Last week, we discussed the general process for tackling Critical Reasoning problems. This week, let’s go through a specific problem together using our process.

First, a reminder. Our 4-step process is:

• Step 1: Identify the question.
• Step 2: Deconstruct the argument.
• Step 3: State the Goal.
• Step 4: Work from wrong to right.

Okay, set your timer for 2 minutes and try this GMATPrep problem:

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This article, written by Abby Pelcyger and Stacey Koprince, was adapted from our upcoming book, The GMAT Roadmap: Expert Advice Through Test Day. The full book will be available mid-November.

You won’t correctly answer every Quant problem on the GMAT in the allotted time. Even 99th per-centile performers typically don’t do this. Through a 700, GMAT-takers are getting about 60% of the problems correct: that’s only three out of five! Even individuals who score a 750 are only getting about four out of five questions correct. That’s why time management is essential on the GMAT. Why spend time on a problem that you won’t get correct anyway, when you could invest that time on a problem where the time will make a difference?

As you are working through a GMAT problem, you also need to evaluate whether you are using your time efficiently. For instance, if you are attempting to solve a problem that you know you wouldn’t get right in ten minutes, let alone two, you are not using your time effectively. Likewise, if you are working on a problem and you know that you can get right, but that it will take five minutes, you are also not using your time effectively. Any time that you spend on a problem over two minutes is time that you are tak¬ing away from a problem that you have not even seen yet.

So how should you use your time? While no two problems will take you exactly the same amount of time to work through each step, using this timeline to structure your time working on GMAT practice problems will help you to make wise (but difficult) decisions on test day.

Note: While having a plan for a problem may mean an algebraic method to solve, it doesn’t have to. Back-up strategies such as plugging in numbers and picking smart numbers are just as valid approaches” and sometimes quicker!

Once you have used this strategy to work through a practice GMAT question, write down (or better yet, input into the GMAT Navigator) your best guess. Then, draw a line under your scrap paper notes and continue to work on the problem until you have exhausted every potential line of your thinking. Providing your brain with the opportunity to think through new material most often takes more than two minutes. The trick is to do the heavy thinking now, during practice, so that on test day there’s very little new: all you will have to do is recognize, remember, adapt, and solve!

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

I’ve been in full-on writing mode lately as we update our Strategy Guides (look for the 5th edition in 2012, in time to start prepping for the Next Generation GMAT!). A couple of our teachers have been doing extensive research on every available official Critical Reasoning problem, and now we’re synthesizing everything. Although we’re still in development mode, I want to share some of our take-aways with you so that you can start to benefit from them right away! Read more

Note: This is an updated version of an article posted last year.

As GMAC gears up to release the Next Generation GMAT in June of 2012, we’ve been taking a look at the four sample questions posted on the mba.com website.

Let’s look at the hardest one of these questions in more detail! I can’t reproduce the problem here for reasons that will be obvious once you actually start to tackle it yourself. I also can’t tell you how much time to give yourself because GMAC hasn’t given us any timing guidelines. Just take whatever time you need. (Note: all excerpts or quotes from the problem are copyright GMAC.)

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Several weeks ago, GMAC (the people who make the test) held its biennial Test Prep Summit, and we’ve all been writing articles about it ever since.  I have more for you today “ and enough for several more articles after that, including another idioms article that I had hoped to have for you today, but the research isn’t done yet. Instead, today I’m going to share with you some very useful knowledge that has been published by Lawrence M. Rudner, Chief Psychometrician of GMAC, in his Demystifying the GMAT article series.

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This article, written by Abby Pelcyger and Stacey Koprince, was adapted from our upcoming book, The GMAT Roadmap: Expert Advice Through Test Day. The full book will be available mid-November.

These days, almost everyone preps for the GMAT”but surprisingly few actually plan how to prep in order to maximize the chance for success. Prepping for the GMAT without a plan is like climbing a mountain without a trail map. You may be just starting out or taking a second crack at the official test, but whatever stage you are at, you need a plan. It’s our hope that this article will help guide you on your way to developing your own personalized study plan.

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Last week, I wrote about meaning issues in sentence correction, and there’s more to say “ so here’s part two of this topic. We’ll keep going till we don’t have anything else to discuss!

First and foremost, I want to address something that I keep seeing everywhere “ on the forums, in the comments sections of my articles and blog posts, and so on. People keep saying, But how are we going to study now? Are you going to publish a new book? What can we do? I’m taking the test soon!

I’m going to reiterate what I’ve been saying (and forgive me if you already heard this and got the message!): meaning issues have always existed, and there is plenty of existing material from which to study. We just didn’t concentrate as much on meaning before, because we were able to do more simply with grammar. They aren’t putting totally new kinds of SC questions out there “ they’re just increasing the proportion of an already-existing issue.

Now, because in the old days, the proportion was skewed more towards pure grammar, we were often able to get away with just studying grammar and not worrying so much about meaning. We can’t get away with that now “ we have to study the meaning as well. Read more

In this table, we discuss a number of Sentence Correction problems from the OG12. Certain answer choices have “meaning” issues; we list the answer choice letters and provide a brief discussion of the issues involved. Note that this list is not comprehensive and is still in fairly raw form; there are additional problems and answer choices that could also contain meaning issues, and it’s possible that reasonable people will disagree with some of the things on this list (though we tried to include only the ones that we thought were most straightforward). Read more

Recently, we heard from GMAC that it has been testing meaning more often in sentence correction than it used to (this increase started years ago). In the last couple of days, I’ve gone through the first 100 problems in the Official Guide 12^th Edition (OG12) so that we can discuss some of these issues.

I’ve categorized these meaning issues into three broad categories; in this article, I’m going to call out some particular examples and discuss what’s going on with each. You can then use these examples to help you continue to study different problems. We’ve also put together a list of specific problems and answer choices that deal with these meaning issues. You can find that list here. Finally, pay attention to the explanation wording “ if it mentions that something changes the meaning or is ambiguous then you know a meaning issue is going on in that problem!

Before we dive in, I have to say that I was surprised while researching this “ turns out that there are even more meaning-based questions than I would have thought (which is why I’ve only gotten through the first 100 OG questions rather than all of them by deadline time). In the OG, a lot of the answer choices that test meaning also have other grammatical issues, so we can often get away with ignoring the meaning and focusing on the grammar.

My guess is that GMAC has been working hard to make us deal with the meaning more by not giving us a grammar out on so many answer choices (on the real test). If you’ve been ignoring the meaning aspect when you see that there’s a more pure grammar reason for getting rid of an answer stop doing that. When studying, pay attention to every possible reason for an elimination. Seek out these meaning issues and study them. Read more

This is an update on Stacey’s previous articles, posted earlier this week.

Two very important things:

(1) Larry just got back into the office and was able to check on some of these idiom issues (he was traveling earlier this week). He was able to clarify that American-centric idioms and expressions are the ones that they have dropped / been dropping. Idioms that are not American-centric are still in. That’s all he’s told me so far – he said “more to come” in his email. I’ll let you know when I have more.

This, of course, begs the question: which ones are American-centric and which ones aren’t? Unfortunately, there isn’t a definitive list of the idioms which do get tested (and there are thousands of idioms in the language), so we can’t just point and say “study this, don’t study that.” My guess is that the ones that we see in OG12 have probably already been mostly stripped of American-centric idioms, because they published that after they decided to start getting rid of the American-centric stuff.

So the lesson there is to study what you see in official questions (which, interestingly, was what we already said before because there are, as we’ve noted, so many idioms in the language).  Also – if you have learned non-American English (British English, for example) and see something where you think “really? I thought that was ” – then ignore that one.

(2) I want to reiterate something else: these aren’t major changes, though they are news and we do want to take action. In particular, meaning has always been there – it’s just that there are proportionally more questions now. If you have been studying meaning, then you should be okay whether you have to answer 3 or 5 or 8 questions that hinge on meaning. (Note – I’m making those numbers up – we don’t know how many questions will test meaning.) And meaning has been on GMATPrep CATs and other CATs as well, so you have been seeing meaning issues when you take CATs.

If you have been neglecting meaning… then you have some work to do. But that would’ve been the case even if they hadn’t said they’ve got more questions that revolve around meaning now. 🙂

And re: the idioms, see above.