Critical Reasoning

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?

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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/

I have to agree with what Brian said. In fact, I go further, I do not use the words "out of scope" on any type of question except an inference.

Remember, on a strengthen question you will need NEW information in order to strengthen. This is not really out of scope. I prefer to say that an answer choice is "not helpful" when it is on a strengthen or weaken or paradox question.

I am a little concerned to hear that you begin the standard types of questions (such as a strengthen question) with process of elimination. On these questions you want to spend more time with the stimulus and the question stem so that when you get to the answer choices you have an idea of what you need to see. I will not say that you "predict" the answer as this can be tough, but that you know what the answer must do.

Here are some articles to help you:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/06/ ... -an-expert

https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/02/ ... duncan-way

If you would like to try any of the questions below please feel free. Some are questions that I wrote and others are questions that I did not write but walk you through fully.

Questions I wrote:

Paradox

https://www.beatthegmat.com/artificial-s ... tml#309781

https://www.beatthegmat.com/cold-climate ... tml#288243

https://www.beatthegmat.com/bird-feeders ... tml#292587

Bold Faced

https://www.beatthegmat.com/bold-faced-f ... tml#307471

https://www.beatthegmat.com/salt-water-p ... tml#291765

https://www.beatthegmat.com/bold-faced-e ... tml#293014


Inference

https://www.beatthegmat.com/hardiness-zo ... tml#288241

https://www.beatthegmat.com/waves-on-the ... tml#290932

Plan

https://www.beatthegmat.com/grade-inflat ... tml#289908

https://www.beatthegmat.com/stock-market ... tml#291213

Assumptions

https://www.beatthegmat.com/computers-as ... tml#302237

https://www.beatthegmat.com/horses-hoove ... tml#289122

https://www.beatthegmat.com/nuclear-powe ... tml#296304


How to Approach Different Question Types:

Inference/ conclusion question:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/how-to-appro ... tml#319885

https://www.beatthegmat.com/gmatprep-mus ... tml#314342

https://www.beatthegmat.com/zoos-t72940.html


Plan question:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/businesses-t ... tml#313911

https://www.beatthegmat.com/strenghtenin ... tml#313159


Assumption question:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/nuclear-powe ... 29-15.html

https://www.beatthegmat.com/an-odd-cr-fr ... 68008.html

https://www.beatthegmat.com/reduce-fatal ... 68915.html


General Posts:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/using-signal ... 71164.html

https://www.beatthegmat.com/bold-faced-f ... tml#307471

https://www.beatthegmat.com/control-alar ... tml#305090

https://www.beatthegmat.com/the-soviet-b ... tml#304739

https://www.beatthegmat.com/the-last-out ... tml#304425

https://www.beatthegmat.com/bold-faced-q ... tml#294134

https://www.beatthegmat.com/lsat-problem ... tml#332976

https://www.beatthegmat.com/crs-that-hav ... tml#339479

https://www.beatthegmat.com/an-inference ... tml#341259


New bold -faced type of question:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/useless-bott ... 66646.html