GMAT Strategy

Hey Metallicafan - these are some GREAT questions, so let's see if I can help!

Hi folks!
1.In the IR section, how different are the scores of the GMATPrep from those of the real GMAT?

Potentially VERY different for a couple of reasons:

- The GMATPrep was released BEFORE the new IR section, and they have definitely made some changes in the way that section looks (the early release questions for IR was considerably harder than those released later in the GMATPrep and then OG). So it is possible that the scoring algorithm is slightly different for the GMATPrep software than for the real thing (and they may not have dealt with experimental during the GMATPrep - and there ARE EXPERIMENTAL during the real thing!!

- With only 12 questions on the GMATPrep, and the ability to re-take that section OVER and OVER and OVER - the GMAC might be (rightfully) worried that people would "break" their scoring algorithm. So there might be some randomness built in to the scoring to avoid that. I will say that my "informal" takes of the GMATPrep section actually support your second comment:
**THE SCORE YOU GET is loosely EQUAL TO the NUMBER of questions you get RIGHT**
So to your comment about friends scoring 7-8 and not even seeing the last 3-4 questions - extremely likely!

So what does that mean for strategy??

2. In this sense, I think that my strategy to take that section would be:
- To skip 3 questions, because it's almost impossible to solve the 12 questions.
- Those skipped questions would be of the Multisource Reasoning type (MSR), because they consume too much time and wouldn't provide a higher score. It's better to invest time in 2 graph analysis questions than in one MSR question.

My only concern is that there could be more than 3 MSR questions in the real exam. There I could be in trouble LOL.
Other doubt is whether the section will show a experimental question.[/quote]

I'll go backwards through these!

EXPERIMENTAL:
we know that the section will contain these, it is FAR too new of a section for them to not use you as a guinea pig for future test takers - expect that at least a question or 2 will be for testing purposes.

How many MSR will I see?
So, I would expect to see at least one[/] MSR set of questions (one prompt with roughly 3 questions that go with it). BUT it is totally possible that you see TWO SETS (that means 2 prompts EACH with 3 questions!)

What should my SKIP strategy be??
I agree with David that you should go in with a Skip plan, but I would be careful per-deciding on a specific question type UNLESS you are sure that you usually get those wrong. I know that an MSR prompt is slow to read/digest, but then you get to answer 3 question sets about it - so the MSR has TRIPLE the value of any other prompt (every other prompt type only has a single question set asked about it). So unless you are an extremely slow reader, I would at least give the MSR a try. If it appears to be too data heavy or too complex, then certainly let it go, just know that your decision to skip 3 is now used up!

For me, I decide ahead of time to skip between 2-4 questions. I skip 2, but then again I'm looking for a perfect score (something I would NEVER tell a student to do - you don't need perfect, you really only need a 6-7 to be highly competitive). If a student is looking for that 6-7, then I'd say skip as many as 4 questions (which results in almost 4 minutes a question for the ones you do work on - just think, that's 12 minutes for an MSR set... PLENTY of time!)

The idea is to know ahead of time and decide on a case-by-case basis:

Tables
These are usually easy to understand (its a table afterall), so when I see a table problem I go straight to the question and make sure that I understand what they want me to find. If I can't figure it out in the first 30 seconds I'm out!

Graphics
If I can't figure out how to read the graphic / picture then I'll skip it.

Two-Part
I try to figure out if the question is basically a Quant question, a Critical Reasoning question, or some other little organizing/scheduling/logic game. Critical Reasoning often take the longest (you have to answer 2 CR prompts for one argument), Quant can be quite tricky to solve, but the little Logic games are really just puzzles and take thinking about (so if you like games and puzzles you'll like these!) These guys are all over the map so you'll want to just decide when you see them - do you want to spend the time to work on it or not??

MSR
The passages aren't ever as tough as the RC passages, but there can be a lot of information. In general, students haven't been finding the questions that accompany these MSR prompts that difficult, so I would say you should try to "read" the prompt before you dump it completely. You want to read this RC-style: you want to get the major idea and be able to locate information later, but you don't care about memorizing every single fact or detail.

I hope this helps clear up some of your questions about the IR section, and I think your plan to skip 3 is a good one - I just wouldn't automatically assume the MSR, because in some ways you actually have MORE time for those than any of the other (once you read that massive prompt, you get to work on 3 different questions from it so those will move a lot faster than the standard question - just like RC).


Whit