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GMATPill’s Reading Comprehension Tips

Following our prior post on the first GMATPill Reading Comprehension Explanation, we’ve come out with more.GMATPill Explanations:
1: Practice Reading Comprehension 6 Questions “Genetic Mutations”
2: Practice Reading Comprehension 6 Questions “Federal Efforts”
3: Practice Reading Comprehension Passage 8 Questions “Women’s Contribution to the Economy”GMATPill’s Four Reading Comprehension Tips:
1. Pretend you’re REALLY engaged in the passage. REACT to emotions in the passage, focus on words that express the author’s opinion about the topic and internalize that perspective. After reading halfway through sentences, ask yourself WHY the author is feeling the way he/she is feeling
2. Focus on the first topical sentence of each paragraph and CONNECT THE DOTS to figure out what the story of the passage is. Don’t just skim, you need to DISSECT that sentence – on first read you’ll often miss the point. If you focus on that sentence, you almost don’t need to read the rest of the paragraph.
3. CUT THE FLUFF. In order to dissect that first sentence, you’re going to need to CUT THE FLUFF. That means, take out any extraneous adjectives that are great to know, but for the purpose of understanding the author’s point, it helps to skip over these words and focus on the key words in the sentence. Once you take
enormously, extraneously, and excessively descriptivewords out of a sentence, you can understand more clearly the author’s intention and purpose in writing.4. Focus on key connecting phrases. After that first sentence that you dissect, you’ll need to focus on key connecting phrases as you skim from sentence to sentence. Often times, a simple glance at a transitive phrase can help you guess what the rest of the sentence is *probably* going to talk about, as well as what the rest of the paragraph is going to continue talking about. You know these future sentences are probably going to either support or refute, so figure out what direction is going and just focus on that. Don’t read into details. That’s for the losers.
Related Resources:
- GMAT Pill Table of Contents
- Reading Comprehension Cut the Fluff
- The Last Minute GMAT Pill Study Plan
Table of Contents | See Pricing
Verbal Videos: Sentence Correction | Critical Reasoning | Reading Comprehension
Quant Videos: Problem Solving | Data Sufficiency -
Video: Breaking Into Wall Street Investment Banking – Learn Financial Modeling Now
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This video above gives you a brief introduction to the kind of stuff you will learn through this financial modeling course.Are you taking the GMAT so you can get into management consulting or investment banking?
Becoming an investment banker is a competitive process. In the same way you would use the GMAT Pill when taking the GMAT to get a leg up, you’re going to need a leg up when it comes to understanding the financial modeling that investment bankers do.
You’ve heard of the term “mergers and acquisitions” and “investment banking”—dollar signs light up in your eyes. But what exactly is it? What do you need to know?
When Company A merges with Company B—how does that affect the shares of the companies? How exactly do you model it out in Excel? More importantly—what does an investment banker need to know about these excel models?
Well, it used to be that you couldn’t learn this stuff in many places. But our trusted partner has put together a course on how do financial modeling like an investment banker.
Is this course any good? We’ve seen the course material–and trust us, this is the BEST material you’ll see anywhere. Members of our team have worked in mergers and acquisitions–and even THEY say it’s better than the training they received from their own company.
Learn Financial Modeling
If you’re interested in the investment banking route—you better get a hold of this program. You’ll need all the advantages over your competition that you can get. And when it comes to learning the skillset, BreakingIntoWallstreet teaches it better than anyone else.
We here at GMATPill recommend the BIWS Premium product because it’s the best value AND you also get PowerPoint Pro tutorials ($47) free with the purchase. There’s even a merger model based on a real life example between Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) and complete leveraged buyout (LBO) models based on real equity research reports from Morgan Stanley.
Here’s the full run-down:
- Financial Modeling lessons cover Accounting 101 up through 3-Statement Models,Valuation, DCF Analysis, Merger Models, and LBO Models.
- 244 videos total (63 hours of footage).
- Excel lessons include navigation, data manipulation, formatting, formulas, and advanced topics like pivot tables, macros, and custom shortcuts.
- Both Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 shortcuts are covered.
- Operating Model lesson cover how to create a detailed operating model, including revenue and expense builds, complex 3-statement model, and PP&E schedule.
- Valuation lessons cover how to spread comps, adjust for non-recurring charges, calendarize financials, how to value NOLs and equity investments, and how to complete advanced DCF analysis including mid-year discounts and stub periods; you’ll also learn future share price analysis, sum-of-the-parts valuation, and liquidation valuation.
- Advanced Merger Model covers how to combine all 3 statements, multiple scenarios, advanced purchase price allocation, how to calculate revenue and expense synergies by segment, and book taxes, cash taxes, and Section 382 NOLs.
- Advanced LBO Model covers how to modify an operating model to make it into an LBO model, 7 debt tranches, multiple capital structure scenarios, and an advanced debt schedule with mandatory and optional repayments.
- Includes sample pitch book and PowerPoint crash course as well as commentary on the deal.
For more information on the financial modeling courses for investment bankers, click here.

Table of Contents | See Pricing
Verbal Videos: Sentence Correction | Critical Reasoning | Reading Comprehension
Quant Videos: Problem Solving | Data Sufficiency -
GMATPill’s New GMAT Reading Comprehension Pill Due To Student Demand
Watch GMAT Reading Comprehension Video #1, and *NEW* Watch Video #2 Here
Due to popular and persistent demand, we will be releasing Reading Comprehension videos.
As you may already know, we originally stayed away from Reading Comprehension because we were not convinced we could produce something quality enough that we would feel comfortable releasing out into the public.
Well, so many of you asked for it that we just had to give it a second thought.
We created some preliminary videos and asked for student feedback.
The results?
Well, needless to say—they LOVED IT!
Watch Zeke Lee think through this Boring GMAT Reading Comprehension passage!
More Reading Comprehension videos will be Free for existing students—so make sure you sign up for GMATPill membership as soon as you can!
Take a look and let us know what you think! Check back again as we’ll be adding more. Email zeke@gmatpill.com and let us know when you want to be notified about more Reading Comprehension sneak peak videos.
OFFICIAL GUIDE READING COMPREHENSION
Passage #1 included below:
[GMATPill's Thought Process Explanation Here]Federal efforts to aid minority businesses began in the
1960′s when the Small Business Administration (SBA)
began making federally guaranteed loans and government-
sponsored management and technical assistance
available to minority business enterprises. While this
program enabled many minority entrepreneurs to
form new businesses, the results were disappointing,
since managerial inexperience, unfavorable locations,
and capital shortages led to high failure rates. Even 15
years after the program was implemented, minority
business receipts were not quite two percent of the national
economy’s total receipts.Recently federal policymakers have adopted an
approach intended to accelerate development of the
minority business sector by moving away from directly
aiding small minority enterprises and toward supporting
larger, growth-oriented minority firms through intermediary
companies. In this approach, large corporations
participate in the development of successful and stable
minority businesses by making use of government sponsored
venture capital. The capital is used by a
participating company to establish a Minority Enterprise
Small Business Investment Company or MESBIC. The
MESBIC then provides capital and guidance to minority
businesses that have potential to become future suppliers
or customers of the sponsoring company.MESBIC’s are the result of the belief that providing
established firms with easier access to relevant management
techniques and more job-specific experience, as
well as substantial amounts of capital, gives those firms
a greater opportunity to develop sound business foundations
than does simply making general management
experience and small amounts of capital available.
Further, since potential markets for the minority busi-
nesses already exist through the sponsoring companies,
the minority businesses face considerably less risk in
terms of location and market fluctuation. Following
early financial and operating problems, sponsoring
corporations began to capitalize MESBIC’s far above
the legal minimum of $500,000 in order to generate
sufficient income and to sustain the quality of management
needed. MESBIC’s are now emerging as increasingly
important financing sources for minority enterprises.Ironically, MESBIC staffs, which usually consist of
Hispanic and Black professionals, tend to approach
investments in minority firms more pragmatically than
do many MESBIC directors, who are usually senior
managers from sponsoring corporations. The latter
often still think mainly in terms of the “Social Responsibility
Approach” and thus seem to prefer deals that are
riskier and less attractive than normal investment criteria
would warrant. Such differences in viewpoint have produced
uneasiness among many minority staff members,
who feel that minority entrepreneurs and businesses
should be judged by established business considerations.
These staff members believe their point of view is closer
to the original philosophy of MESBIC’s and they are
concerned that, unless a more prudent course is followed,
MESBIC directors may revert to policies likely
to re-create the disappointing results of the original SBA
approach.Table of Contents | See Pricing
Verbal Videos: Sentence Correction | Critical Reasoning | Reading Comprehension
Quant Videos: Problem Solving | Data Sufficiency
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