GMAT Strategy

I did some RC passages from Kaplan verbal book and was scoring almost 85-90% on them. I wrote a sample GMAT prep exam and got 75% questions right on that.

Just recently, I picked up the OG book and started doing RCs from it and guess what, my hit rate just tanked (50%). Well the reason being, I am timing myself on all the RC passages which I wasn't with Kaplan.

I am giving myself 10 minutes to complete passages with 7 questions, 5 minutes for passgaes with 3 questions etc.... Am I being too strict on timing ??

I have no problem understanding and answering RC questions without being timed, but I want to practice timing myself.

Anyone got any suggestions ? How much time should I give for reading (right now I am giving myself 2 mins and 1 min per question) and doing questions?

Well, on average, you have about two minutes per question. So, for a normal passage with 4 questions, you should budget about 8 minutes. So, it sounds to me like you're rushing a bit. Moreover, many people like to spend a little extra time on RC and a little less time on sentence correction to balance it out.

Another tip for speeding up on RC is to focus on the overall main idea and structure of a passage, rather than getting caught in all the details.

Hope this helps!

for me in verbal i made by far the most mistakes in rc. I found that i was too focussed on timing. and id finish with time to spare.

To rectify the situation i don't even look at time during my rc's. some of these questions were freebies and i was getting them wrong. for example when the question says according to the author, or passage, or infer, i would realize that the answer is literally written there. so i didnt mind taking the extra time to find the answer and being certain that it was right. For me, extra time on a question like that is more valuable than extra time on a question you're unsure of like a cr.

also i found that length of passages varies too much to set a specific time to complete them. some are longer, some are shorter. the same changes happen for complexity of the material.

so to sum up. in my opinion dont focus too much on time with rcs.

and of course, this is just my opinion and do whatever works best for you.

thanks for the help... now that I have gotten the timing straightened out, I am having issues solving inference question in rc .

the problem is that inference question which rely on the passage as a whole rather than one specific portion of the rc are the main cause for concern.

anyone decoded how to solve this question type ?