Quantitative Comparisons? What’s that mean?
Let’s just put it right out there: the Quantitative Comparison (QC) question type is bizarre. If you’re just starting out, you’re probably thinking, What is this thing? Even if you’ve been studying for a while, unless you really like math, you likely feel a little uncomfortable whenever a QC question pops up on the screen.
Why? Because we all realize that we could completely mess up a QC question and still get to one of the 4 answer choices, clueless that we’ve messed up. It’s not like the questions with the 5 regular answers, where at least I know when I mess up because my answer isn’t in the answer choices!
What is QC?
The GRE isn’t really a math test. These kinds of tests are actually trying to test us on our executive reasoning skills—that is, how well we make decisions and prioritize when faced with too many things to do in too short a length of time.
Quantitative Comparison questions test our ability to (quickly) analyze some information and figure out how two quantities compare to each other. Imagine your boss dumping a bunch of stuff on you and saying, “Hey, our client wants to know whether Product A or Product B is better liked in the marketplace. Can you answer that question from this data? If so, which is it: A is better, B is better, or people think they’re about the same?”
We do, of course, have to do some math—and sometimes that math is quite annoying. We usually don’t, however, have to do as much as is necessary on the more normal quant questions.