This post was written back in 2004 by an MBA aspirant. In it, Dave captures the essence of GMAT quant thinking and the relevance of this GMAT skill to MBA (and business) success. And while he probably wasn't aware of it at the time, in his concluding paragraph, Dave makes an elegant argument for the Kaplan strategies.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on this topic lately. I’ve come up with some ideas on what a quantitative personality means to a top Business School and why they emphasis (sic) a pretty good score in this area.
First of all, a Quant person is not necessarily a good math person. It is someone who can look at independent ideas and facts, look at a situation and be able to come up with a response in a step-by-step fashion. It also means looking at a situation and not respond in a typical fashion of, “what is the right answer?”, but rather, “I have a possible answer…. However, how could it be the wrong answer based on the facts given?”. In short, a quant person is not just a memorizer, although they might have a great memory and often do, but rather someone who reasons very well. So when a quant person looks at a math problem with 2,3 or 4 various combinations of theories.. they don’t get confused, but rather pull the question apart and can see where one theory leads into the other and can merge and manipulate the combinations to get the final answer.
Let me summarize my points. A great Quant person is one who 1) Doesn’t jump to conclusions unnecessarily and make rash decisions 2) Can take various experiences and knowledge points to extrapolate a very good position and direction even though they haven’t had exposure to a particular situation. In other words, with few instructions, they will be able to perform and handle many possible situations well 3) Doesn’t answer with “can’t” until they’ve exhausted all possible knowledge, theories, and experiences before asking for help. Even then… a great Quant person will often realize exactly what pieces of information are missing and ask for them before a conclusion can be drawn.
With regard to Business Schools, it has become clear to me that great Quant scores are indicative of the people with the capacity to be great business people. They are looking for people who can handle the diversity of business challenges and great Quant people have what it takes. Of course, this isn’t the only characteristic they are looking for, but I think this is a good foundational quality to look for. It makes sense that you don’t want a math head only, but someone who can take their Quant ability and be a good to great communicator. It also makes sense that great Business School candidates are also decisive. I know a lot of great quantitative people who suffer from, “paralysis of analysis” where they don’t know when to say they have enough facts. They need to know when the rest is gut, intuition, experience and economic circumstances to take a calculated risk. Or as some would say, they ought to be able to “bet the farm” on a calculated initiative occasionally and have the courage to follow through.
With regard to the GMAT, a topic much on my mind these days, a good quant person understands the content (the formulas, geometry rules, work problems and etc…), but don’t just rely on their memory to be able to handle a problem even though they haven’t seen a particular combination of theories in one problem. They are able to proficiently take apart the problem into its’ constituent theories and manipulate them in any combination they run into. The idea of doing a lot of problems to see the various possibilities one might see on the test is therefore NOT the way to do well on the GMAT. However, doing a lot of problems should be a way to test ones ability to manipulate possibilities of questions. Do you see the difference? Therefore, each area of the GMAT are all dependent on ones (sic) ability to understand the rules first.. then be able to perform step by step reasoning of independent ideas to come up with a well reasoned answer.
The practical side to all of this is getting used to doing the problems as a great Quant person would.
My wife who graduated with an Electrical Engineering degree tells me that she feels like she didn’t learn anything in school. She would always tell me that she didn’t need to memorize every single formula because many of them were derivations of combinations of a core set of formula theories. She understands that her education taught her to be an incredible quantitative math person. She mentions that some other schools are well known for education emphasizing formula learning however and that those students generally didn’t do well in situations where they didn’t see the exact permutation of a problem before.
Glad I got that off my chest. If you want to do well on the GMAT, you MUST be able to do what a good quant person does. Having 20 different resources of GMAT problems just to see more problems is a vain approach to preparing for the GMAT and is frankly a big waste of time. One ought to have enough problems to go through with 4-5 resources like the Official Guide. If one requires more than that, then you’re relying too much on memory and you may need to get with a tutor or get personalized help to learn to handle the GMAT as a great quant person would.
Before you conclude in disagreement with me on these ideas, I suggest you take a hard serious look at the way you approach your GMAT studies and see why you are getting wrong answers. The bottom line is that, if you get a question wrong, there are only four reasons why. You don’t know enough content (rules, theories well enough), you were careless, you were tired and unfocused, or your process to handle weird permutations is not solid enough (this last one is the case for me right now). One final comment. I've noticed that if I get a questions wrong... it's not necessarily because I was "careless", but rather because my "process" in doing a problem is not solid enough. Therefore, we ought not to look at a problem that we got wrong and just see that the fault was due to an overlooked fact, but perhaps our process of step-by-step problem solving was not solid enough or focused enough.
Well, back to my studies.
DaveforMBA
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Thanks for stopping by,
Doug
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