5^4 + 5^4 + 5^4 + 5^4 =  Choose one:
A) 5^5 B) 5^6 C) 4^8 D) 4^9 E) 4^12
Hi shakticnb,   Certain Quant questions on the GMAT are just about 'organizing' the information in a specific way. If you find yourself getting confused by a prompt, think about how you might change the way that the information is presented to you.   Here, for example, we're asked for....   5^4 + 5^4 + 5^4 + 5^4 =   Now, the GMAT doesn't really expect us to calculate this sum (but we could if we had to), but we are expected to find a way to organize this information... If, instead of all of those exponents, we had...   X + X + X + X =   What would the sum be?   Clearly, it would be 4(X) = 4X.....since we're just combining 'like' terms. Take that same idea with this prompt and you have...   5^4 + 5^4 + 5^4 + 5^4 =   5(5^4)   This can be re-written as...   (5^1)(5^4)   ...and now we can use exponent rules; since we're MULTIPLYING 'bases' that are the same, we ADD the exponents...   (5^1)(5^4) = 5^5   Final 5^5nswer:   5^5
<result>A</result>
5^4 + 5^4 + 5^4 + 5^4 =