How can you ace the GMAT, the EA or any test required at your dream school? [Show summary]

Mike Diamond of Apex GMAT shares his advice for acing the GMAT, prepping for graduate program tests of all kinds, and why empathy is central to Apex’s approach to test-coaching.

Mike Diamond, Director of Curriculum Development at Apex GMAT talks test prep [Show notes]

How can you ace the GMAT, the EA, or any tests that may be required at the school you have your heart set on? Today’s guest has your answer. Mike Diamond is Director of Curriculum Development at Apex GMAT, and also its Co-Founder. Mike earned his bachelor's at Brandeis in 2000 and has worked in finance, strategy advising, and political consulting. However, his passion is the GMAT.

How did you get involved in the test prep business? [1:55]

Entirely by accident. My passion is teaching and helping people, and I've always pursued that in all the various places that I've been in my career, and even going back to being a student. And like many, I was sort of the go-to guy for friends and family members, as a resource for people I knew, without paying attention to it as a potential career choice. I had spent some time working in a hedge fund, and then I was in the world of political consulting as you had mentioned. I loved it. I was helping people. I was doing really interesting work. But frankly, I was getting a little jaded, and this is well over a decade ago, and I know a lot more people are jaded these days. I was getting a little jaded, and I was having a burrito with my best friend's cousin. We're sitting in the Qdoba, and she's brilliant. She's actually an instructor at Manhattan Prep and she says to me, "Hey, I'm super passionate about Teach For America. I love teaching fourth grade science in North Philly, but I pay my mortgage teaching the GMAT." I said, "Oh really?" At the time, I only thought there were the bigger shops, the Kaplans and Princeton Reviews. And frankly, as an educator, and I certainly consider myself an educator, those never held much appeal for me as a place of employment. I said, "Oh wow, that's really fascinating." I had always had a proclivity towards psychometric standardized testing.

So about four days later, I went in, I did the GMAT, and then I began taking meetings with various GMAT firms. I was disappointed in what I saw, and there's plenty of great firms and great tutors out there. But once a GMAT business gets beyond a small scale, personalized attention really isn't a priority, and everything defaults to curriculum and having very bright instructors go through a prescriptive method for learning how to excel. There's two problems with that. One is that it only gets a candidate so far, and the other is that it's very one-size-fits-all, and yet one size does not fit all. Very quickly, everything else went into the rear view mirror. I began Apex with some like-minded instructors, and the rest, as they say, is history.

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What is Apex GMAT Prep? [4:54]

Apex is dedicated to helping people become better thinkers and bett...