GMAT practice questions with answers and explanations

Answer: (D). A 20 percent profit on an $80 cost means a selling price of $96. That $96 is 75 percent of the marked price, so the marked price is 96 ÷ 0.75 = $128. Choice (C), $120, comes from adding 25 percent to $96; a 25 percent discount off $120 gives only $90. Percent changes apply to different bases, so work back from the price you know.

Answer: (C). Square the first equation: (x − y)² = x² − 2xy + y² = 16. Substitute x² + y² = 40 to get 40 − 2xy = 16, so 2xy = 24 and xy = 12. Choice (E), 24, is 2xy; forgetting to divide by 2 is the usual slip. You never need x and y themselves (they are 6 and 2), and solving for them takes longer.

Answer: (E). List the numbers below 30 that leave a remainder of 4 when divided by 6: 4, 10, 16, 22, 28. Only 28 leaves a remainder of 3 when divided by 5. Because 30 is a multiple of both 6 and 5, every n that fits both conditions is 28 more than a multiple of 30, so the remainder is always 28. You can also test the choices: 13, 18 and 23 fail the first condition and 4 fails the second.

Answer: (D). In 2 hours pump A fills 2/6 = 1/3 of the tank, leaving 2/3. Together the pumps fill 1/6 + 1/9 = 5/18 of the tank per hour, so the rest takes (2/3) ÷ (5/18) = 12/5 = 2.4 hours. The whole job takes 2 + 2.4 = 4.4 hours. Choice (A) is only the time spent together, and (B), 3.6, is how long the pumps would take if both ran from the start.

Answer: (C). The integers add up to 7 × 10 = 70. To make the largest as big as possible, make the other six as small as the conditions allow. The median, the 4th number, is 12. The three below it must be different positive integers: 1, 2 and 3. The two above it must be different and greater than 12: 13 and 14. Those six add up to 45, which leaves 70 − 45 = 25 for the largest. Choice (D), 28, comes from repeating 12 above the median (1, 2, 3, 12, 12, 12), which the word "different" rules out.

Answer: (D). Count the opposite case. There are C(9, 3) = 84 possible committees, and C(5, 3) = 10 of them are all managers. So the probability of at least one analyst is 1 − 10/84 = 74/84 = 37/42. Choice (A), 5/42, is the probability of no analyst. "At least one" questions are almost always faster by subtracting the "none" case from 1.

Answer: (B). The managers credit the app with a rise in spending, so the best strengthener rules out other causes. (B) supplies a comparison group: stores without the app saw no rise over the same period, which makes a chain-wide cause such as inflation or a general shift in shopping less likely. (A) weakens, since higher prices alone could raise spending. (C) suggests the app had little effect. (D) describes who uses the app but says nothing about why spending changed from one year to the next, and (E) is about Meridian's costs, not customer spending.

Answer: (B). The council infers cause from a change that followed the new limit. (B) shows the same drop happened in similar cities without the new limit, so something other than the limit, such as safer cars or a regional trend, probably explains Halvor's decline. (C) and (E) strengthen the argument by linking the residential limit to fewer deaths. (D) suggests the limit was enforced, which also supports the council. (A) is about opinion, not effect.

Answer: (C). Use the negation test. If (C) were false, and crime is low after midnight because the streets are brightly lit, then dimming the lights could remove the very thing keeping crime low, and the conclusion collapses. So the argument needs (C). (A) concerns the plan's purpose, not the crime prediction. (B) and (E) would help the argument but aren't required: the planners' evidence is about Pelham's own records. (D) is irrelevant to whether crime will increase.

Answer: (A). The evidence compares people who chose to attend with people who didn't. If the volunteers were already more punctual (A), the 15 percent gap may reflect who signed up rather than what the workshop taught, and forcing everyone to attend wouldn't produce the same gain. If they weren't, the workshop looks effective. Either answer changes your view of the plan, which is what an evaluate question asks for. The other choices wouldn't tell you whether the workshop improves on-time completion.

Answer: (A). Find the conclusion first. The author's own position is that the analysts' prediction "is likely to prove wrong," and the rest of the passage (fixed working hours, the survey) supports it, so the second bold portion is the main conclusion. The first bold portion is the analysts' reason for their prediction, which the author rejects. That rules out (B), (C) and (E), which treat the first portion as something the author accepts, and (D), which demotes the second portion to evidence.

Answer: (A). Take the certified warehouses that run around the clock; some exist. None of them can handle refrigerated goods, because no refrigerated warehouse runs around the clock. So some certified warehouses don't handle refrigerated goods: (A). (B) contradicts the second sentence and (D) contradicts the first. Nothing gives proportions, so (C) is unsupported. (E) reverses the logic: the passage never says that every round-the-clock warehouse is certified; some could be neither certified nor refrigerated.

Answer: (B). The passage describes dividend smoothing, gives the caution explanation, presents the signaling view as a response to its limits, and ends with a difficulty for the signaling view and its defenders' reply. (B) covers all of that. (A) is advice the author never gives. (C) is too strong: the author calls young firms a "difficulty," and defenders have a reply. (D) isn't discussed; the passage mentions share prices rising after increases. (E) treats a detail from the last paragraph as the main point.

Answer: (B). The passage says an increase is "a credible message precisely because it is costly to reverse." If reversing it cost the manager nothing (B), any manager could raise the dividend regardless of private expectations, so the increase would no longer separate optimistic managers from others. Nothing in the passage says that being mature (A), having past earnings growth (C) or announcing an investment (D) would remove the signal, and a rising share price (E) is described as investors' response to the signal, not a reason it fails.

Answer: (B). The paragraph opens with "The signaling view has its own difficulty" and states the prediction that firms should signal most when investors know least. Young firms, about which investors know least, rarely pay dividends, which seems to contradict that prediction: (B). The example has nothing to do with the caution explanation (A) or share prices (C), the passage compares what outsiders know, not what firms know (D), and the author makes no recommendation (E).

Answer: (B). Statement (1): n² + n = n(n + 1), the product of two consecutive integers, which is always even. It's true for every integer, so it tells you nothing: not sufficient. Statement (2): if 3n + 1 is even, 3n is odd, and 3n is odd only when n is odd. The answer is a definite yes: sufficient. Answer (B). Statement (1) is the trap: it looks like information but holds for any n.

Answer: (C). Let x be the $20 shirts and y the $35 shirts. Statement (1), x + y = 40, allows any split: not sufficient. Statement (2), 20x + 35y = 1,100, simplifies to 4x + 7y = 220, and even with whole numbers of shirts there are several solutions (x = 55, y = 0; x = 48, y = 4; x = 20, y = 20; and more): not sufficient. Together, substitute x = 40 − y: 160 − 4y + 7y = 220, so y = 20. Answer (C). Before choosing (B) on a revenue question, check whether the integer constraint really forces one answer; here it doesn't.

Answer: (E). Each statement alone allows x and y to have the same sign or opposite signs, so neither is sufficient. Together, adding the inequalities gives 2x > 0, so x is positive, and the two statements say x > y and x > −y, that is, x is greater than the absolute value of y. But y can still be positive or negative: x = 3, y = 1 gives xy = 3 (yes), and x = 3, y = −1 gives xy = −3 (no). Answer (E). Test numbers that satisfy both statements, and try a negative and a zero.

Answer: (C). Swiftline costs 1,500 + 4.80n dollars a month and Northway 900 + 5.40n. Setting them equal: 1,500 + 4.80n = 900 + 5.40n, so 600 = 0.60n and n = 1,000. Below 1,000 orders Northway is cheaper; above it, Swiftline is. Choice (A), 600, is the difference in monthly fees, not the order count.

Answer: Yes, Yes, No. At 1,200 orders: the current carrier costs 1,200 × $6.50 = $7,800; Swiftline 1,500 + 5,760 = $7,260; Parcelo 1,200 × $6.10 = $7,320; Northway 900 + 6,480 = $7,380. All three are under $7,800, so the first statement is Yes. Parcelo's $7,320 is under $7,500 but its 93 percent on-time rate is below 95, so the second is Yes. At 1,500 orders Northway costs 900 + 8,100 = $9,000, over $7,500, so the third is No. You need both tabs for every statement, which is the point of Multi-Source Reasoning.

Answer: False, True, True. Sort by revenue: Birch is highest at $1,120 thousand with returns of 4.5 percent, but Elm's 5.2 percent is the highest return rate, so the first statement is False. Sorted revenue is 660, 750, 840, 910, 980, 1,050, 1,120; the median, the 4th value, is 910, so the second is True. Sort by change: only Birch (−2) and Elm (−6) fell, and both are in the South. Grove's 0 is no change, not a fall, so the third is True.

Answer: April to May; 62.5%. Percent increases: January to February 4/40 = 10%; February to March 6/44 ≈ 13.6%; March to April is a decrease; April to May 8/48 ≈ 16.7%; May to June 9/56 ≈ 16.1%. The greatest is April to May, even though May to June has the larger rise in absolute terms (9 thousand vs 8 thousand), because May to June starts from a bigger base. For the second, June is 65 and January 40: (65 − 40)/40 = 25/40 = 62.5%. Choice 25% mistakes the change in thousands for a percent, 38% divides by June instead of January, and 65% is June's value.

Answer: Price per pastry: $2.00; Packaging fee: $3.50. The 4 extra pastries in the larger box add $23.50 − $15.50 = $8.00, so each pastry costs $2.00. The box of 6 is then 6 × $2.00 = $12.00 in pastries, leaving $3.50 for packaging. Check with the box of 10: $3.50 + $20.00 = $23.50. Two-Part questions often make the two answers depend on each other, so solve for one and use it to get the other.

Answer: Strengthen: The rail projects that ran over budget in other cities were all built by the contractor that would build this line.; Weaken: The line's construction would be paid for entirely by a federal grant that the city cannot spend on anything else.. Marisol's argument rests on two premises: rail projects overrun their budgets, and the city can't absorb the cost. The second statement strengthens the first premise, since the same contractor's record makes an overrun here more likely. The first statement weakens the second premise: if a dedicated federal grant pays for construction, the city's strained budget isn't at stake. The mayor's silence, other cities' plans and vehicle noise don't bear on cost.