You’re having lunch with your friend Jane, and you suggest getting hot fudge sundaes for dessert; Jane tells you that she doesn’t eat hot fudge sundaes.  In real life, you could draw several valid inferences from this: she’s lactose intolerant, she has sensitive teeth and so can’t eat frozen desserts, she’s on a diet and trying to avoid sweets, or maybe she just doesn’t like ice cream or hot fudge. 

In real life, those would all be acceptable inferences, because the real-world definition of infer is to do any of the following:

1. to derive by reasoning; conclude or judge from premises or evidence: e.g., They inferred his anger from his heated denial.
2. (of facts, circumstances, statements, etc.) to indicate or involve as a conclusion; lead to.
3. to guess; speculate; surmise.
4. to hint; imply; suggest.

“Infer” is, as you can see, a word with fairly flexible meaning.  We most often use it in day-to-day life to mean “make an educated guess.”  If your friend Jane says she doesn’t eat hot fudge sundaes, you apply your existing knowledge about the possible reasons someone could have for not enjoying the hot fudge and ice cream deliciousness, and you make an educated guess as to what her reasons could be.  On the GMAT, however, “inference” has a different meaning.  Think of...

Simple interest and compound interest - essential topics for an MBA. GMAC thinks the same too. So you will find these questions randomly distributed in your GMAT Exam.

Simple interest is the most basic and is a function of P, the principle amount of money invested, the interest rate earned on the principle, i, and the amount of time the money is invested, t (this is usually stated in periods, such as years or months).

The resulting equation is:

Interest = iPt

In basic terms, the above equation tells us the amount of interest that would be earned on a principle amount invested (P), for a given time (t) at a given interest rate (i).

Example
If you invested $1,000 (P = your principle) for one year (t = one year) at 6% simple interest (i = given interest rate), you would get $60 in interest at the end of the year and would have a total of $1,060.

For compound interest, you would earn slightly more. Let’s look at similar type problem, though this one involves compound interest.

Q) Mr. Riley deposits $500 into an account that pays 10% interest, compounded semiannually. How much money will be in Mr. Riley’s account at the end...

MBA applicants are frequently beleaguered by internet-induced anxieties regarding their demonstrated student leadership, professional accomplishments and net impact. In their MBA admissions essays, they spend copious amounts of time on positioning, and finding ways to distill (or embellish) management responsibilities from a number-crunching  senior analyst position. The resultant problem here is: most applicants are hard at work engineering the same kind of boring “super-candidacy.”

What will make your candidacy different?

We find that the biggest issue in our clients’ writing rarely lies in their academic or professional pedigrees, but in the authenticity of their prose, and the specificity of their point of view. MBA programs are becoming increasingly concerned not just with finding business leaders, but finding energized community members, values-driven students and passionate people. Net impact and business acumen are no longer enough. Consider the following prompts from Harvard Business School, Duke Fuqua and Stanford GSB, respectively:

What are your three most substantial accomplishments and why do you view them as such?

Describe your vision for your career and your inspiration for pursuing this career path.

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