GMAT: Consider Algebra, not Arithmetic
Many test takers fail to make the connection between not being permitted to use a calculator on the quantitative section of the GMAT and, well, not making intensive, calculator-required calculations.
The reality is, when you are working through a question and think a calculator is needed and/or there is some simplistic, obscure formula is required, you are not using the right strategy. This proves most true for arithmetic questions, when tedious calculations take test takers down the road where an algebraic approach should be considered instead.
Let’s look at an example:
5^10 + 5^10 + 5^10 + 5^10 + 5^10 = 5^x. What is x?
1. 8
2. 10
3. 11
4. 40
5. 50
Most test takers get started by going down the route of (5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5) + (5 x 5 x 5…. And either a) take 10 minutes trying to do some intense multiplication calculations and potentially getting the correct answer if careless mistakes are not made or b) give up and just add the exponents, well knowing that it is not the correct direction to take, but hoping there is an exception to the rule they have forgotten about.
Operating on hope does not typically lead to success!
The reality is, think of a parallel example with a variable, say:
x^2 + x^2 + x^2 + x^2 = 4x^2
OR
2^3 + 2^2 + 2^1 = 2(2^2 + 2 + 1)
Would help test takers realize there is a different approach to this question – combining like terms and factoring – that would them to the right answer quickly and efficiently.
For this particular problem, 5^10 + 5^10 + 5^10 + 5^10 + 5^10 is the same as 5(5^10) which is the same as 5^(1+10) making x = 11 or (C).
Take a similar problem:
What is the greatest prime factor of 12!11! + 11!10!?
1. 2
2. 7
3. 11
4. 19
5. 23
Multiplying out these factorials makes it impossible to get to the right answer efficiently – while prime factorization is an important component of the test, a combination of strategies need to be used for this particular question. Instead, trying to factor out the factorials makes the most sense:
11!10!(12×11 + 1) = 11!10!(133)
By factoring out 133 we get 7 x 19, and there are no numbers within 11! or 10! that are greater than 19 making the correct answer choice (D).
Whenever you see a question that requires combining terms and/or additional or subtraction of variables, exponents, and roots consider factoring as your primary strategy, not diving down the road of endless times tables.
The above GMAT Tip comes from Veritas Prep. Since its founding in 2002, Veritas Prep has helped more than 100,000 students prepare for the GMAT and offers the most highly rated GMAT Prep course in the industry.
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5/4/16 B-school is pushing business analytics amid a growing interest from students, employers in data science.
The Wharton School has long been a destination for Wall Street-bound M.B.A.s. Now, the University of Pennsylvania’s elite business school is betting on big data.
Wharton is expanding its offerings in business analytics, the application of data science to business problems, as more firms seek to make sense of the large troves of data they collect. The school last week unveiled an M.B.A. major in the subject and plans to add courses and, it is hoped, faculty in the discipline in the near future.
Administrators say the analytics initiatives are intended to help meet student and employer demand, citing a growing number of data-science jobs at companies like Amazon.com Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc.
The analytics push comes as the number of elite M.B.A.s who aspire to finance careers, particularly in investment banking, is shrinking. Some 306 students in Wharton’s 2008 M.B.A. class entered the financial-services industry right after graduation; last year, that number was 219, according to the school.
Read more via: http://www.wsj.com/articles/wharton-m-b-a-s-get-more-training-in-data-and-decision-making-1462381445
5/3/16 Supply chain management and human resources management are important areas for employers in the modern business world.
Starting this fall, Lakeland University’s Master of Business Administration program will offer concentrations in both.
Those are just two of the significant additions to Lakeland’s academic programming, additions that include new marketing emphases and a degree that combines business administration and computer science skills.
Scott Niederjohn, Lakeland’s professor of business administration and director of the MBA program, said the supply chain management concentration will enhance the MBA degree, especially for employees who work in the manufacturing and industrial sectors.
The curriculum for Lakeland’s human resources concentration was developed in conjunction with, and endorsed by, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) – the world’s largest HR membership organization.
Read more via: http://lakeland.edu/item/312-mba-degree-offers-new-concentrations
5/4/16 Business schools have long been male-dominated, but many have ramped up their efforts to create more gender-balanced classrooms.
The average at many schools is close to 36 percent, according to the Forte Foundation, which advocates for women in business school and in business careers.
Schools with a high percentage of women, however, don’t necessarily have the largest class sizes. Howard University, for example, had 58 full-time MBA students in fall 2015; 55 percent were women. At University of San Diego, 45 percent of the 80 full-time students were women.
A few larger, and highly ranked, schools came close to making it into the list of 25 schools with the largest percentage of women enrolled, according to U.S. News data.
Read more via: http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/articles/2016-05-04/map-mba-programs-popular-with-women
5/2/16 Scholarship cash has been an answer to the lack of diversity at business schools.
When Maria Kolesnikova chose to begin an MBA at the world’s top business school, she was managing a $3 billion budget for Rosneft, Russia’s biggest oil supermajor. But, like many of her peers at INSEAD, the former investment manager is seeking out new MBA job opportunities.
“For women especially, it’s not that easy to pull off a career change. But when you take an MBA, this pushes you beyond your limits, and helps to make a transition,” says the full-time student in Fontainebleau, France.
Maria is in a minority — 30% of INSEAD’s cohort of MBAs are women. But she is one of a number of talented female managers that business schools are increasingly seeking to entice. “Enrolling more women is a huge priority. It helps the learning community, brings diverse perspectives, and taps into the economic power of women,” says
Twelve elite US schools now teeter at around 40% female MBA enrolment, according to Forté Foundation, a consortium trying to advance women’s business careers. But the figure hasn’t risen above 37% globally over the past decade, according to AACSB, which accredits business schools.
For many the answer has been scholarship cash. According to Forté, 36 MBA programs partnered with the organization funded $18.5 million in scholarships to women last year, up from $5.6 million in 2010.
Read more via: http://www.businessbecause.com/news/full-time-mba/3948/mba-scholarships-help-women
5/5/16 Legal education has been getting bad press since the start of the Great Recession, and perhaps for good reason. While tuition skyrocketed, often leaving graduates with six-figure debt loads, quality job prospects seemingly disappeared. The jobs that were left had salaries that were too low to service those graduates’ tremendous debt loads. Prospective law students began to hear about new lawyers’ joblessness and indebtedness, and stopped applying. This prompted many law schools to lower their admissions standards in the hope of filling their seats. This, in turn, brought about wave after wave of record-setting failure rates on bar exams nationwide.
Now that class sizes are smaller, employment statistics seem to look “better,” and law school administrators across the country have started spreading the word that law school is once more a good investment. But is it really?
Law students and graduates have started using Whisper, an anonymous messaging service, to tell the world about legal education and what it has done to them. These messages are representative of the general tone of posts having to do with law school.
Read more via: http://abovethelaw.com/2016/05/the-future-is-bleak-for-law-students-and-law-school-graduates/?rf=1
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