Word Problems: TRANSLATE First, Solve Second
Say you're on question 6 of the Executive Assessment Quant section. The prompt is five lines long. It mentions a team, hours, travel, research and a total. You read it once. You read it again. I'll bet you read it a THIRD time before your pencil ever touched the paper. Then you looked at the clock and felt your stomach drop.
Here's my verdict: that question was not hard. The math inside it was something you could do in middle school. What beat you was the English wrapped around it. You tried to hold five facts in your head at once, and your head said no.
The math was never the problem
A word problem is a math problem in a disguise. The disguise is long sentences, extra words and phrases like "10 fewer than" that are easy to flip backwards. Strip the disguise off and most of these questions turn into two or three tiny lines of notes.
That matters on this test. The Quant section gives you 30 minutes for 14 questions, a mix of Problem Solving (regular multiple choice) and Data Sufficiency (more on that below). That works out to a little over 2 minutes per question on average. You can see the full layout on GMAC's assessment structure page. Every reread is time you are paying for and getting nothing back.
So stop and think for a second. If the math is easy, why do word problems eat so much of your time? Don't read on until you have an answer. Mine is simple: you are trying to SOLVE before you have finished READING.
Translate, one sentence at a time
Here's the process. Read ONE sentence. Write it down as a short note. Move to the next sentence. Don't try to solve anything until every sentence is on paper. By the time you finish reading, the problem is already set up in front of you.
Most of the English on this test falls into a short list of patterns. Learn them the way you'd learn shortcuts in a spreadsheet:
| The prompt says | You write |
|---|---|
| X is 3 times as many as Y | X = 3Y |
| X is 10 fewer than Y | X = Y − 10 |
| X is 12 more than Y | X = Y + 12 |
| half of X | X ÷ 2 |
| the total of X and Y is 90 | X + Y = 90 |
| how many X? | ? = X |
That last row is the one people skip, and it costs them. Writing down exactly what the question asks for is the cheapest insurance on the whole test.
Notice what happened. Once the four notes were on paper, the problem was basically over. No rereading. No holding facts in your head.
Data Sufficiency rewards translation even more
Data Sufficiency is a question type where you get a question and two statements. Your job is NOT to find the number. Your job is to decide whether the facts are enough to find ONE answer. If your notes are clean, you often know the answer without doing any arithmetic at all.
The mistakes I see every week
- Reading the whole prompt before writing anything. By the last sentence, the first one is gone. INSTEAD: write one note per sentence as you go. Your pencil moves while your eyes move.
- Doing it in your head because "it's easy." That's pride talking, and pride makes silly mistakes. INSTEAD: write every fact down, even the obvious ones. Easy notes take three seconds. A reread takes ten or more.
- Solving for the wrong thing. You find P when they asked for R. INSTEAD: write "? = ..." before you do any math, and look at it again before you click.
- Flipping "less than" and "fewer than." "10 fewer than P" becomes 10 − P. INSTEAD: plug in one real number to check the direction. It takes five seconds and kills the most common translation error there is.
- Building heavy algebra when the answers are sitting right there. INSTEAD: once your notes are down, ask whether you can just test the answer choices or pick numbers. And if the choices are far apart, you may be able to estimate your way there.
Here's the forced choice. What do you want MORE: to feel fast because you skipped the notes, or to actually BE fast because you never had to reread? You can't have both. The clean notes win every time.
Your challenge for today
Pull 5 word problems you've already done. Cover the solutions. For each one, set a timer and do ONLY the translation step: one note per sentence, ending with "? = ...". No solving. Then look at your notes and ask how much of the problem is left. I'll bet the answer is "almost nothing" on at least four of the five. Then solve them, and compare that time to what you spent the first time around.
