No one likes to admit defeat.  Whether you’re taking a test, playing a competitive sport, making a bet, or engaging in any other activity that requires a demonstration of skill, you want to do your best.

We live in a culture that fosters competitiveness, and there are few environments that encourage competition to the degree that the business world does.  So if you’re taking the GMAT, you most likely have a bit of that Type-A spark.  And as such, you don’t want to accept any kind of failure.

Refusing to quit can be useful when you’re the founder of a company or an Ultimate Fighting Champion, but it can seriously hurt your GMAT score. Here’s how.

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On the LSAT Logical Reasoning section, an assumption is something in an argument that is not stated outright, but must be true for the argument to be valid. In other words, it is an idea that the author takes for granted when forming his/her argument.

So if assumptions aren’t stated outright in arguments on the LSAT, how are you supposed to identify them in Assumption questions? Here are the steps you should take first.

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Jonathan Bethune is a Content Developer at Knewton.

As both a teacher and the father of a three month old child, I find myself often wondering what the future holds for education. What will schools look like fifteen years from now, when I send my little guy off to high school? I am encouraged when I consider the last fifteen years, from 1995 to 2010, and I think of the marvels of the information age. In particular I am enthusiastic about online schools, as the ubiquity of broadband internet access has dispelled the technological challenge and made real the possibility of top quality distance learning.

Yet as Reason magazine’s piece “Teachers Unions vs. Online Education” points out, there are several stubborn barriers to the realization of this field’s potential…

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Jonathan Bethune is a Content Developer at Knewton.

As someone who has been mocked by Spanish, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese people (in that order) for tragic attempts at speaking their respective languages, I know the anxiety foreign language students feel. Today’s post is meant to help out my fellow language-learners by answering a simple question:

How much English do you need to know to take the GMAT?

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Kyle Hausmann is a Content Developer at Knewton, where he helps students with their GMAT prep.

In the first installment of our MBA Life series, we talked to Knewton’s Nathan Lasche about his experience at HBS. We found out how Nate felt about class size, the people he met, Cambridge and Boston, and the weather. Now we’ll hear from Ben Jackson, friend of Knewton and current JD/MBA student at Stanford. And, in fantastic life-path chiasmus, Ben was an undergrad at Harvard just as Nate was an undergrad at Stanford. Ben was kind enough to speak to me a few days ago about his experience with Stanford GSB.

So let’s get right into it:

Ben’s general impression of the GSB? (more…)

David Ingber is Knewton‘s Faculty Manager, as well as an expert GMAT prep and SAT prep teacher.

It all began with a high five.

I was teaching an online class, and all 27 of the students in the class answered a difficult question correctly. In an attempt to form what I thought was the closest approximation of a congratulatory hand-slapping ritual with my students, who were attending the class from wifi hotspots and Ethernet ports all across the globe, I pushed my open palm toward my camera. I encouraged them to do the same.

It was then that I learned about the Virtual High Five (aka “The VH5”). (more…)

Matthew Busick is a Content Developer at Knewton.

Two years ago, I attended an informal panel at Google featuring nine or ten in-house attorneys who were kind enough to share stories about their law school experiences and general advice. They all came from different backgrounds and had varying perspectives on law school – some loved it, some hated it, some had blocked it out of their memories.

What caught my attention, though, was that they unanimously agreed on one thing: They either wished they had waited a few years after college to attend law school or were extremely thankful that they had. Working as a paralegal, I had the opportunity to talk to a lot of lawyers of all stripes – Big Law, public interest, company in-house – and everyone (this word should raise a red flag on the LSAT, but in this case it’s meant honestly) had the same advice for prelaw college students: (more…)

Kyle Hausmann is a Content Developer at Knewton, where he helps students with their GMAT prep.

Many of Knewton’s GMAT students are aiming for the top MBA programs in the world. Comparing those programs can be difficult —HBS and Stanford GSB both look pretty darn good on a resume, after all.  In the end, deciding between those two business behemoths largely comes down to personality. The learning experience will not be the same — the case method dominates at Harvard, for example — but there’s no question you’ll get a first class education at either one.

So, how do you decide which business school is better for you?

With the recent addition to our Product Team of Nathan Lasche, a 2010 MBA from Harvard, we thought it the perfect time to take an inside look at these top institutions.

Nathan Lasche

So, here begins Knewton’s series, MBA Life: Insiders’ Perspectives on Business School. First, we’ll hear from Nate about his experience at Harvard Business School. And stay tuned for Ben Jackson, a friend of Knewton, currently at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. We’ll mostly steer clear of the education itself and delve more into the experience, what it’s like to live there, who you’ll meet, how you’ll feel at these schools.

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I spoke with Nate last week about his experience as part of Harvard’s class of 2010. Nathan did his undergrad at Stanford, so he also had some insight into differences between HBS and Stanford’s GSB.

Here are some of the highlights of our conversation

On networking at b-school: According to Nate, “It was awesome. HBS is incredibly international. You end up with friends from all over the world, from Russia, from India, from Africa. They’re known for that… Your alumni network is likely to range more widely across the globe.” Stanford claims a very similar percentage of international students per class, but, Nate explains, “It’s a volume thing. With three times the number of students, your network will probably be dispersed a little more broadly. Stanford has a reputation of being a bit more regional, not in terms of where students are coming from, but post-graduation — people of course head there from all over, but they may be more likely to be interested in staying in Silicon Valley afterward.”

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Kyle Hausmann is a Content Developer at Knewton, where he helps students with their SAT prep.

Translating words to algebra is hugely important on the SAT. The test contains trickily worded problems that are crafted specifically to test this skill. Fortunately, it’s something you can easily improve upon with a little bit of practice!

As you go through practice SAT math problems,  focus on phrases which signify an operation, a fraction, an equality or inequality. Is there a “half as,” “five less than,” or “six times as many?” Write out all of the expressions these phrases signify. The goal is to get everything written out so do not need to look at the wording again. You can practice and re-practice on the same problem — don’t bother solving the equations if that isn’t your problem area. Then, move onto a new problem and see if your speed in translating has improved. Here’s a bit of a long example problem to get started. If you can handle this, you’re in pretty good shape.

A large crate containing statuettes of ninjas, pirates, robots, and flying monkeys fell off a loading dock, and half of the statuettes break. Of those unbroken, one third are ninjas, three times as many are pirates as are robots, and half as many are flying monkeys as are pirates. If there are 20 unbroken robot statuettes, what was the total number of statuettes in the crate before it fell?

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Jonathan Bethune is a Content Developer at Knewton, where he helps students with their GMAT prep.

People who dream of making a killing in the business world are a dime a dozen. Unfortunately, few can actually go the distance on the GMAT. I have seen many students cut their teeth on practice tests, then take the actual exam and appear down in the mouth once their scores come to light. The devil is in the details; once in a blue moon you may be tickled pink to see a high score on a practice test, but you can bet your bottom dollar that, come test day, you’ll be in for a raw deal since you won’t be able to hold your own. Assuming that you can play it by ear is a recipe for disaster when it comes to test prep, and you will find yourself in hot water if you just try to wing it.

Was that first paragraph a bit tricky for you? If so, don’t get your knickers in a knot; the paragraph is full of idioms and is designed to throw off non-native English speakers. Idioms are set phrases that have no strict rule or logical meaning.

Every language has idioms. Spanish speakers sometimes use the phrase en bocas cerradas no entran moscas, which literally means “flies do not enter closed mouths,” but idiomatically means “keep your mouth shut, stay out of trouble.” The Japanese often say hara ga tatsu, to describe someone getting angry, though the phrase’s literal meaning is “stomach stands up.”

English has thousands of idiomatic expressions, and while they are vital for ESL students pursuing fluency, they are not very important for the GMAT verbal section. That’s right; you don’t need to spend hours memorizing those nonsense phrases about it “raining cats and dogs” in order to get a good GMAT score.

Quite a relief, isn’t it? Well, don’t celebrate just yet. There is one variety of idiom that you will need to study for the Sentence Correction section of the test. (more…)