Introduction

You’re merrily skimming through the admissions requirements for your favorite MBA programs when all of a sudden, you’re dealt a shocking blow. Your absolute top choice program — you’ll die if you don’t get in — requires that you take the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT). And you thought your days of speed-reading passages and solving for x were over.

Many MBA programs include the GMAT as an admissions requirement, so you’ll be in good company. But how do you prepare for such a comprehensive test? What are you going to do? Get out your spiral notebooks from undergraduate courses and sift through years’ worth of doodles? Many years may have gone by since you encountered a geometry problem, and we bet your grammar skills have gotten a little rusty since English 101.

Clearly, you need a readable, concisely structured resource. Well, you’ve come to the right place. GMAT For Dummies, 7th Edition with Online Practice, puts at your fingertips everything you need to know to conquer the GMAT. We give you complete math and grammar reviews and provide insights into how to avoid the pitfalls that the GMAT creators want you to fall into. We also try to make this book as enjoyable as a book that devotes itself to setting up equations and critiquing arguments can be.

About This Book

We suspect that you aren’t eagerly anticipating sitting through the GMAT, and you’re probably not looking forward to studying for it, either. Therefore, we’ve attempted to make the study process as painless as possible by giving you clearly written advice in a casual tone. We realize you have a bunch of things you’d rather be doing, so we’ve broken down the information into easily digested bites. If you have an extra hour before work or Pilates class, you can devour a chapter or even a particular section within a chapter. (If these eating metaphors are making you hungry, feel free to take a snack break.)

In this book, you can find

Plenty of sample questions so you can see just how the GMAT tests a particular concept. Our sample questions read like the actual test questions, so you can get comfortable with the way the GMAT phrases questions and expresses answer choices.
Detailed explanations of the strategies for mastering all four sections of the GMAT. Enjoy a grammar review for the verbal-reasoning section, an extensive math lesson to help you with the quantitative-reasoning section, a summary of good writing practices for the analytical writing assessment, and a how-to on reading all kinds of charts and graphs for the integrated-reasoning section.
Six practice tests. One appears in this book in Chapter 21, and you’ll find that one plus five others online. Ultimately, the best way to prepare for any standardized test is to practice on lots of test questions, and this book, along with the accompanying online test bank, has more than 600 of them.
Time-tested techniques for improving your score. We show you how to quickly eliminate incorrect answer choices and make educated guesses.
Tips on how to manage your time wisely.
Suggestions for creating a relaxation routine to employ if you start to panic during the test.

We’ve included all kinds of information to help you do your best on the GMAT!

You should find this book easily accessible, but a few things may require explanation. A few of the chapters may contain sidebars (a paragraph or two in a shaded box) with quirky bits of information that we think may interest you but aren’t essential to your performance on the GMAT. If you’re trying to save time, you can skip the sidebars.

Foolish Assumptions

Although we guess it’s possible that you picked up this book just because you have an insatiable love for math, grammar, and argument analysis, we’re betting it’s more likely that you’re reading this book particularly because you’ve been told you need to take the GMAT. (We have been praised for our startling ability to recognize the obvious!) And because we’re pretty astute, we’ve figured that this means that you intend to apply to MBA programs and probably are considering working toward a masters of business administration.

Generally, MBA programs are pretty selective, so we’re thinking that you’re a pretty motivated student. Some of you are fresh out of college and may have more recent experience with math and grammar. Others of you probably haven’t stepped into a classroom in over a decade but possess work skills and life experience that will help you maximize your GMAT score despite the time that’s passed since college.

If math and grammar are fresh in your mind and you just need to know what to expect when you arrive at the test site, this book has that information for you. If you’ve been out of school for a while, this book provides you with all the basics as well as advanced concepts to give you everything you need to know to excel on the GMAT.

Icons Used in This Book

One exciting feature of this book is the icons that highlight especially significant portions of the text. These little pictures in the margins alert you to areas where you should pay particularly close attention.

This icon highlights really important information that you should remember even after you close the book.

Throughout the book, we give you insights into how you can enhance your performance on the GMAT. The tips give you juicy timesavers and point out especially relevant concepts to keep in mind for the test.

Your world won’t fall apart if you ignore our warnings, but your score may suffer. Heed these cautionary pointers to avoid making careless mistakes that can cost you points.

Whenever you see this icon in the text, you know you’re going to get to practice the particular area of instruction covered in that section with a question like one you may see on the test. Our examples include detailed explanations of how to most efficiently answer GMAT questions and avoid common pitfalls.

Beyond the Book

Be sure to check out the free Cheat Sheet for a handy guide that covers tips and tricks for answering questions in each section of the GMAT. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and enter “GMAT For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.

The online practice that comes free with this book contains six full-length practice tests, so that you can really hone your GMAT skills! To gain access to the online practice, all you have to do is register. Just follow these simple steps:

Find your PIN access code located on the inside front cover of this book.
Go to Dummies.com and click Activate Now.
Find your product (GMAT For Dummies, 7th Edition with Online Practice) and then follow the on-screen prompts to activate your PIN.

Now you’re ready to go! You can go back to the program at testbanks.wiley.com as often as you want — simply log on with the username and password you created during your initial login. No need to enter the access code a second time.

Tip: If you have trouble with your PIN or can’t find it, contact Wiley Product Technical Support at 877-762-2974 or go to support.wiley.com.

Where to Go from Here

We know that everyone who uses this book has different strengths and weaknesses, so this book is designed for you to read in the way that best suits you. If you’re a math whiz and need to brush up only on your verbal skills, you can skim Part 4 and focus on Parts 1, 2, and 3. If you’ve been writing proposals every day for the last ten years, you can probably scan Part 3 and focus your attention on the math review in Part 4. Because the integrated-reasoning section differs so significantly from other standardized test questions, you’ll benefit from reading Part 5 regardless of your math prowess or verbal genius.

We suggest that you take a more thorough approach, however. Familiarize yourself with the general test-taking process in the first two chapters and then go through the complete GMAT review, starting with the verbal section and working your way through the analytical-writing, math, and integrated-reasoning sections. You can skim through information that you know more about by just reading the Tips and Warnings and working through the examples in those sections.

Some of our students like to take a diagnostic test before they study. This is a fancy way of saying that they take one of the full-length practice tests before they read the rest of the book. Taking a preview test shows you which questions you seem to cruise through and which areas need more work. After you’ve taken a practice exam, you can focus your study time on the question types that gave you the most trouble during the exam. Then, when you’ve finished reading through the rest of the book (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), you can take another practice test and compare your score to the one you got on the first test. This way, you can see just how much you improve with practice.

This book provides you with a bunch of practice tests, but you can never get enough practice. So, if after taking all the practice tests provided at dummies.com, you still crave more, visit the official GMAT website at www.mba.com and download the free GMATPrep software there. This software mimics the computerized format of the test and gives you practice on the types of mouse-clicking and eye-straining skills you need to succeed on the exam. That way, you can experience using the same software you’ll see on the exam.

We’re confident that if you devote a few hours a week for at least six weeks to practicing the skills and tips we provide for you in this book, you’ll do the best you can when you sit in front of that computer on GMAT test day. We wish you our best for your ultimate GMAT score!