CR strategic guessing

by ua Sat Nov 10, 2007 6:06 am

Hi instructors,

This is a question I should have asked during the course, but its now that I felt the need for it. During the course of my studies, I realized that I have a (bad) habit of skimming and missing minor details, resulting in unnecessary mistakes. I am now practicing to time myself in such a way that for the last 6-10 questions I will have about 30 sec per question.

I am assuming that these last questions will consist of CR and SC only. I have a reasonable technique (courtesy the course) for strategic guessing on SC questions, but I cannot formulate a strategy for CR questions. Can a few of you (instructors) share or propose any such technique?

Regards,
UA.

by **StaceyKoprince** Mon Nov 12, 2007 9:43 pm

First, DO NOT time yourself to have only 30 seconds per question for ANY questions on the test. In order to maximize your score, you must spend full time (but not too much time) on every question on the test. The early questions are NOT worth even the slightest bit more than the later questions - if you have heard that somewhere, it is a complete myth. They are all worth the same amount and your score will go down just as far by getting a lot wrong in the last 6-10 as it will by getting a lot wrong in the first 6-10.

If you continue to pace yourself such that you have only 30 seconds per question for the final 6-10 questions, then no other advice I give you will really matter. You won't get the score you could get if you do this. In fact, you will significantly undershoot the score you could get.

Second, DO NOT assume that the last 6-10 questions will be CR and SC only. You can easily have an RC passage in there - plenty of people do.

Generally speaking, for both RC and CR, your educated guessing technique is primarily based on a study of why the wrong answers are wrong. If you can start to understand specifically why the wrong answers tend to be wrong for the various types of CR and RC questions, then it will be easier for you to find wrong answers and cross them off, even if you are not 100% solid on the argument or passage. If you haven't already been spending time understanding why wrong CR and RC answers are wrong, get started! It can take a few weeks to get good traction in this area.