Where to Start With GMAT Quant

If you are taking the GMAT and you are not comfortable with maths, either because you never liked it or because you have not used it since university, this is where to begin. Most people have not done arithmetic by hand in years. That is normal and it is fixable.

GMAT Quant is not a maths test

This is the most important thing on this page, and most people get it wrong.

What the exam tests is whether you can break a problem into simple steps and execute each one quickly. The maths inside those steps is roughly times-table level, up to 12 × 12. If a calculation feels complicated, it usually means the problem has not been broken down far enough.

The consequence: not having studied maths or science at an advanced level is not a disadvantage here. People who did often over-complicate questions that wanted a simpler route.

What is actually on it

Three sections, 45 minutes each, around 21 questions per section. Quant, Verbal, and Data Insights.

No calculator on Quant. You get one on Data Insights, and there is usually more benefit in not reaching for it.

Since the 2023 changes, Quant covers arithmetic, algebra, and word problems, plus number properties, probability and combinatorics at the higher scoring bands. Geometry is no longer on the exam. Neither is calculus.

The arithmetic in a correct solution is high-school level. The difficulty is doing four to six steps in a little over two minutes, which leaves about 20 seconds per step.

Take the nine-question check

Nine questions, one per topic in this course. They are deliberately simpler than a real GMAT question, which mixes topics inside a single problem.

Give yourself about a minute each. If a question takes much longer than that, treat it as a gap even if you get the answer right. Speed is the thing being tested.

The video runs through all nine and gives the answers. The printable version has space for working and a routing table telling you which video covers each one.

Three mistakes that cost people months

Studying too much theory first. Brush up the basics, then get into real questions quickly. It is like practising in an empty car park for months before driving on a road: some value at the start, and the actual skill only develops in traffic. You will also find out where you genuinely need to go deeper, rather than assuming you need depth everywhere.

Answering more questions instead of better ones. Get a fractions question wrong, and most apps hand you more fractions questions. That is what a tool does when it does not know which step you got wrong. The useful work is reviewing the questions you got wrong, and the ones you got right slowly, and identifying the specific step to improve.

Chasing hard questions and mock scores. Scoring well depends on reliably getting easy and medium questions right; those are heavily penalised when missed. And early in your prep, the percentage you get right tells you almost nothing, because getting a question right requires five or six steps to all go right at once. Track which steps you are fixing instead.

About the course

Nine videos, around half an hour each, covering every foundation topic from the perspective of the exam rather than pure theory. Free, in order, no signup.

Start with the check above, or go straight to Fractions if you would rather begin at the beginning.

About the author

Graeme O'Connor scored in the 99th percentile on the GMAT and holds an MBA from a top programme. He has taught GMAT for over ten years and coached hundreds of test takers. He is a guest author for mba.com and GMAC, the organisation that administers the GMAT, and ran GMAC's Quant bootcamp this year. He is the founder of GMAT Panda.