Is GMAT Verbal Fair? (Part 2)
Students sometimes tell me that studying GMAT Verbal feels a little pointless. After all, isn’t it true that you either “know it or you don’t”? As it turns out, that’s not really true—although the GMAT definitely tries to make it seem that way!
GMAT Verbal problems are more “fair” than they look. In order for the GMAT to successfully test you, Verbal problems can’t really be up for interpretation. They can certainly look that way, but under the surface, there needs to be consistent rules for what makes a right answer right and what makes a wrong answer wrong.
In the previous article, we went over two GMAT Verbal problem types: Sentence Correction and Critical Reasoning. We looked at what makes these problem types seem unfair—and now we’ll talk about how to see through the “unfairness” of Critical Reasoning and turn this problem type into a strength.
On GMAT Verbal, Critical Reasoning Arguments Are Repetitive
Have you ever tried a new Quant problem and realized that you’d already seen the exact same trick before? There are really only so many things the GMAT can test you on in Quant, and Critical Reasoning is secretly the same way.
That happens because a Critical Reasoning argument will rarely be longer than four or five sentences, and there aren’t that many different ways to create an argument in so little space.
Let’s look at two different arguments. They both come from the free GMATPrep materials.
Argument 1: Guitar strings often go “dead”—become less responsive and bright in tone—after a few weeks of intense use. A researcher whose son is a classical guitarist hypothesized that dirt and oil, rather than changes in the material properties of the string, were responsible.
Argument 2: The book Art’s Decline argues that European painters today lack skills that were common among European painters of preceding centuries. In this the book must be right, since its analysis of 100 paintings, 50 old and 50 contemporary, demonstrates convincingly that none of the contemporary paintings are executed as skillfully as the older paintings.
One of these arguments is about guitar strings, and the other is about European painters. But they’re actually the same argument. Let’s call it Argument 0:
Argument 0: I’ve noticed that something typically happens. An expert claims that it happens for a specific reason.
Here’s how the three arguments match up:
Pretty close, right?
Here’s another pair of arguments, again from the free GMATPrep practice problems:
Argument 1: Manufacturers of mechanical pencils make most of their profit on pencil leads rather than on the pencils themselves. The Write Company, which cannot sell its leads as cheaply as other manufacturers can, plans to alter the design of its mechanical pencil so that it will accept only a newly designed Write Company lead, which will be sold at the same price as the Write Company’s current lead.
Argument 2: The technological conservatism of bicycle manufacturers is a reflection of the kinds of demand they are trying to meet. The only cyclists seriously interested in innovation and willing to pay for it are bicycle racers. Therefore, innovation in bicycle technology is limited by what authorities will accept as standard for purposes of competition in bicycle races.
And here’s the underlying argument:
Argument 0: Certain people may be limited in what products they can use. It makes sense to sell those products to those people.
Let’s match them up:
It looks like once again, two different arguments are pretty close to being the same argument under the surface. But why does this matter?
On GMAT Verbal, Critical Reasoning Answers Are Predictable
Check out the questions and right answers from those last two arguments. Here are the question and right answer from Argument 1:
Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the Write Company’s projection that its plan will lead to an increase in its sales of pencil leads?
In extensive test marketing, mechanical-pencil users found the new Write Company pencil markedly superior to other mechanical pencils they had used.
And here are the question and right answer from Argument 2:
Which of the following is an assumption made in drawing the conclusion above?
Bicycle racers do not generate a strong demand for innovations that fall outside what is officially recognized as standard for purposes of competition.
You know what? Those are basically the same right answer. They both boil down to this: “Wow, people actually are limited in which products they can use!”
In Argument 1, if the Write Company pencil is fantastic, people actually will choose to use that pencil, which means they’ll be stuck with the Write Company leads. In Argument 2, we need to assume that people actually care about race-specific technology—if bike racers are perfectly happy to buy non-racing technology as well, then they aren’t really limited, after all.
There’s nothing new under the sun. Critical Reasoning problems use the same basic arguments over and over, with a couple of small variations to keep things interesting. More importantly, each of those basic arguments has basically the same flaws and assumptions.
That’s Very Interesting, But…
On test day, you don’t have time to take such a close look at every Critical Reasoning problem. That’s why this work needs to happen before test day if it’s going to pay off.
When you review a Critical Reasoning problem, start by generalizing. Try to express the “Argument 0” in your own words. After all, you won’t see this exact argument on the test—but the odds are good that you’ll see one that’s very similar. The more prepared you are, the better.
You don’t want to work out every new argument totally from scratch on test day. Instead, you want to develop a mental library of common tricks and tropes that show up in GMAT Verbal arguments. This doesn’t have to be anything complicated! It can be as simple as this:
“This argument says that something will happen in the future… well, how do I know that the situation won’t change between now and then?”
So, think about starting a problem log for Critical Reasoning right now—and stay tuned for the next article, where we’ll talk about some tricky GMAT Verbal & Critical Reasoning situations. ?
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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.