By now you've no doubt read all about the college admissions scandal that has rocked higher education and cast doubt on the fairness of the process that students go through to get admitted to the top U.S. universities.

And, like most people, you're probably outraged by it. You can't believe the depths that people will go to to cheat the system. And if you're in the middle of the admissions process yourself, you're wondering if the deck is stacked against you to the point where you even have a legitimate chance at competing for a spot at your dream school.

Those are perfectly normal reactions, and I get it. Believe me, my inbox has been full these past few days from students asking what it means for them, and whether they should be concerned that the same thing may be happening at the graduate level as well. 

(To that last point, Operation Varsity Blues only focused on uncovering schemes perpetrated at the undergraduate level. It's certainly possible that similar things could...

It's getting more competitive by the year to be accepted at the top graduate and business programs, and yet there are plenty of things you can be doing right now to separate yourself from your peers and put your best foot forward during the admissions process.

Dominate Test Prep is excited to host a special presentation on March 20, 2019 with MBA admissions expert Hillary Schubach, President of Shine/ MBA Admissions Consulting, to give you an edge in the admissions process and a plan to get admitted to the business or graduate school of your choice.

During this LIVE webcast event, Hillary will cover:

• What the top business schools are looking for
• When to take (or retake) the GMAT/GRE
• Securing the strongest recommendations
• Tips for writing the best essays and résumé
• Standing out from the increasingly competitive applicant pool
• Common application mistakes and how to avoid them
• Handling employment gaps, career switches, and other potential "red flags"
• Nailing your...

Want to ensure you're positioning yourself as an outstanding candidate in the business school application process?

Join Hofstra University's Frank G. Zarb School of Business on Thursday, March 7th for a free webinar where they'll be hosting Stacy Blackman, an internationally recognized MBA admissions consultant, who will share tips on putting your best foot forward during the MBA admission process.

WHAT: How They See You: Tips for Building Your Strongest Candidacy (free webinar)
DATE: Thursday, March 7, 2019
TIME: 2:00pm EST (11am Pacific)
WHO: Hofstra University and Stacy Blackman Consulting
REGISTER: https://www.anymeeting.com/AccountManager/RegEv.aspx?PIID=ED57D680874738

Click the button below to learn more and to reserve your spot.

Interview season is here for Round 2 MBA applicants, and we thought you'd benefit from these helpful tips from Stacy Blackman of Stacy Blackman Consulting about how to answer three of the most common interview questions you're likely to encounter.

1. Tell me about yourself.

Our first piece of advice: don’t go on and on. It’s easy to do when you’ve been asked such an open-ended question, so make sure you practice your response out loud a few times. There’s no need to recite your life story — talking about where you were born, your family, or your childhood is not what they’re looking for here.

We recommend approaching this question as if they’d asked you to walk them through your resume: quickly summarize the highlights of your college years and then move on to your professional career. Explain why you took the roles you did, what your main responsibilities were, and what you enjoyed or took away from each position. If you’ve...

Earlier this week we hosted a free webinar on Time Management, Speed Reading, and Anxiety Relief with special guest trainer Bara Sapir of City Test Prep. If you missed it, the recording is above.

We are pleased to announce that we have worked out and exclusive deal with Bara to offer anyone affiliated with Dominate Test Prep a $50 discount on any one of her upcoming online MindFlow Speed Reading clinics!

To learn more and take advantage of this special offer, visit https://citytestprep.com/product/mindflow-workshop/ and enter the following coupon code at checkout: 50discount.

For the past 13 years, Bara has taught MindFlow, a game-changer workshop that teaches participants to read up to 5x faster -- without compromising comprehension. Increased speed and accuracy translates to test-takers gaining more time to answer questions and consistently score higher on the GMAT, GRE, LSAT, SAT, ACT, and MCAT. In fact, Bar's techniques lead to a 13% average score increase in your...

Would you agree that if you could increase your reading speed, it would help you immensely on whichever standardized test you're taking?

Of course it would. 

Reading faster will help you on reading comprehension questions, obviously. It will also help you with your overall time management. Timing issues are one of the top concerns my students have when they first come to me, and reading faster is one of the strategies for improving that.

And even after test day, think about how useful it would be in graduate school to be able to get through the countless pages of text you're expect to read in less time -- and still understand what you're reading!

Fortunately, there are a handful of easy-to-learn techniques that will enable you to increase your reading speed without losing comprehension -- and we're going to teach them to you in a free webinar we're hosting on Tuesday, February 5th, at 1:00pm Eastern Time U.S. (10am PST).

Lock in your spot NOW so that you...

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

You've been studying like crazy for your standardized test (whether SAT, ACT, GMAT, or GRE), and you feel like you've brushed up on all of the key concepts that are supposedly tested. But then you go to take your first practice test (or worse, the real thing) and, uh-oh!, you encounter some questions that you simply haven't seen before.

Panic sets in, and you wonder whether all that preparation was for naught.

Now you're confused. What did I miss? Did my tutor / prep course steer me wrong? Do I need to seek out new books that may have some of these "missing" practice questions in them? Will I ever be able to get the score I need?

Truth be told, you probably haven't missed anything. I'm sure your prep course or tutor didn't overlook any major topics, and that book you've been studying from almost certainly includes all of the major content areas you can expect to see on test day.

So what went wrong?

More likely than not, you simply haven't...

There's a quote attributed to the famous Renaissance artist Michaelangelo, supposedly in response to a fan who asked Michaelangelo how he was able to sculpt such a masterpiece in "David" out of a formless block of marble, that goes as follows:

"[Sculpting David] is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn't look like David."

Whether that's an actual Michaelangelo quote or not, I like the sentiment -- and it applies perfectly to certain question types that you make encounter on the GMAT or GRE.

The Complement Rule of Probability

You may remember the complement rule of probability that states,

probability (something) = 1 - probability (not something)

In other words, probabilities must sum to 100%, so if the probability of something happening is 60%, for example, then the probability of that thing not happening is 40% (1 - .60 = .40). Pretty straightforward.

Now as I explain in the probability lessons of my GMAT and GRE courses, this formula is particularly helpful on hard...

What are factorials?

Factorials are among the more advanced math topics you'll be expected to know on the GMAT or GRE, especially if you're shooting for a high score. They most commonly come up in what I call "counting" questions (the "how many ways...?" questions that involve combinations and permutations), but you may see factorials tested individually as well.

You recognize a factorial by the exclamation point "!" after a number, and that mathematical notation simply tells you to multiply every integer in decreasing order starting with the number before the exclamation point and stopping at one (1). 

For example, 8! (read "eight factorial") = 8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1 = 40,320.

Advanced Factorial Example + Strategy

As you can see, factorials can get pretty big! And in fact, you very rarely actually need to multiply out all of the numbers to solve problems involving factorials on your exam. The numbers can get too large for the built-in calculator on the GRE, and you don't even have...

You've no doubt heard the adage that "practice makes perfect." But that's not necessarily true. I prefer the legendary American football coach Vince Lombardi's variation that goes, "Perfect practice makes perfect."

You see, how you practice and prepare for your exam matters. I want to shed some light on that for you so that you're able to maximize your study time. In fact, if you internalize and take action on the three tips I'm going to share with you, you'll be able to get more right answers on test day without having to put in a lot of extra hours. Time is valuable, so why spend more of it preparing for your exam than absolutely necessary?

Okay, let's dive in.

A Tale of Two Candidates

Consider the following two hypothetical students studying for their respective exams.

Candidate A: Studies for 100 hours.

Candidate B: Studies for 80 hours.

Which student do you think is likely to get a higher score?

It's a trick question. On the surface, it seems like Candidate A is the obvious...