Guess an entire passage in RC

[ARASH4339]

(I HAVE POSTED THIS PREVIOUSLY IN GMATCLUB, SO I HOPE IT IS NOT PROHIBITED TO POST IT AGAIN HERE)
I have GMAT exam in 2 weeks and I am really confused about the RC section.
I am a non-native test taker and some RC questions are really hard for me. it happened to me time and time again that after spending too much time on a long tough passage finally I answered more than 75% of the questions wrong! (awful isn't it?)
Finally I decided to take the following strategy for RC:
Select a tough passage, and guess all the questions without reading it. in this way not only i can save more time on the other questions , including other time-consuming and difficult RC questions that require too much time, but also it will reduce my stress.
I'd really appreciate it if you can guide me about this strategy.
moreover, if you think that it is a good idea to do o, how can i guess the entire questions of a passage in a way that i can reduce the probability of wrong answers?
Thanks for your help in advance.

[StaceyKoprince]

You are certainly free (and welcome!) to post anything here even if you have already posted it on a different forum. :)

What is your goal score? You can possibly follow the strategy you describe, BUT probably not if you are going for a 680+.

Next, on the longest, hardest, most ridiculous passages... could you still answer the main idea question and have a good chance of getting it right? What if you decided to skip all of the annoying detail and just read the "main idea" type sentences? Then at least you'd have one question right out of the set. And you might also be able to use your understanding of the overall point to get rid of some wrong answers on the specific / detail questions.

Read this:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -passages/

If you have access to our OG Archer program, go watch the passage video for RC #128 (OG13).

Next, I want to address a question that you didn't actually ask. Your exam is in 2 weeks and you're asking permission for a pretty drastic strategy. Is this because your practice test scores aren't at the level that you want on the real test?

If that's the case, then the real question here is: should I postpone my test? So what are your most recent practice scores? And were those tests taken under 100% official conditions, including essay and IR? What's your goal score? How far away are you?

[ARASH4339]

Thanks for your response,
The reason that I think that it can improve my overall score in Verbal is that first of all, even if i spend too much time on the difficult passages (i will tell you later how can i distinguish them) finally most of the time many of them are not true (as i mentioned more than 75%). secondly, my experience is that if i spend enough time on each passage (average about 2 min and 20 sec for each question) i can answer more than 75% of the question correctly, obviously, in this way despite the acceptable outcome, i usually face lack of time for other questions and my overall performance will decrease. therefore if i guess all the questions of an entire passage, i would not lose too much score, because even if had spent time on them. on average only 1 out of four questions were correct. when generalizing this too all the passages, it would be a disaster! however by saving time with one passage and spend it with others, i can claim that i would do better on other passage (this time more than 75% CORRECT). besides that, consider that when guess, all the answers are not necessarily wrong. in addition, as a non-native test taker, i need more than standard time for other questions )specially CR which i can get a good score in them if i have enough time (about 2 min per question)
i have to say that i am not very optimistic for verbal section, all i need is a score about 35 (don't blame me, but now my average score in prep's is about 28!) so in your comments please consider this score.
Moreover, about the tough passages, some of them are obvious, the long passages with more than 50 lines are usually tough (isn't it?) also by reading first few lines of other passages you can define if they are tough (for example passages about lawsuits are deadly hard for me).
in addition, i think that if i consider my approximate performance on previous questions, i can guess that the current passage might be for example 700-800 score.
I am looking for an overall score more than 680, so with a score about 49 in quantitative section i need just a 34-35 in verbal.
sorry for too much words (and definitely too much annoying grammatical errors!) . again thanks for your generous guides, it really means a lot for me, especially in these less than two weeks to exam.

[ARASH4339]

Also, i have to mention that my records in GMATPrep is as follows: 620-620-650 before these tests i took manhattan cat and i got 620 in that. now, al i want is a +660 score, i am not too a dreamer and i think it is realistic to expect this score.

[StaceyKoprince]

Okay - if you're getting the scores that you want using this strategy now, and if you are able to reliably tell when a passage is way too hard for you, then you might be able to get away with this (because you aren't going for a super-high score).

I still want you to try one more thing though, just to see. :) If you read the first 2 sentences of the first paragraph and the first sentence of the remaining paragraphs - can you then get the main idea question right? (Or at least make a strong guess?) If so, then that might be worth the time spent - you can probably do that in about 2m for the one question. And, if you can do that, then that would interrupt the "3-4 questions wrong in a row" outcome that is likely if you skip an entire passage.

Next, it's not great to have 4+ questions wrong in a row anywhere, but if you're going to have that, it's better to have it in the middle somewhere - not in the first 7 or so Qs and not in the last 7 or so Qs. So keep that in mind.

[ARASH4339]

Dear Stacey;
Thanks for your response and attention.
during these days I tried hard and struglled with a lot of RC tests and i improved seriously. now, i can do much more better in this section with spending less time, i read a post by Ron and i applied his strategy and it just rocks! like him self!
my last score in prep (prep 2 - second test) was 710, and i am sitting for test in Jan 8th. wish my lock dude,
i will tell you the score ASAP.
thank you again for all your helps.

[StaceyKoprince]

Good luck!!! :)

[sw001]

Dear Stacey;
Thanks for your response and attention.
during these days I tried hard and struglled with a lot of RC tests and i improved seriously. now, i can do much more better in this section with spending less time, i read a post by Ron and i applied his strategy and it just rocks! like him self!
my last score in prep (prep 2 - second test) was 710, and i am sitting for test in Jan 8th. wish my lock dude,
i will tell you the score ASAP.
thank you again for all your helps.

Hi Aarash,

I find myself in the same boat as you. You are probably done with your GMAT. Could you or anyone please suggest which Post from Ron you are referring to for RC strategy.

Thanks!

[StaceyKoprince]

We would love to hear back!