Is GMAT Verbal Fair? (Part 1)
GMAT Quant might be frustrating, but at least there are rules! Verbal, on the other hand… well, I’ve had some arguments with the GMAT over what the right answer to a GMAT Verbal problem should be. You probably have, too. Or, you’ve wondered what makes this Verbal answer choice “more right” than that Verbal answer choice. After a lot of years and a lot of GMAT Verbal problems, here are my thoughts.
Sentence Correction: Yup, It’s (Mostly) Fair
There are definitely clear rules for Sentence Correction: they’re the rules of English grammar. (Of course, people argue about grammar rules all the time. But the GMAT stays out of the really contentious debates, like the Oxford Comma issue.)
The GMAT is only 99% consistent in applying these rules to Sentence Correction problems. There are very few issues—most notably, pronoun ambiguity—where different GMAT Verbal problems sometimes disagree with each other. However, most Sentence Correction problems can be solved in multiple ways. If you can’t tell whether one piece of grammar is supposed to be right or wrong, just look for another error that seems more clear-cut.
Official GMAT explanations for Sentence Correction problems can be really frustrating. Here are some actual quotes from the Official Guide to the GMAT 2018:
- Having been based on is wordy.
- The sentence structure makes it unclear what almost all females describes.
- The sequence of information in this sentence is confusing.
Wordy, unclear, confusing—aren’t those subjective judgments? What I think is confusing might be perfectly clear to you. However, this is a problem with the explanations, not the problems themselves.
For a clear and thorough explanation of the grammar rules used in each problem, check out GMAT Navigator alongside the Official Guide. You’ll learn that the right and wrong answers are based on predictable rules, even if the official explanations don’t go into detail about them.
Critical Reasoning: Fairer Than You’d Think!
There are a few things that make GMAT Critical Reasoning problems seem unfair. One simple issue is the way the questions are worded:
- Which of the following, if true, most seriously undermines the researchers’ reasoning?
- Which of the following hypotheses best accounts for the findings of the experiment?
- Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the force of the evidence cited?
To me, those questions sound pretty similar to this one:
- Which of the following would you most like to have for dessert: brownies, ice cream, pie, or crème brulee?
Okay, I’d most like the crème brulee—any dessert that involves a blowtorch is good in my book—but I still love brownies, ice cream, and pie!
Questions like this make it sound like you’re looking for the “best” answer out of a bunch of “pretty good” answers. That seems really unfair. However, that isn’t actually how Critical Reasoning works. There’s always one “right” answer and four “wrong” answers, even if that doesn’t seem obvious at first glance. To see why, let’s take a look at how GMAT Verbal problems are actually created.
A Little Trip to GMAT Verbal Land
Imagine that you’re the one writing the problems. The GMAC puts thousands of dollars into writing and testing each GMAT problem, so if you want to keep your job, the problems you write had better be “successful.”
In other words, strong GMAT Verbal test takers should get your problem right almost all of the time, and weak GMAT Verbal test takers should usually get it wrong. It shouldn’t be based on luck, or personal opinion: your problem should tell you something about a test taker’s overall skill level.
So, you’ve got a challenge. Your problem should be fair, because otherwise, people would get it right or wrong randomly, not based on how well they performed overall. But it also shouldn’t be super-obvious, since GMAT Verbal problems should be hard! What do you do?
What GMAT writers seem to do is create one right answer that follows all of the rules for the problem type, and four wrong answers that “break the rules.” But then, they dress the right answer up to look boring, confusing, poorly-written, or irrelevant. They dress up the wrong answers to look interesting, clear, well-written, and relevant. High scorers are people who cut through the distractions and eliminate anything that breaks the rules, no matter how nice it looks.
Back to Critical Reasoning
So, for the GMAT to work at all, Critical Reasoning has to have objective rules and it has to be fair. That doesn’t mean the rules need to be obvious! In fact, the less obvious they are, the better that is for the GMAT. In the next article, we’ll talk a bit about what the rules really are, why they seem so unfair, and what you can do about it—and we’ll take a look at Reading Comprehension, the most “unfair”-looking GMAT Verbal problem type of all. ?
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Chelsey Cooley
is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Seattle, Washington. Chelsey always followed her heart when it came to her education. Luckily, her heart led her straight to the perfect background for GMAT and GRE teaching: she has undergraduate degrees in mathematics and history, a master’s degree in linguistics, a 790 on the GMAT, and a perfect 170/170 on the GRE. Check out Chelsey’s upcoming GMAT prep offerings here.