CR Strategy, frustrated.. advice?

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hmgp22: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 36; Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2012 11:15 pm

CR Strategy, frustrated.. advice?

by hmgp22 » Tue Feb 12, 2013 9:58 pm

I have 2 questions, looking for advice

(1) Currently going through the problems in the Official Guide. I'm roughly getting half of the problems wrong. Is this a bad sign? How many did you get right and wrong?

(2) I'm noticing that questions are either extremely easy or extremely difficult for me. The ones I get right are very straightforward and I can understand it completely, but for the majority of the questions I get wrong, I always narrow it down to 2-3 choices and am unable to figure out what the answer choice is.

Any suggestions?

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Critical Reasoning | Tue Feb 12, 2013 9:58 pm

hemant_rajput: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 447; Joined: Sun Apr 22, 2012 7:13 am; Thanked: 46 times; Followed by:13 members; GMAT Score:700

by hemant_rajput » Tue Feb 12, 2013 10:58 pm

hmgp22 wrote:I have 2 questions, looking for advice

(1) Currently going through the problems in the Official Guide. I'm roughly getting half of the problems wrong. Is this a bad sign? How many did you get right and wrong?

(2) I'm noticing that questions are either extremely easy or extremely difficult for me. The ones I get right are very straightforward and I can understand it completely, but for the majority of the questions I get wrong, I always narrow it down to 2-3 choices and am unable to figure out what the answer choice is.

Any suggestions?

I think before you go through official guide, you better work on your basic. Polish your fundamentals and take question topic wise, such as, if you are taking Permutation, first polish your basics and try to solve questions of permutation only, then you can take other topic and proceed in same manner.

Hope it helps.

cheers,
Hemant

I'm no expert, just trying to work on my skills. If I've made any mistakes please bear with me.

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charu_mahajan: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 111; Joined: Tue Jan 31, 2012 1:06 pm; Thanked: 15 times; Followed by:8 members

by charu_mahajan » Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:38 am

I would agree with hemant. It's important to work on the basics before you pick up Official guide.
Whatever works best for you - like some people prefer Manhattan CR and some go with CR Bible. Some prefer Kaplan and some Veritas. You have to pick your choice. Do some research on your own (some excellent reviews of all books and courses are available on BTG community), read through the whole book or notes or whatever and then start Official guide.

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Brian@VeritasPrep: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 1031; Joined: Thu Jul 03, 2008 1:23 pm; Location: Malibu, CA; Thanked: 716 times; Followed by:255 members; GMAT Score:750

by Brian@VeritasPrep » Wed Feb 13, 2013 12:13 pm

Couple things to add:

1) As you study, your "percent correct" really isn't *that* important. If you get half the questions wrong but in doing so realize 2-3 important things that help you perfect your approach, that's exponentially more valuable than getting 75% of them right but coming away without much to say about the 25% you got wrong (and the 5-10% you may have guessed right on). As you study focus on what you're learning from the questions - it's not your correct percentage now that's important, it's what it is on test day that really matters.

2) When you review those questions that were difficult for you, try to find reasons why. There are some common mistakes that nearly everyone makes on CR problems, including:

-Reading the conclusion slightly wrong (either missing a key word or inferring a word that isn't really there)
-Eliminating the correct answer too quickly because the first 5-6 words of the answer choice seemed irrelevant (when a few words later the choice started to relate directly...the GMAT loves the "curveball" answer choice)
-Mistaking the question stem by reading too quickly(seeing a "Strengthen" question as an "Inference" question, for example - the word "support" in a question stem lends itself to this mistake quite a bit)
-Picking a conclusion answer choice that's probably true but not necessarily 100% true

If you can categorize your mistakes and see that many of them relate to the same problem, you now know what to work on.

So try to see your study through the OG as part of a process. Thomas Edison had that quote something like "every time I failed I knew one more way not to make a light bulb", and it's overwhelmingly true that you learn a lot more from your mistakes than from your successes, to take advantage of these opportunities to learn more about the question type and about how your mind reacts to it.

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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kunalkulkarni: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 34; Joined: Mon May 07, 2012 10:59 am; Thanked: 2 times

by kunalkulkarni » Thu Feb 14, 2013 8:54 am

The thing that worked for me, when I was in same situation as yours is:
1. Read each word carefully from the passage.
2. Focus on question.
3. If it asks strengthen, start thinking how it could be boosted. What point will actually make the answer seem more valid? (ofcourse, without looking at answer choices!)
4. If it asks weaken, find the 'gap' between the 2 connecting parts of the passage (Finding a gap is a tough part initially, but after some practice and carefully reading the solutions from OG, this can be mastered). Once you identify the gap, you can start browsing the answer choices to identify the option that closely matches the hole you found.
Same can be applied for other question types.

Good Luck with your studies and exam.
Cheers,
Kunal

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ceilidh.erickson: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 2095; Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2012 3:22 pm; Thanked: 1443 times; Followed by:247 members

by ceilidh.erickson » Thu Feb 14, 2013 10:25 am

If, as you say, some are really easy and some are really difficult, you're probably just relying on your intuition, but not taking a systematic approach to these questions. I agree with Brian's assessment of common mistakes, and I'll add these:

- Treating each question case-by-case, without analyzing major themes/trends/patterns. You should be doing these topic-by-topic, not at random. Do a set of all assumption questions, then ask yourself - How do I identify logical gaps? What kinds of logical gaps are tested?

- Jumping to conclusions. If you read an argument and say "oh, I bet the answer is this," sometimes you'll be right (and find it very easy). On those times that you don't see exactly what you were looking for, though, it becomes really hard. Instead of guessing what you think the answer should be, spend time analyzing the components of the argument, and evaluate how each answer choice addresses those.

- Picking a choice that's related informationally, but not logically. For example, take this argument: Lucy finished in second place in the marathon last year. She has improved her timing, so she will win this year. If the question asked, "what is the assumption?," one answer choice might be "she improved her time by 15%, by running every day." This is related to the topic, but doesn't address what's missing logically from the argument. A correct answer could be "none of her opponents improved their time."

So, spend some time analyzing your thought process as you're reviewing these questions. Which mistakes were you making?

Ceilidh Erickson
EdM in Mind, Brain, and Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education

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hmgp22: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 36; Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2012 11:15 pm

by hmgp22 » Fri Feb 15, 2013 12:57 am

Thanks for the replies.

@ceilidh.erickson

The process I am going through after reading is initially eliminating clearly wrong choices, such as out of scope, reverse logic choices...etc For example, if it is a strengthen question, I would eliminate the out of scope choices and the ones that seems to weaken the argument.

Usually that narrows it down to 2 choices that appear very similar. I've encountered many instances already when I am down to 2 and simply select the wrong answer, even after analyzing both of them very carefully.

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Brian@VeritasPrep: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 1031; Joined: Thu Jul 03, 2008 1:23 pm; Location: Malibu, CA; Thanked: 716 times; Followed by:255 members; GMAT Score:750

by Brian@VeritasPrep » Fri Feb 15, 2013 10:42 am

Hey hmgp - one thing you may want to consider based on what you just wrote:

While "out of scope" is a perfectly valid reason to eliminate an answer choice on a Strengthen or Weaken question, I've found that a lot of people employ "out of scope" a little too broadly and eliminate correct answer choices too quickly. Make sure you're patient particularly as questions get harder - an easy way to "hide the right answer" is to begin it with a 5-7 word preamble that takes a little while to get to its point.

For example, if the question were asking you to weaken:

The unemployment rate dropped, therefore more people must have found jobs.

The correct answer you want is something like:

The drop was actually caused by the fact that many left the labor pool, not because they found jobs.

But the GMAT can make you think that answer is out of scope by making the first portion of the sentence seem irrelevant:

Due to a wrinkle in the tax code, initially inserted after World War II to assist with the assimilation of wounded veterans, many were able to earn more by leaving the labor pool altogether and therefore have stopped looking for jobs.

Your initial thought might be "tax code, WWII, out of scope!", but in this case the answer just takes a meandering path toward "directly in scope". So be careful - if you find that you're not getting to your target level of CR proficiency, you may want to examine whether you're being a little too quick to employ "out of scope".

This article sheds a little more light on that: https://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2012/05 ... ous-thing/

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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David@VeritasPrep: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 2193; Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:30 pm; Location: Vermont and Boston, MA; Thanked: 1186 times; Followed by:512 members; GMAT Score:770

by David@VeritasPrep » Fri Feb 15, 2013 5:37 pm

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