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Improve SC Timing

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Improve SC Timing

by melguy » Wed Jul 27, 2011 4:51 am
Hello

It would be great if someone can advise some strategies on how to solve a problem quicker. Since SC has sooo many rules it is very difficult to recollect & apply everything in 60 seconds. So I am curious to find some tips on solving SC quicker.

I am already aware of checking first and last part of every option and eliminate based on that. But in Q's when that trick is not possible it takes a lot of time to read all options and then check if it fits with the rules and hence wasting precious time.

Would appreciate comments from experts.

Thanks
Last edited by melguy on Wed Jul 27, 2011 4:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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by mundasingh123 » Wed Jul 27, 2011 5:19 am
What i have observed is that its mostly the difficult SC s that take a lot of time . One only has a 50-50 chance of getting an SC , the answer to which you dont get easily , right . The only solution is to learn to apply the rules efficiently and quickly
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by Brian@VeritasPrep » Wed Jul 27, 2011 5:05 pm
Great question - I ran into this problem a few years ago while tutoring one of my best friends over the phone. I'd be done answering a question while he was still reading choice B and I realized that his wasn't just a timing problem, it was an accuracy problem simply because his head was swimming with too many things to think about and it was affecting his ability to make good, efficient decisions.

A few things you can do:

1) Learn to lighten your load. Ignore adjectives and adverbs, as well as modifiers that don't have an error. The easiest way to make an SC question hard is to add superfluous words to it to obscure what's really important, so you need to counteract that by trimming down what you read. In a sentence like:

Known to the majority of the world by his nickname "Magic", Earvin Johnson of the Michigan State Spartans and the Los Angeles Lakers were legendary for his bright smile and boundless enthusiasm as much as for his playmaking ability.

The entire first part "Known to..." is a modifier that clearly works with Earvin Johnson, so you can eliminate that. And the proper nouns "Earvin", "Michigan State", and "Los Angeles" just add length to the sentence, as do the adjectives "bright", "boundless" and "playmaking". To the GMAT test-taker this sentence really just says:

Johnson were legendary for his smile and enthusiasm as much as for his ability.

That's a much smaller sentence and a more obvious S-V agreement error.

Learn to cut through description and you'll find that the sentences are much shorter.

2) Read proactively for major errors. When you see verbs, pronouns, modifiers, and comparisons, those are usually your decision points, so you can start to build your decision around them instead of waiting for the error to emerge.


This article should help: https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/07/ ... strategies

This one, too: https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/11/ ... gmat-score

And this may help train your ideology away from unique decisions and more toward big-picture strategy, which is faster: https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/09/ ... -objective
Brian Galvin
GMAT Instructor
Chief Academic Officer
Veritas Prep

Looking for GMAT practice questions? Try out the Veritas Prep Question Bank. Learn More.
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by melguy » Thu Jul 28, 2011 5:23 pm
Thanks a lot Brian! Exactly what i was after!
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