Quarter Wit Quarter Wisdom How to Read GMAT Questions Carefully

We all know that we need to be very careful while reading GMAT questions that every word is important. Even  small oversights can completely change an  answer for you. This is what happens with many test takers who try to tackle this official question. Even though the question looks very simple, the way it is worded causes test-takers to often ignore one word, which changes the solution  entirely. Lets look at this question now: Alice’s take-home pay last year was the same each month, and she saved the same fraction of her take-home pay each month. The total amount of money that she had saved at the end of the year was 3 times the amount of that portion of her monthly take-home pay that she did NOT save. If all the money that she saved last year was from her take-home pay, what fraction of her take-home pay did she save each month? (A) 1/2 (B) 1/3 (C) 1/4 (D) 1/5 (E) 1/6 Let’s consider the question stem sentence by sentence: â€Å"Alice’s take-home pay last year was the same each month, and she saved the same fraction of her take-home pay each month.† Say Alices take-home pay last year was $100 each month. She saves a fraction of this every month   let the amount saved be x. â€Å"The total amount of money that she had saved at the end of the year was 3 times the amount of that portion of her monthly take-home pay that she did NOT save.† What would be â€Å"the total amount of money that she had saved at the end of the year†? Since Alice  saves x every month, she would have saved 12x by the end of the year. What would be â€Å"the amount of that portion of her monthly take-home pay that she did NOT save†? Note that this is going to be (100 x). Many test takers end up using (100 x)*12, however this equation is not correct. The key word here is monthly we are looking for how much Alice does not save each month, not how much she does not save during the whole year. The total amount of money that Alice  saved at the end of the year is 3 times the amount of that portion of her MONTHLY take-home pay that she did not save. Now we know we are looking for: 12x = 3*(100 x) x = 20 â€Å"If all the money that she saved last year was from her take-home pay, what fraction of her take-home pay did she save each month?† From our equation, we have determined that Alice  saved $20 out of every $100 she earned every month, so she saved 20/100 = 1/5 of her take-home pay. Therefore, the answer is D. Often, test-takers make the mistake of writing the equation as: 12x = 3*(100 x)*12 x = 300/4 However, this will give  them the fraction (300/4)/100 = 3/4, and that’s when they will wonder what went wrong. Be extra careful when reading GMAT questions so that precious minutes are not wasted on such avoidable errors. Getting ready to take the GMAT? We have  free online GMAT seminars  running all the time. And, be sure to follow us on  Facebook,  YouTube,  Google+, and  Twitter! Karishma, a Computer Engineer with a keen interest in alternative Mathematical approaches, has mentored students in the continents of Asia, Europe and North America. She teaches the  GMAT  for Veritas Prep and regularly participates in content development projects such as  this blog!