Cracking The GMAT book.

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There are several number properties that GMAT test takers need to know / memorize.  A lot of these seem simple at first glance; however, the GMAT is very good at finding ways to make straightforward concepts difficult.  Additionally, there are number property concepts that are not as straightforward as others.  One of the more difficult concepts is exponent properties.

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Most candidates who have a goal of attending business school at some point in the future understand that the schools want to see evidence of community service.  In response, they dive into a community service project in hopes of checking the community service box on the application.  Unfortunately, they never stop to think about why the admissions committee is interested in their community service accomplishments.  The admissions committee isn’t like a judge who has sentenced you to 100 hours of community service.  Rather, they are interested in your community service work because it provides insight into your deeper interests and the causes that you care about.  Most of us need a job to earn a paycheck, but community service (barring a judge’s mandate) is optional.  Therefore, you will want to put a great deal of thought into what kind of community work you do.  If the only reason you can come up with for being involved with a particular organization is because you think it will look good on your business school application you may be wasting your time.

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For those of you who are regular visitors to Beat The GMAT, you might have noticed that we’ve significantly changed the design of the website today.

Just three months ago, on August 17, 2009, Beat The GMAT underwent a major transformation, evolving this community from a site that just featured a simple GMAT discussion forum into a full GMAT/MBA learning portal.  Why, might you ask, did we perform another major overhaul of the site today (and so soon after our first launch)?

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For many, the GMAT study experience will take several months. These months take the form of figuring out what is on the test, doing many practice problems, perhaps taking a review class, taking practice tests and then mentally preparing for the tests in the final few weeks. This article suggests some pre-test routines and gives an idea of what people should be expecting and doing in the months leading up to their test.

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