8 Steps for Making the Most of Your Summer Internship (Brazen Life)

It’s almost summertime! Here are some great tips to help you maximize your summer internship experience.

Yes, Guys, Graduate School in the Humanities is Still a Worthwhile Investment (Policymic)

Graduate school, especially in the humanities, has been receiving very bad press for a long time, but 2013 has already produced a bumper crop of essays about the Ph.D. process.

Get Research Experience for Graduate Admissions (About.com Graduate School)

Graduate programs, especially PhD programs, highly value research experience. Without it, it’s unlikely that you’ll gain admission, regardless of your GPA.

Grad School May Not be for Everyone (Daily Sundial)

A current student argues that grad school is a good idea, but only if you’re 100 percent ready for the challenges that await.

Did we miss your favorite article from the week? Let us know what you’ve been reading in the comments or tweet @ManhattanPrep

Two different children are to be selected at random from a group of 12 students. If the probability that both students selected are girls is greater than , there must be at least how many girls among the 12 students?

See the answer choices and submit your pick over on our Challenge Problem page.

Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara recently published the results of a study following 48 undergrads preparing for the GRE. Jan Hoffman details the research in a blog post over at The New York Times; here’s a summary:

The Motivation

“We had already found that mind-wandering underlies performance on a variety of tests, including working memory capacity and intelligence,” said Michael D. Mrazek, (quoted from the NYT blog post)

Ah, yes, “mind-wandering.” We’ve all had this experience. We’re taking a test, the clock is ticking, and we keep finding ourselves thinking about something other than the question we’re supposed to be answering right now. Maybe we’re stressing about our score. Maybe we’re thinking about applications. Maybe we’re even distracted by work, significant others, family, or other issues that have nothing to do with the test!

How do we stop fixating on other things and concentrate on the task at hand? This study tried to find out.

The Study

First, the students were given one verbal reasoning section from the GRE. They also completed a task that measured their working memory. These tests are the “baseline” results.

The students were split into two groups; let’s call them Group M and Group N.

Group M attended meditation classes four times a week; these students learned lessons on “mindfulness,” which focuses on breathing techniques and helps to minimize distracting thoughts.

Group N attended nutrition classes, designed to teach these students healthy eating habits.

Afterwards, the students were given another GRE verbal section and another task to measure working memory. The performance of students in group N stayed the same; the nutritional studies didn’t make a difference.

Group M students, however, improved their GRE scores by an average of 12 percentile points! Here’s the best part: the study took just two weeks. You read that correctly: these students improved their verbal scores by 12 percentile points in just two weeks.

The students also reported (subjectively) that they were better able to concentrate the second time around; they felt that their minds wandered less than they had before.

How did that happen?

The hypothesis isn’t that the students became smarter or learned more in that timeframe. Rather, the mindfulness techniques helped the students to perform closer to their true potential by reducing negative thoughts or habits that were interfering with performance. Think how much better you could do if you could turn off, or at least minimize, all of those distracting thoughts that interrupt you when you’re trying to concentrate!

How can I use this?

That short, two-week timeframe is both good news and bad news. The good news is that you can achieve results without having to study meditation for 6 months. The bad news is that we don’t know whether this provides just a short-term boost—the effects may fade over time.

So let’s speculate that the effects will fade unless you keep up with a regular meditation schedule. Let’s also assume that most people aren’t going to make meditation a regular part of their daily life; most will try it for a time and then drop it.

Here’s what to do, then: start learning some of these mindfulness techniques about 8 weeks before you plan to take the test. Give yourself enough time to learn what to do and then make these meditation sessions a part of your regular study schedule until you take the test. (If you’d like to continue after that, great!)

Here’s a resource to get you started: the Mindful Awareness Resource Center at UCLA. They offer free meditation lessons and podcasts. They also periodically offer a 6-week online course (for a small fee, less than $200 at the time of this publication); in addition to the pre-recorded classes, you’ll be able to participate in live chats with an instructor. If you’d rather meet with someone in person, whip out your fingers and run a google search for your local area.

Take a deep breath, exhale, and start learning how to minimize distractions and concentrate on the task at hand. Good luck!

5/13/13- Online -Mondays with Jen- 9:00- 10:30PM (EDT)

5/19/13- New York, NY- Free Trial Class- 2:00PM – 5:00PM

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Happy Friday! It’s that time of the week to catch up on some of the top grad school tips and news links:

Intentional Delay: Productive Procrastination (About.com Graduate School)

We all work hard to manage our time well and avoid procrastination, putting tasks off until the last minute. However, intentionally delaying work can have benefits.

Explore Health Insurance Options for Grad Students (U.S. News Education)

This week U.S. News addressed the sixth in a series of questions that admitted graduate school students often ask with information about purchasing health insurance.

Graduation Guide: Graduate School Not For Everyone, But Can Be A Great Experience (The Collegian)

A Graduate Student studying English at Kansas State University outlines the pros and cons of continuing your education after college.

Graduate Schools Need to Improve Career Counseling, Report Says (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

The Chronicle reports on the lack of understanding that graduate students have about the full range of career options available to them once they earn degrees.

Did we miss your favorite article from the week? Let us know what you’ve been reading in the comments or tweet @ManhattanPrep

All for the game

I think it’s great that some teachers want to use the GRE as a way to inspire a love of learning in students. You’ll use this vocab all your life! You’ll sound so smart! Start reading the Economist every day! I just… really? You’re an adult. You have infinite things you could learn about, and infinite resources to learn about them, and finite time to do it in. If you were passionate about vocab and wanted to learn more of it, you already would be! And who is really ever going to care if you can use “puerile” or “penumbra” in a sentence?

For me, studying for the GRE is all about the game, and the game here is getting GRE points. That’s it. I don’t need to know this word for life. I need to know it to get it right on the exam. And I like that mindset, because I feel like it presents me with a defined challenge that I can win. And I like to win.

Making Mnemonics

I’ve posted before about different ways to learn vocab words, and the Manhattan GRE materials present you with a lot of alternatives as well. I think making mnemonic devices, or little tricks to help you remember the words, can be a huge help… if it’s done right.

You have to make sure that the mnemonic is easy to remember and that it alone tells you the meaning of the word. It’s good if it sounds like something you already know, uses an expression you already know, plays off the sounds of the words it uses, and/or clarifies an important distinction in meaning about the word.

Twenty Examples

To get you started, here are 20 mnemonics I used to remember GRE vocab words. I’ve put the words that I emphasize when saying these sentences in my head in bold.

(1)    Lassitude – tiredness or lazy indifference. “Working in the Bahamas is almost impossible. The heat at this latitude inspires nothing but lassitude.”

(2)    Proscribe – prohibit; banish; exile. “During your pregnancy, I prescribe rest and proscribe alcohol.”

(3)    Sedulous – diligent and persistent. “The people who were most persistent always said less and did more”.

(4)    Adumbrate – roughly outline; foreshadow; obscure. “One sharp witness gave us a sharp, clear picture, but a dumb brute only gave us an adumbration of the scene.”

(5)    Encomium – warm praise; formal praise. “Bathed in encomium from her bosses, the new attorney was in a coma of happiness.”

(6)    Distaff – female; women’s work; a staff that holds wool for spinning. “Some of my distaff relatives did staff the president even when that kind of job was almost unheard of for women!”

(7)    Delimit – define or mark the boundaries of. “I need you to delineate the limits of this property; once you delimit it, we can start mowing.”

(8)    Cosset – treat as a pet. pamper. “Cosette in Les Miserables has a silly name, because her family doesn’t cosset her at all, instead making her sweep the floors and go hungry.”

(9)    Canard – false rumor. “I can ‘ardly believe this rumor; what a canard!”

(10) August – majestic; admirable. “Harvard is an august institution, and when the freshman first arrive in August, they really feel its majestic nature and are proud of its esteem.”

(11) Arrogate – claim without right or permission. “That arrogant man arrogated this land as his own!”

(12) Assiduous – persevering; diligent; constant. “Like a stubborn ass, that assiduous donkey keeps climbing slowly even though he’s obviously exhausted.”

(13) Pith –core; essence; significance. “Arguments, like fruit, have both pith and pit: the meat of the matter, and the wasted words.”

(14) Enervate – weaken. “You think it means ‘to make you strong’, but ‘enervate’ always steers you wrong. It means to wear your nerves down so, you’re weak and tired and very slow.”

(15) Divest – deprive of a rank or title; sell off holdings. “I want to divest you of the idea that an investment in whole life insurance is a good idea; make a divestment before you take a dive.”

(16) Craven – very cowardly. lacking courage. “Master Craven in The Secret Garden is indeed craven; he can’t even face his own sick child.”

… and the last four, which help me not only to remember the word, but to avoid thinking that it’s definition is tied to the way it is most conventionally used.

(17) Chauvinism – fanatical patriotism or blind enthusiasm for the military; undue bias toward a particular group. “Her female chauvinism was too much to bear where she suggested that only women were smart enough to go to school with no evidence to back up her claims.”

(18) Condone – overlook; tolerate; regard as harmless. “The governor did not support the protest, but he condoned it, refusing to send police to disperse the protestors.”

(19) Arcane – known or understood by only a few; obscure; secret. This new research is full of so many arcane details on the arcs of walking canes that almost no one could understand it.

(20) Ambivalent – uncertain or unable to decide. “He cared which medicine he took, but he was ambivalent between Ambien and Lunesta.” (And of course, “to amble” also means “to walk around”.)

Coming up with and using sentences such as these is a great way to help move your vocab study in the right direction!

Within rectangle ACDF, both ABGH and BCDE are squares, and 3x > y > 2x.

 

Quantity A

The ratio of the area of ACDF to the area of HGEF

Quantity B

5

See the answer choices and submit your pick over on our Challenge Problem page.

Do you have to follow this strategy to get a 6? Absolutely not! But if it appeals to you, you might find that it helps you better organize your thoughts and give a clear, linear progression to your argument. I call it the “even if” strategy.

The “Even if” strategy

The idea behind the “even if” strategy is to structure your essay to highlight the most important points first. Basically, it allows you to nest your points, conceding one point at a time so that the issue or argument at hand has fewer and fewer problems to contend with as you proceed.

For the writer, the benefit of the “Even if” strategy is that your introduction sentences to each paragraph almost write themselves. They introduce the new concept while linking it seamlessly to the previous concept. For this reader, this provides a clarity of structure that GRE graders really seem to enjoy.

The “Even if” strategy on the Issue essay

Let’s say that the issue essay asks you to discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement, “Investment in education is the most important investment that can be made.” Like most issue statements, this is much too broad a proclamation to agree or disagree with completely. When I first take my notes, they might look like this:

• Too broad; must narrow to discuss
• Mostly agree (education allows for growth; education is vital to society)
• However, other side has many points (other investments matter; depends on needs)

When I structure my essay, the paragraphs will link together seamlessly when they follow an “Even if” structure. The introductory sentences of my body paragraphs, after my introduction but before my conclusion, might look like this:

• The statement is much too broad with which to agree or disagree, as it currently applies across all of time, space, and society.
• Even if we can agree to narrow the discussion to only the present, my world view is not informed enough to have an opinion as to the truth of this statement.
• If based solely on my understanding of the world, I see the value in the statement and agree with its sentiment.
• However, even though I agree overall with the sentiment of the statement, there are some strong factual arguments against it.

I’ve dealt with one issue at a time in a systematic way. I’ve addressed all ambiguities and bias, then followed the directions and taken a preference for agreement or disagreement, and then tempered my statements with an understanding of the other side’s opinion. In the conclusion, I will reinforce the extent to which I agree with a more nuanced version of the statement.

The “Even if” Strategy on the Argument Essay

The argument essay is where “Even if” really shines. It allows you to present one problem at a time, and then stipulate that even if that problem were handled, there would still be another problem underneath. It cuts away one bruise from the apple at a time in order to leave no excuses or explanations for the rotten core underneath.

Let’s say that the argument essay asks me to evaluate the following argument: “The Mayor of Janesville has proposed a plan to help stimulate sales for small businesses in the town’s downtown shopping district. He proposes that Janesville provide tax breaks to businesses who want to move their operations to Janesville. The tax breaks, the Mayor reasons, will motivate businesses to move to Janesville, which will help to grow the downtown shopping district, attracting customers and their spending dollars.”

First, I might make a list of some (of the many) problems with this argument:

• Will tax breaks make businesses want to move?
• Will businesses necessarily offer shopping?
• Will businesses grow the downtown shopping district?
• Does the mayor want to help the current small businesses? Or any?
• Will customers be attracted to the businesses that come?
• Will more customers help the current small businesses?
• Will customers coming to new businesses shop at small businesses?

That list is a bit disordered, and it doesn’t prioritize my issues in the most important way. Whether or not they get their own paragraph, I’d like to nest my arguments in an “Even if” structure, such as the following:

• We don’t know if tax breaks motivate businesses to uproot.
• Even if they do, we don’t know if these tax breaks will be large enough to be motivating.
• Even if they are large enough to be attractive, we don’t know if they outweigh the costs or disadvantages of moving to Janesville.
• Even if they are enough to drive businesses to Janesville, we don’t know if these businesses offer shopping.
• Even if they do offer shopping, we don’t know if they will open downtown.
• Even if they do open downtown, we don’t know if they will attract customers.
• Even if they attract customers, we don’t know if those customers have money to spend.
• Even if the customers do have money to spend, we don’t know if the increased competition will help small businesses or hurt them.

Do you see the benefit of this structure? It allows us to bring up one issue at a time, and then stipulate that it might not be a problem and put it aside. In other words, the reader could disagree with my first seven points and still come back and agree with me on the final point. The “Even if” strategy makes it so that all your points are clear and presented in a logical progression, but they aren’t linked together to depend on one another. And that makes for a much stronger argument!

5/6/13- New York, NY- Free Trial Class- 6:30PM – 9:30PM

5/6/13- Online – Free Trial Class- 2:00PM – 5:00PM

5/6/13- Online -Mondays with Jen- 9:00- 10:30PM (EDT)

5/8/13- Los Angeles, CA- Free Trial Class- 6:30 – 9:30PM

5/12/13- Berkeley, CA- Free Trial Class- 6:00 – 9:00PM

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listing Page.

Happy Friday! It’s that time of the week to catch up on some of the top grad school tips and news links:

6 Tips for a Smooth Relocation to Grad School (U.S. News Education)

U.S. News addresses the fifth in a series of questions that admitted graduate school students often ask with tips about relocating for a master’s or doctoral program.

Which is Right for Me? One Student’s Choice of a PhD or PsyD (About.com Graduate School)

About.com shares a conversation with a student who was awarded admission to three doctoral programs in psychology but didn’t know where to go – and whether she should choose a PhD or PsyD.

Grad School…What’s the Point? (USA Today College)

USA Today provides their insight into whether there a practical reason to go to graduate school these days, given the current recession and job situation.

Graduate School Decision Should be Based on Career Program (BG News)

Some students may think it’s better to attend a different graduate school than where they went to undergraduate, but one student shares why it all depends on the program.

The 6 Tops Regrets Students Have Once Finals Week Hits (Houston Press)

In the spirit of finals week across campuses around the world, we wanted to share some regrets that students have had from past semesters so you can avoid such pitfalls.

Did we miss your favorite article from the week? Let us know what you’ve been reading in the comments or tweet @ManhattanPrep

The Studying Dip

When Seth Godin wrote about “The Dip,” he was talking about the time in a business where you feel like things will never improve, but they’re just about to get better. He was trying to quantify, or at least clarify, when you should stick with it despite the obstacles, versus when you are just on a steady downward streak.

When we talk about “the dip”, we’re talking about that time in studying for a standardized test when you’re working, and working, and working, and you wonder, “Is this working?”

The Bad News

Let’s start with the bad news first. The bad news is that if what you’re doing isn’t making your score go up, after a number of weeks, you have to change it. But this section is very short because that’s the only bad news.

The Good News

The good news is that just because something has to be changed, doesn’t mean it’s been a waste. Let me repeat: if you’ve been learning things you didn’t know and improving at doing things you weren’t able to do before, your efforts have not been wasted. They’ve been necessary; they just haven’t been sufficient.  Much of the time, your preliminary study is necessary just to get the basic building blocks together is an essential start… but you’ve still got to build something with them.

The other good news is that you’re not alone. It’s totally common for students to get through weeks of studying and learning but not yet see the increase in score that they wanted. So that doesn’t mean you’re on the wrong track.

What to do

When you’re in the dip, you have to keep working. But you often have to tweak what you’re doing to be more test-focused. How can you do that? Some suggestions are:

• Review particular questions that you missed and make sure you understand the solution completely. Try to, in your own words, articulate what you might notice in the problem next time that would help you get on track to the write answer.
• Record what you’ve learned, grouping similar strategies together by topic.
• Go after your worst vocab words with a vengeance. If something keeps eluding you, integrate it into your life in as many ways as you can think of until it’s solidified.
• Don’t overdose on practicing problems or exams just hoping that your score will go up. Instead, make sure you’re doing problems and practice tests with a purpose: to diagnose your weaknesses so that you can study them, or to review problems you  missed and understand how to do them (or both!).
• Instead of trying to cover everything at a set speed, set aside a specific amount of time to study and go at whatever pace lets you master the material. Mastery is key!

If you’re in the dip, don’t give up! Keep working hard, but shift the direction of you work toward specific problems: how to spot them, what traps lie waiting for you, and what your general plan of attack will be for those problems. Combined with your basic math and verbal skills, this strategy will help you start adding points to your score and, bit by bit, the pieces you’ve mastered will build on one another and start linking together in ways that push your score even higher.

If  and  are positive integers, what is the least possible value of xy?

See the answer choices and submit your pick over on our Challenge Problem page.

Sleep in Graduate School: Why Depriving Yourself of Sleep is a Terrible Idea (Grad Hacker)

Cutting back on sleep is never a good solution to getting your work done. In fact the opposite is true: healthy, sound sleep can be your key to success in graduate school.

Overwhelmed with End-of-the Semester Tasks? (About.com Graduate Schol

Whether you’re already in grad school or finishing up the Spring Semester in college, these final weeks can be very overwhelming. Here are some tips to ease the stress.

The Impossible Decision (The New Yorker)

Now that it’s springtime, college students who received acceptance letters to graduate school need to answer the complicated, inevitable question: To go, or not to go?

12 Tips For Increasing Productivity (Forbes)

Forbes has some good news—productivity is something that can be continuously improved. Here are some great pointers to help you focus your efforts and plan intelligently.

Did we miss your favorite article from the week? Let us know what you’ve been reading in the comments or tweet @ManhattanPrep

How does exercise help memory?

In the blog post, New York Times journalist Gretchen Reynolds details the two new studies¾one conducted on humans and the other conducted on rats.

In the human study, elderly women who already had some mild cognitive impairment were split into three groups. One group lifted weights, the second group engaged in moderate aerobic exercise, and the third group did yoga-like activities.

The participants were tested at the beginning and end of the 6-month exercise period and the results were striking. First, bear in mind that, in general, we would expect elderly people who are already experiencing mental decline to continue down that path over time. Indeed, after 6 months, the yoga group (our “control” group) showed a mild decline in several aspects of verbal memory.

The weight-training and aerobic groups, by contrast, actually improved their performance on several tests (remember, this was 6 months later!). In particular, these groups were not losing as much of their older memories and they even became faster at some spatial memory tests involving memorizing the location of three items. In other words, the women were both better at making new memories and better at remembering / retrieving old ones!

Another group of researchers conducted a similar study, only this time rats were the ones getting some cardio in or lifting weights. (The rats ran on wheels for the cardio exercise. For the weight lifting, get this: the researchers tied little weights to the rats’ tails and had them climb tiny ladders!)

At the end of six weeks, the running rats showed increased levels of a brain protein that helps create new brain cells. The tail-weight-trainers had higher levels of a different protein that helps new neurons to survive.

How can I use this? Get up and MOVE!

Reading this study has made me want to exercise more¾and not even for the GRE! I’d like to stave off mental decline in my old age. : )

The women in the study were performing fairly mild exercises only twice a week (remember, they were elderly), so we don’t suddenly have to become fitness fiends. We don’t know, of course, exactly how the study results might translate to younger people, but the general trend is clear: exercise can help us make and retain memories. That’s crucially important when studying for the GRE¾every last bit will help!

Get a little bit of both weight-training and cardio in every week. You don’t have to become a gym rat (pun intended). It’s probably enough to engage in some moderate activity every few days. Also, look for ways to incorporate mild exercise into your daily routine. For example, when I go to the grocery store, I carry a basket around on my arm rather than push a cart (unless I really have to buy a lot). I’ll fill that basket right up to the brim¾often, I end up having to use both hands to continue carrying the thing. I figure that, every time I do that, it has to be worth at least 10 minutes of pumping iron!

Studying for the GRE is tiring, so use this news as an excuse to take a brain break. Get up and walk around the block for 15 minutes, or turn on some music and dance, or run the vacuum cleaner (vigorously!). Then sit back down and enjoy the brain fruits of your physical labors.

Note: Figure not drawn to scale.

 

Quantity A

h

Quantity B

8

See the answer choices and submit your pick over on our Challenge Problem page.

4/22/13- Boston, MA- Free Trial Class- 6:30PM – 9:30PM

4/22/13- Online – Mondays with Jen- 7:00PM – 8:30PM

4/25/13- New York, NY - Free Trial Class- 6:30PM – 9:30PM

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listing Page.

How to Make the Final Grad School Enrollment Decision (U.S. News Education)

Former dean of admissions has some advice for how to focus your needs and desires when you make your final grad school enrollment decision.

Overcome Procrastination with the Pomodoro Technique (About.com Graduate School)

Looking for a way to overcome procrastination? The Pomodoro Technique is a formal timer-based time management technique—it’s simple and effective.

How to Choose a U.S. Graduate School (U.S. News Education)

Use these four tips to thoroughly research graduate programs and prospective career fields before becoming and international graduate student.

U.S. Graduate Schools Stung by Drop in Chinese Applications (Reuters)

Reuters reports that slowing grad school enrollments, including a 5 percent decline in applications from Chine for fall 2013, are hurting the revenues of many U.S. universities.

Did we miss your favorite article from the week? Let us know what you’ve been reading in the comments or tweet @ManhattanPrep

 “Triplets Adam, Bruce, and Charlie enter a triathlon. There are nine competitors in the triathlon. If every competitor has an equal chance of winning, and three medals will be awarded, what is the probability that at least two of the triplets will win a medal?

(A) 3/14

(B) 19/84

(C) 11/42

(D) 15/28

(E) 3/4

© ManhattanPrep, 2013

Yuck. I’m not a fan of probability in general and this one is particularly annoying. Why? Because they ask for the probability that at least two will win. Most of the time, when a probability question uses at least or at most language, we can use the cool 1 – x shortcut because there’s only one not-included case.

For example, if I tell you I’m going to flip a coin three times, I might ask you to calculate the probability that I’ll get at least one heads. There’s only one case where I wouldn’t: zero heads. So you can just calculate the probability of zero heads and subtract from 1.

But we can’t do that here, because it’s possible for just 1 twin to win a medal and it’s also possible for zero twins to win a medal. Sigh.

Okay, how are we going to tackle this? Probability is a measure of the number of “desired outcomes” divided by the total number of possibilities. Let’s figure out the total number of possibilities first.

Take a look at the question again. Is this one of those questions where the order matters? If you don’t win, you don’t win. If you do win, does the question make a distinction between coming in first, second, or third?

Nope. An actual contest probably would, but this question only makes one distinction: you either win a medal or you don’t. If Adam, Bruce, and Charlie come in 1-2-3, or if Charlie, Bruce, and Adam come in 1-2-3, the outcome is the same as far as the problem is concerned: all three win a medal. As a result, order doesn’t matter in this problem.

There are nine competitors; 3 will win a medal and 6 will not. Use the “order doesn’t matter” formula to figure out how many possible combinations there are:

And simplify:

3 × 4 × 7 = 84

Okay, there are 84 possible ways for 3 out of the 9 competitors to win medals.

Now, how many of those will include at least 2 of the triplets? Let’s start with the easier case: all 3 win. There’s actually only 1 possible way that all three triplets could take all 3 medals(since order doesn’t matter). All that matters is that the three medals are taken by the three brothers, in any order.

What about the cases where only two of the three win? Let’s stay that Adam and Bruce win but Charlie doesn’t. Is there only one way for that to happen?

No – there are actually 6 ways for that to happen! Let’s say that the 6 other contestants are named D, E, F, G, H, and I, respectively. So one winning set could be Adam, Bruce, and D. Another winning set could be Adam, Bruce, and E. Essentially, Adam and Bruce could be paired with any one of the other 6 – just not their brother Charlie.

Likewise, if Adam and Charlie are the two who win, they can be paired with any one of the other 6. And if Bruce and Charlie are the winners, they can also be paired with any one of the other 6.

There are 18 different ways, then, in which two of the three triplets win. Add that to the 1 way that all three can win: there are 19 different ways that at least two of the three triplets win.

Because there are 84 possible combinations overall, the probability that at least two of the triplets will win is 19/84.

The correct answer is B.

What if you had to guess? Is it more likely that all 3 of the triplets will win a medal or that none of the 3 will? Since there are more competitors, the competitors are more likely to take the top 3 spots than are the triplets.

Is it more likely that 2 of the 3 triplets will win a medal or that 1 of the 3 will? Let’s say that 1 triplet wins a medal. For the remaining two medals, we have a choice of 2 other triplets and 6 non-triplet competitors. It’s more likely, then, that the non-triplet competitors will win the remaining medals¾there are more of them. So, again, it’s more likely that a lower number of triplets will get medals.

The overall probability for at least 2 triplets, then, should be less than 50%. Eliminate answers D and E and guess from among the other three choices.

Key Takeaways for Messy Probability:

(1) First, probability isn’t super-common on the test, so if you hate these, do know the basics but also know how to guess. If you get a harder one (like this one), just guess and move on!

(2) If you do want to tackle a tough probability problem, first try to think about it in real-world terms. Pretend you’re the one running the triathlon and awarding the medals. This will make it easier to figure out, for example, that order doesn’t matter in this particular problem.

(3) Next, break things into smaller parts. Probability = desired / total. I have a formula to calculate the total. I can break the desired portion down into exactly-2-win or exactly-3-win. And so on!

© ManhattanPrep, 2013

I moved to Los Angeles, to a little bungalow in Laurel Canyon, the day before the Northridge earthquake.  Timing is everything, just like on the GRE.  I woke up around 3 in the morning.  Because the bungalow was jumping up and down.  As a stupid easterner, I thought, “Oh, it’s an earthquake.  They have them here.”  I didn’t know it was “The Medium One.”  (It was amazing to see the damage—piles of rubble on Ventura Boulevard and in Hollywood, and the I-10 ramp to the 405 fell down.)  As long as I was awake, I decided to go to the bathroom.  The first big aftershock threw me into the door frame.  It’s unsettling not to have a firm foundation under your feet.  You feel out of control and at the mercy of forces larger than you.

And that’s the way students feel about the GRE.  And for the same reason, metaphorically speaking.  In every GRE class I’ve taught, most of the students were bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by the shakiness of their foundation knowledge.  The ground was not firm beneath their feet.  It paralyzed them.  They understood the concepts of the problems and the relevant strategies to employ, but could not then solve the problems in a timely manner, if at all.  Especially on the quant side, the GRE tests a logic system—be precise, don’t assume, pick the choice that must follow.  The arithmetic and algebra are the moral equivalent of reading English.  You would like to be able to take those skills as much for granted as you do reading words.  When I say 7 times 13, you say 91.  Think of it as a rap.  When you see .625, you say 5/8.  Woot.  All seriousness aside, people waste 30 seconds a question in the quant because they don’t know their times tables or squares or the fractional decimal percentage equivalencies.  Or their algebra isn’t smooth and silky.  Think about how much time that uses up during the section.  How do you fix that?  “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”  “Practice, practice, practice.”  That’s a New York joke—LA classes hate it.  Having that mastery frees you to identify the type, the approach, and the traps—to do what has to be done to score well.

It truly pains me to see students who have the capacity to excel crippled because they lack that fluency and facility.  And this is the tough love part of the evening.  People have to not kid themselves about what they want the most.  Youse guys can do it.  You have to want it enough to do the work that you need to do.  I had an acting coach who said, “You can have anything you want if you’re willing to sacrifice everything for it.”  Hear the second part.  When I was a young I considered going expat in Paris, even though I was decades too late, but, never mind.  I didn’t go because I wasn’t willing to sacrifice things that I ultimately considered more important.  It wasn’t a failure; it was a choice.  It’s the same with y’all.  If you don’t want to put in the time and effort that it would take you to score brilliantly, it’s not a failure—it’s a choice.  Maybe even the right choice.  Just don’t kid yourself.  The older I get, the more respect I have for “what is.”  If you want most to max out on this exam, do the amount of foundation work that you need.  I have worked with folks who started from zero and went to the best programs in their fields.  They worked real hard for as long as it took, and I admired their dedication.  Do the work.  You can.  I am trying to be encouraging here, but I was raised by Germans, and it’s not part of the culture of my people.

Where did everybody go?  What did I say?  Just kidding. . .I hope.  Some people feel that they don’t have time to do the foundation work and meet their deadlines.  It’s a bad, even self-defeating, excuse.  Of course I don’t know you—perhaps you have several husbands and many children to support.  But deadlines are artificial.  I don’t want to sound like your grandfather, but in twenty years you’ll barely remember when you started grad school.  I know you don’t believe me, but I went through undergrad at a top school in three years.  And now it means nothing to me.  Just sayin’.  Also, quite frankly, waiting a year usually improves your application because you garner not only higher GRE scores, but also more accomplishments.  Or go to Paris and paint—you’ll always be glad that you did.

People generally associate foundation work with the math, but there also such work in the verbal.  When I’m being mean to students, I say, “You know what the secret to Sentence Completion and Sentence Equivalence is?  It’s a lot harder if you don’t know what the words mean.”  Bring the same rigor to the verbal that you do to the math.  Notice the parallel—-you know the strategy guide approach to sentence completions but vocabulary issues handicap you, just as you know the rate formula but cracks in your quant foundation hamstring you.  Be willing to make vocab flash cards and use the words—at least in your inner monologues if you are too embarrassed to do so in Facebook posts.  (But let me point out the upside, if your friends all think you’ve become a pompous twit, you will have more time to study.  Just kidding.  Sort of.  After all, you can always make more friends, but there’s only one Maltese Falcon.  It’s a movie joke, don’t mind me.)

Do you want to do more?  It’s a choice.  Read literature—many novels written before the second world war feature now obscure words that the GRE fancies.*  I can hear you sputtering in outrage about this fact of life, but remember that “what is” thang I wrote about early.  Try Somerset Maugham if you want to ease in.  If you’re up for it, try DH Lawrence, Thomas Wolfe, or William Faulkner.  Even Evelyn Waugh—whom you might find more amusing.

There is a reward.  As I said, if your quant and vocabulary foundations are solid, then you are free to devote yourself to the approaches, form, and awareness delineated in the strategy guides.  Then you can gain the mastery and control necessary to max out this exam—-but the mastery and control I speak of is akin to that displayed by Olympic gymnasts and concert pianists.  When I was young and pretty, I went to a method acting school in Manhattan.  These guys were hard core, as I’m trying to be here.  A quote carved over the front door read, “I wish the stage were as narrow as a tight rope, so incompetents would fear to trade on it.”  The GRE is a tight rope and requires the same commitment to form and precision.  And the same rock solid foundation.  So do that preparation and don’t kid yourself about it—as Jimi Hendrix used to say, “Castles made of sand fall into the sea, eventually.”  Especially during earthquakes.

*I tried off and on to use some annoying GRE type words but “fancies” is a classic example.  “To fancy” can mean “to like.”  You see it a lot. . .in one hundred year old books.

Owners of condominiums in a certain community share annual maintenance costs in proportion to their condominium’s share of the total square footage for all community condominiums at the end of the year. In 2011, when total annual maintenance costs were $104,000, the share of these costs for the owner of a 1,000 square foot condominium was $832.  In 2012, several new condominiums were added to the community, increasing total annual maintenance costs by $5,000 from the previous year and total development square footage by 3,600 square feet.

In 2012, what was the share of maintenance costs for the owner of the 1,000 square foot condominium?

See the answer choices and submit your pick over on our Challenge Problem page.