GRE & GMAT Mental Math Webinar: July 8, 2020

MyGuru's Director of Online Tutoring introduces & demonstrates mental math concepts and strategies for the GRE & GMAT. 

Calculator Availability on the GRE & GMAT

GMAT: Simple calculator is offered on the Integrated Reasoning section, but not for the quantitative portion

GRE: Access to a calculator on all sections of the exam, but it is not user-friendly

Basically, we want to avoid the terrible calculator as much as possible and use it only when absolutely necessary. Instead we'll use good manual calculation.

One thing to remember about manual calculation on the GRE & GMAT is that the tests love calculations as simple factors. 

  • Generally, break or chunk calculations into factors of 2, 5 10 100 and 1/2
  • Facilitate and improve your mental math with math-aids.com (free)
    • You can create customized worksheets & never run out of problems
  • Become proficient in calculating multiplication and division up to 15^2 and rooted (sufficient for the GRE)
  • For more difficult multiplication use single or multiple digit multiplication worksheets 
  • Become math ambidextrous and capable of processing non-integers as fractions, decimals, and percents
    • GRE decimals and percents can be addressed with the calculator, but fractions are more difficult
  • Practice exponential and radical manipulation
    • Exponents and radicals can be manipulated by multiplying, dividing, or factoring as normal if you keep the common exponent or radical sign
  • Add any other topics you know you need to work on (arithmetic, algebra, word problems, and geometry for both exams)

As with most things, the key to improving your mental math skills on the GRE & GMAT is PRACTICE!

For a full listing of our GRE/GMAT webinar videos click here, and see below for more information about our online tutoring: