What’s the best low-key summer project?

Date: June 27th, 2007 Category; Graduate, Vocabulary, MBA, College

What’s the best low-key summer study project if you’re looking at a monster exam this fall? Whether the standardized test in your future is the SAT, GMAT, GRE or yet another of these big rocks in your road, there’s a little something Athena Mentor recommends you do every day: add a few new words to your vocabulary. Give it a try with this little story. There are a couple of helpful hints at the end.

“The GMAT is an abomination,” grumbled Randy. “Why any MBA program would subject us to the enfeebling process of fabricating essays on egregiously pointless topics . . .”

“It’s an enigma,” agreed Sandy.

“The vocabulary is arcane, the critical reasoning exercises are abstruse and the reading comprehension questions are just . . .”

“An enigma,” agreed Sandy.

“Who can we get to illuminate this morass?” mumbled Randy, irritably.

“That would be Athena Mentor,” confided Sandy. “She’s a monomaniac on the subject of building one’s vocabulary over the summer.”

If you need to, ah, brush up on some of these words, Athena Mentor recommends the dictionary at Merriam-Webster Online. Click on the little loudspeaker icons to hear each entry pronounced with an American accent.

Athena also recommends the Cambridge Dictionaries Online. If you are studying for an American exam, be sure to use the Cambridge Dictionary of American English. If you’ve been brought up on British English, you can compare usage on this, ah, invaluable site.