因为GMAT考试是国外研究生考试，所以外国网站的介绍可能更贴近考试的初衷，为了不歪曲理解，小编引用了简介的英文原文，希望大家能够了解一下。
Preface:
This guide assumes that you have already comprehended what is in Official Guide for GMAT,
and thus only explain terminologies that are not mentioned in the Official Guide.
By “general”, I mean this guide is philosophical and methodological, involving few specific
examples or points of grammatical knowledge. Most of the generalized principles that the guide
is about to introduce can be trusted. However, the author’s generalization might suffer from
personal judgment or discretion, and errors are unavoidable. And suggestions herein are also
general. I suggest that you read this guide before you start your lengthy journey to GMAT, get a
blurry impression of how to deal with GMAT and frequently review this guide in the middle of
your preparation to further understand what is going on in this guide.
This guide is based on unverified information from the Internet (mainly, the Qiancheng Baili
Forum) and personal experience, so it has no official authority, and thus is labeled as
“UNOFFICIAL”. Although the author did his best, the legality of this guide is limited to his ability to,
from his only personal experience of GMAT, correctly and completely identify applicable pieces of
information out of the great bulk of the true and untrue in the Internet.
So, despite the author’s confidence, readers’ own discretion and consciousness is necessary.
You should know better to trust all the statements in this guide.
I. Parts of GMAT and appropriate PACE you should take on:
The “pace” here refers to speed and pattern. Pace can never be too emphasized. A good pace
calms you, puts you in a familiar and friendly atmosphere that is crucial to appeasing tensions
built in such a difficult test and enables you to finish all the questions in an efficient and
economic way. The lengthy and energy-consuming preparation for GMAT you’ll go through in the
next few months is for most part to develop a pace that is unique and suitable for yourself. So
remember that DO NOT panic if your correction rate is stagnant or even lowering. As long as you
are developing and perfecting your own pace of proceeding, you are progressing!
GMAT consists of three parts, Math, Analytical Writing Assessment and Verbal. Math is usually
the easiest part for Chinese students, but requires meticulousness and patience to get a
maximum score. Read carefully and fluently every question, solve it step by step and never rush
to a conclusion because such conclusions are almost wrong. In most cases, you’ll find plenty of
time left when you have finished this part. However, the next two parts are by far more
exhausting and difficult, so you’d better take good advantage of this part of time to mentally
collect and physically prepare yourself. NEVER get forward to the writing section until you feel
calm, confident and ready for a brainstorming and quick typing.
Analytical Writing Assessment, or AWA, includes Argument and Issue. Time allocated to these
two parts is never enough. A quick typing is essential here.
Verbal section is the part most of your time will be spent on. As you may know, GMAT is
computer-adaptive test. In this kind of test, what you encounter for the next question depends
on whether you correctly answer the current one. A wrong answer brings an easier one, and vice
versa. Moreover, it is said, however not officially, that correction rate of the first ten questions
decides the track that you are going for the test. If you answered them all correctly, you’d be on a
high-score track, otherwise on a low-score one. The rest questions of the test are arranged
according to the track and the correction of the former question. Thus, a normal high-score track
means an ever-more-difficult set of questions. To properly handle it, you need to develop a pace
that really works. For me, my pace is medium for the first ten, speeding up in the middle of the
test, and low for the last ten or so questions. The reason is obvious and automatic. The first ten
questions are medium-difficult and make sure you answer them all correctly. Then get adapted to
the difficulty level of your track and speed up a little. The last few are usually the most difficult
ones, and they might cost you significantly more time than previous ones did. Do your best to
tackle these most-difficult, yet do not linger on them if two or three minutes have been used in
vain.
Then how to develop a pace? Pace is both spontaneous and intentionally designed. You cannot
develop a pace until you start to simulate tests in quasi-reality (GWD-TN-24). That’s when you
have already mastered the basic ways to solve verbal questions. The correction rate might
improve little as you go through tests one after another, because in fact you have come to your
top performance after finishing ALL-IN-ONE(大全). You do not have to strive to improve
correction rate then. Just follow the methods you have constructed during ALL-IN-ONE
session—the reason why it is spontaneous! The only task facing you is to develop a pace. Time
every simulated test, form a pattern of correction rate for each kind of questions in verbal section,
namely Sentence Correction, Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension, and identify a
proper speed for reading and answering.
Technically, developing a suitable pace could be the toughest thing you’d come across during
your whole GMAT preparation. Do not hurry, do not wonder whether there is a short cut. Step by
step, day by day, a pace will emerge by itself.
II. Tips for every single kind of questions in GMAT
Math section: the necessary math knowledge is introduced in Official Guide, so I am not going
to reiterate here. There is great chance that the toughest question you’d see is related to integer
theory. Practice more about it. There also might be some tables, graphs and lengthy passage,
some of which could be annoying and drive you out of sobriety and patience. The simplest way to
tackle them is to read more slowly and get to understand what exactly is known and asked.
Analytical Writing Assessment: all secrets for a high score writing section come down to three
words: SPEED, SPEED, SPEED! Fast conceiving and fast typing!
Argument is relatively simple. A universal template is of great help in such a time-limited
situation. But NEVER pick up someone else’s template and make it your own. That might be
considered as cheating by GMAC (the institution providing GMAT). Frame one of your own style.
The most valuable part about New Oriental School’s GMAT classes could be writing part. Take
notes on how to pinpoint logic errors in shortest time and how to properly state and correct
them.
Issue is definitely tougher. Issue tests not only your vocabulary and English writing skills, but
also your comprehensive knowledge of human society, including politics, sociology, economics,
leadership, corporate governance, environmental problems, arts, education, and so on and on.
You could find that some of the topics spark nothing whatsoever in your mind, especially those of
politics, sociology and arts. Fortunately, the issue questions are all drawn from one determined
topic pool, so in practice, you just need to get those high-frequency topics well prepared. I
strongly recommend that you start writing preparation as soon as possible. It may take more
than one month for you to understand each area of knowledge involved in the ISSUE topic pool
and get adroit about issue essay. Google and Wikipedia are among the most useful tools that can
be employed during the preparation. Google and wiki everything you don’t understand. Once you
have some fundamental knowledge, get to draw outlines for those high-frequency topics.
Outlines are simple and constructive, with usually one sentence for each paragraph and a few
words describing the examples you’d cite. Finally, expand each of these outlining sentences into a
complete logic process, that is, a paragraph. In sum, three steps to finish an issue are 1) collect
related knowledge, 2) draw outlines and find examples and 3) expand outlines to form an essay.
Among the three steps, step 2 is critical. A typical 6-point issue essay consists of 350-400 words.
Generally, your essay score is positively correlated to the number of words you can put within a
limited time, holding that the reasoning and wording are soundly done. Then the crux is how to
form a set of logically sound sub-positions that can be derived from and supportive to your major
position you bring up in the first place. One of the tricks is Characterization, to spot key words in
the issue statement, figure out what characteristics they have and see what logical connections
there are between these characteristics. And these connections are probably good sub-positions
you should work on. Another trick is to categorize the subject. Either the subject consists of
several sub-subjects or the subject can be applied on different levels (for example, personal level,
community level and societal level). Let’s name it Categorization. I’ll take No.1 issue question
(excerpted from 2006 AWA Issue Pool) for illustration since the instruction above may seem a
little abstract.
1. In some countries, television and radio programs are carefully censored for offensive
language and behavior. In other countries, there is little or no censorship.
In your view, to what extent should government or any other group be able to censor television
or radio programs? Explain, giving relevant reasons and/or examples to support your position.
Resolution: the bold-faced words are so-called key words. The subject is CENSORSHIP. You
might not be familiar with censorship, which is a political terminology. Find “censorship” entry in
Wikipedia.org. Censorship is termed as “the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative
material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the
government or media organizations as determined by a censor.” Obviously, censorship is
administrative and thus may suffer from bias of groups of special interests, suppressing freedom
of speech. Down the webpage, Wikipedia lists categories of censorship, namely moral, military,
political, religious and corporate censorship. This leads us straight to the second
method—categorization. Among them, military and corporate censorships are not relevant, and
moral censorship is to some degree justifiable. For example, pornography is harmful to minors
and abets premature sex and needs censoring. Minors’ mains sources of information are
television and radio. Thus to the extent that something that is determined immoral is blocked,
censorship is proper. However, morality is never static. The evolution of morality causes heated
controversies over what is moral and otherwise. Censorship should not be extended to moral
topics that are still under debate. Homosexuality is morally controversial in the U.S., and should
not be censored by state or federal government or other non-governmental organizations.
Political censorship violates freedom of speech, which is a critical human right, and freedom of
the press. Look up entries to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. You’ll find that
political censorship is probably utilized by demagogues and groups of special interests to
withhold information. And freedom of speech and the press is essential to a mature and true
democracy (See democracy section in the entry of freedom of speech). Religious censorship
violates freedom of religion, one of fundamental ideologies that gave birth to the United States
of America. Although the majority of Americans are Christian, a suppression or deletion of
non-Christian message could be viewed as a violation of constitution.
The boldfaced sentences in the paragraph above are just what we seek to establish a set of
outlining sub-topics. Let’s rewrite them to present a clear structure of our essay:
Major position: censorship can clear up dirt in the television and radio programs. But
censorship is a dangerous slippery slope toward excess and dictatorship. Limited censorship is
justifiable.
Minors get their information mainly from television and radio, censorship is justifiable on some
moral grounds. To the extent that something that is socially determined immoral is blocked,
censorship is proper. Examples: pornography, violence, drug abuse…
However, censorship should not be extended to moral topics that are still under debate. A
premature censorship could jeopardize lawful rights of some people. Examples: homosexuality. A
pandemic criticism of homosexuality on television and radio is indirect oppression on
homosexual people and could cause hatred toward them.
Political censorship should be removed, because it violates freedom of speech and the press,
endangering our democracy. Television and radio are major means of the press, having enormous
influence on people’s opinions. Thus censorship can be used by demagogues. Examples:
Watergate scandal: if political censorship existed, Nixon would never be exposed and forced to
step down.
Religious censorship violates freedom of religion, suppresses people’s faith and belief, and
should be removed.
Once you have these above in your mind, a brilliant essay will soon come out!
A set of outlines presents the structure of your essay. Typically, a good issue essay contains four
parts:
a). beginning, one paragraph, which presents your major position,
b). concession, one paragraph, which partly agrees with the statement and makes your
argument complete and defendable,
c). transition and development, several paragraphs, which brings out your sub-positions and
reason them,
d). summation and conclusion, one paragraph, which is similar to but definitely not the same
as the beginning part.
p.s.: the order of (b) and (c) parts can be reversed.
The step 3 requires you to elaborate your outlining sentences using reasoning and examples. A
typical reasoning paragraph consists of three parts. The first one is a topic sentence, or TS, stating
the sub-topic, i.e. a paraphrased version of the outlining sentence. Then one or two sentences of
reasoning develop your idea, followed by a RELEVANT example that closely illustrates your idea.
The last part is concluding your reasoning.
Some tips for writing skills:
1). NEVER waste time trying to think out some brilliant ideas that are supposed to give you an
edge. GMAT issue essay do not emphasize the creativity as much as Chinese do. As long as it
shows complete and sound logic process, vast vocabulary and fluency, your essay deserves a
decent score.
2). Use conjunctive words frequently, logically and properly. Conjunctive words with logic
implication are welcome in issue. Frequently-used words are such: so, and, therefore, thus, hence,
accordingly, correspondingly, as a result, on the one hand….on the other hand…, meanwhile,
however, moreover, furthermore, nevertheless, nonetheless, notwithstanding, despite, albeit……
There are so many of them. Take good advantage of them and make your essay fluent and
smooth.
3). Use some “advanced” words. Try to substitute GRE-level words with your obsolete CET
vocabulary. Make a note of good substituting sophisticated words that can show your large
vocabulary and forget those naïve words learned in your regular college life. For example, “dirty”
is simple. You may use “filthy” instead. Therefore, pay additional attention to verbs, adjectives
and adverbs.
4). Construct long sentences, but do not fill your essay all with long ones. There should be a
rhythm as to the length of sentences in your essay. Read the document 句法多样化.doc in the
GMAT preparation package.
5). Take advantage of Google. Google is far more powerful and useful than you can ever imagine!
Google gives you examples, reminds you of blurred usage of idioms and words and leads you to
wonderful websites. Read this post: 学会用 Google 做 research.
6). Read more. There are resources in blogs, books, newspapers, etc.. Time.com, TNR.com,
NYRB.com.
7). Use formal language. Avoid slang words and idioms. Use verbs rather than verbal phrases,
which seem a little colloquial. Colloquialism is negatively regarded in GMAT.
So much for writing… Writing tend to be ignored by Chinese GMAT test takers, who would
regret profoundly when their writing score turned out to be the only part that makes their GMAT
look sad. NEVER underestimate the efforts you would devote to writing. It could be more
demanding than verbal section.
Verbal section comprises three kinds of questions: Sentence Correction, Critical Reasoning and
Reading Comprehension. I’ll analyze them each.
Sentence Correction is usually about grammar, as many would tell you. Nevertheless, I hold a
different opinion. Cracking SC needs more logical consideration than grammatical background.
Logic is the thread that links SC, CR and RC. The process of preparing GMAT is indeed a training of
logic and critical thinking. As to SC, logic is intertwined with grammatical phenomenon. As you
would get to know from OG, you may encounter many kinds of errors. Official Guide is essential
and indispensible in SC preparation. The examples offered in it are relevant, instructive and
exhaustive. The explanations are splendid. Scrutinize them repeatedly and meticulously. You
would feel frustrated shortly after you start SC ALL-IN-ONE, because you would find that many of
the SC rules are literally contrary to the knowledge you’ve got from your Chinese English teachers
and that there seems no applicable universal method to solve these questions. Believe me. This
feeling could last significantly much longer if you did not take OG seriously. Take notes to points
of knowledge and solution rules as I did in document My Notes on SC.doc
A leading author in GMAT SC, named Bai Yong, alleges that Sentence Correction is pivotal if you
want a 700-plus score.1 Make sure you answer SC questions all correctly. At most only one or
two of them are allowed to be wrong.
I always claim that Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning are inextricably intertwined.
Reading is fundamental in GMAT, GRE and TOEFL tests. A good reader should have the following
three qualities: large vocabulary, information processing, temporary retention.
How to increase your vocabulary within a short time? Here is my method learned from my GRE
class:
1. Spend less than two seconds on a single word. Do not attempt to memorize spelling when
you are skimming words. The aim is to get a vague impression of characteristics, i.e.
structure, shape, length and alike, of word, which nonetheless is enough for you to
recognize them quickly.
2. Assume there are roughly 15 words on every page. Cover the Chinese explanations and
speak out them fast. Mark every word you do not recognize with 0.5 seconds.
3. Go on to the next page. Repeat Step 1 and 2, and review the previous page you just went
through, especially those words that you did not memorize.
4. Make three pages a unit. Repeat step 1~3 for every unit, and review this unit all after you
have finished these three pages.
The point here is to spend little time on every single word yet to review them a lot.
A worth-recommending systematic pattern for memorizing GRE vocabulary is Yangpeng’s
17-day Memorization Plan. Stick to this plan, and you could carve in mind nearly 10,000 words
within as few as 17 days!
As for information processing, it is a simultaneous process with temporary retention. In effect,
the two are selecting key information and logic connections and memorizing them. Du Changxu,
a New Oriental School’s teacher specialized in TOEFL reading comprehension, invented a theory
called Vague Comprehension. This theory suggests that reading be a logic constructing process,
rather than a word-by-word translating one. This theory is particularly powerful as to long and
complicated sentences, as followed:
e.g.: Matching the influx of foreign immigrants into the larger cities of the United States during
the late nineteenth century was a domestic migration, from town and farm to city, within the
United States.
This sentence consists of 33 words, a typical long sentence in GMAT reading. After reading it,
you should memorize two facts and one logic connection. Facts are a). Foreigners are immigrating
1 《白勇 GMAT 语法全解》
into big cities in the U.S. and b). U.S. residents are migrating from town and farm to city. These
two facts are connected by a word matching. Therefore, the connection is that a) and b) are
simultaneous in the late 19th century.
Despite this example, a mature reading method still requires lots of practice. Apart from
readings offered in my GMAT preparation package, another splendid source of good reading is
the first section, namely introduction part, in academic economic papers. NBER.org (National
Bureau of Economic Research) is one of the best banks offering such papers.
Critical Reasoning is sort of like, yet far more difficult than, argument. Start with example
questions in Official Guide. Read the explanations carefully and repeatedly! Familiarize yourself
with the manners that OG employs to solve problems and make them your own.
Reasoning problems could be exceptionally abstruse and confusing. The foundation of cracking
reasoning part is reading ability. Many times did I discover that a tiny remiss in reading caused an
ultimate error in reasoning. So when the problem confuses you, try to read it again more slowly
and carefully.
III. A Detailed Process of Preparing GMAT-My Personal Experience
I scored 780 out of 800, percentile rank 99%, for my first attempt of GMAT. Although it might
not be universal and omnipotent, my experience, I guess, is worth recommending. However, a
good process of preparation should be personally customized according to individual’s
background of English skills, general knowledge and capability. Before I took GMAT, I have tried
GRE and TOEFL, the former resulting 1420+5(verbal 630+quant 690+writing 5) and the latter 108
(reading and writing full scored). Therefore, one month is enough for my background to score
high. In fact, GMAT reading is relatively simple as to GRE counterpart, let alone LSAT reading,
which I once scored a 90% correction rate during my GRE phase. Sentence Correction part is at
first annoying because some of the rules GMAT embraces are just inconsistent with, even
contrary to, those you learned from your English teachers. But, sooner or later, once you get
adapted to these new rules through plenty of practice, SC is beyond question. The only part that
to some degree annoys me throughout my GMAT time is Critical Reasoning. CR problem seems
able to surprise me always with its creativity and difficulty, becoming the very part that could
prevent you from getting a 750-plus score.
Nonetheless, different persons have different backgrounds. Some may have difficulty dealing
with Reading, some writing and others reasoning. Prolong the time that you intend to spend on
the tough part and practice more. Thus, my experience presented below is only one of these
scenes. The point of this presentation is to recommend my utilization of GMAT review materials.
All of my review materials are enveloped into one RAR file, GMAT Review Package.rar. The
most important stuffs included in the package are ALL-IN-ONE series (including SC, RC, CR), GWD
simulating tests (24 tests incorporated) and GMATPrep, a piece of software provided by GMAC.
Other things includes Feifei series of logic and Math, Taotao Math, AWA package and some
grammatical and logic notes.
I started with the Official Guide, got familiar with types of questions in GMAT and their
solutions, finished example questions and read the explanations which presented basic solutions
skills that could be refined during your coming review process. Official Guide is a tool that I
frequented to refresh and remind myself of usual types of questions and their solution rules.
GMAT requires test takers to finish the great bulk of question of different difficulty levels within a
limited time. SPEED is essential and familiarity improves speed. Official Guide cost me
approximately one week.
ALL-IN-ONE series further hones your skills at rapidly solving problems. Time every unit of
questions and record the correction rate to get a primitive impression of the correlation between
speed and correction rate, which helps build an effective pace later. Some of the reference
answers given by the document are questionable. Go to Qiancheng Baili forum to search for early
discussion of these questions. These discussions were inspiring even if they reached no
unanimous results.
There are three major documents in this series, separately for SC, CR and RC, more than 2,000
questions in sum. Do not be intimidated. You can finish them all within at most 3 weeks with
full-time devotion.
Take notes during ALL-IN-ONE phase, especially for SC questions, as I did in My Notes on
SC.doc.
The most important material is GWD-TN-24. In effect, 21 of them are effectively worth doing
because SC questions in the remaining three overlaps those in GMATPrep which is a key predictor
I’ll discuss later. According to the compilers of GWD-TN-24, the reference keys to these tests are
never officially verified and thus not beyond question. A few questions are debatable. Refer to
MY used edition for explanations when you suspect that the answer might be
wrong.
The value of GWD-24 lies in that they mimic the reality well and thus help you familiarize
yourself with the real scenario and that the pace I emphasized in the first part of this guide is also
developed through this series of tests. Although it is widely said that the difficulty of GWD is
higher than that of real GMAT, my experience told me that GWD, especially the last few of the
tests, is still a fair predictor of your later real GMAT score.
I finished GWD-TN-24 at a speed of three tests a day, one each in the morning, afternoon and
evening. And that’s why I suggest a full-time dedication. After the intense week, I developed a
pace and made up my mind according to my record that I’d score 750-plus.
I want to additionally mention the Critical Reasoning questions in GWD, which are very
instructive and the best part of GWD. The pattern of these questions is extremely like that of real
ones.
The rest of the package is to keep your hands warm. Feifei logic is of great value. Feifei Math is
an excellent material for Math review. Math is relatively easy, so you can do it casually for a rest.
The last five days is used to predict your score and give you an expectation. The best predictor I
used is the official review software, GMATPrep, of which the latest version is enclosed in the
package. I scored 780 twice in the simulated tests in GMATPrep, the same score as I did in the real
one.
The directory AWA contains a piece of software that mimics the real Analytical Writing
Assessment scene. It can test your writing ability under real time pressure. It took me one month
to get prepared for my GRE writing test. So do not underestimate the amount of time and energy
needed to get through AWA.
IV. Other Issues in GMAT Preparation
1. Stress. GMAT is a very intense exam. The heaviest pressure comes from writing section.
Before GMAT, you might have never been through such a writing task that treats you as an
English native speaker and requires typing continuously to reach a reasonable floor of the
number of words. When you pause or hesitate in the middle, the fear and stress could easily
accumulate, prevent you from smoothly thinking and in turn aggravate the stressful effects. A
familiar pace and atmosphere is good for appeasing such stress. If stress seems unstoppable,
pause a few seconds, collect your mind and then continue.
2. The World Wide Web. Internet is a useful tool to crack GMAT. 3. Improve your writing skills by reading and doing SC questions. As you proceed with SC part,
you may realize how informal and erroneous your essays are. Learn formal ways of
expression and wording from SC questions, and apply them to your writing.
4. Write at least ten issues and arguments before you get on test table. A classic reference
material is 北美 GRE 范文精讲. Read and emulate it. The fastest way to write good issues is
to mimic the best.
5. Well, in fact, GMAT is not that difficult. Try your best and try again if the first attempt failed.
For God’s sake, I finally finish this….
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