Reading Comprehension passages

[PistolPreet]

Hello MGMAT:

I wanted to see how close to the real GMAT are the subjects of your reading comp. I have taken some other practice tests through Kaplan and Princeton Review and have found both the subjects and the word choice of their reading comps to be much more bizarre. For example, a few Kaplan reading comps will focus around the brain structure and actions of marsupials or the foundation or linguistics. These passages are not only more scientifically written, but also seem longer than the passages by MGMAT.

Can you perhaps speak to the reading comp passages we can expect for the actual test? Can we expect a strong similarity in writing style and subject range as what appears with MGMAT's practice tests?

Thank you !

[StaceyKoprince]

In general, if you want to get a feel for actual language on any part of the test, look to OG. Although we (and I assume TPR and Kaplan) spend lots of time and money trying to mimic the GMAT, there's nothing quite like the real thing. If you haven't already, go take a look at some of the OG passages to get a feel for the tone and style. Expect them to be fairly dry and sometimes to have a slightly disjointed feeling - like some of the stuff doesn't have enough context. (That's because they excerpt paragraphs from real bodies of written work - they just take a few paragraphs out of an entire paper or book, so what you see can feel a little out of context.)

You can see some passages that are pretty scientific - we have some too, though maybe you haven't seen them yet - but the key is that, when a passage gets really complicated, the questions are actually unlikely to make you dive too deeply into the most complicated stuff. (This applies to the real test.) It's like they want to scare us into spending lots of time figuring out what the details are about... and then they don't even bother to get into that stuff very much with the questions.