770 Debrief - A Poet's Approach

Hi all,

I've received a couple questions about my approach to verbal, so I've decided to outline my thought process and approach to several SC and CR problems. Unfortunately, I can't really help with RC... I never got a question wrong on RC in all my GMATprep mocks and I only relied on intuition, so there's nothing I can really suggest that would be terribly useful. My only tip is to never go outside the passage or make any "leaps" when you answer inference questions. Above all, do NOT "word salad" RC passages or try to pick answer choices based on them containing similar verbiage to the passage - these choices are almost always wrong.

Quick background on verbal - I averaged between 2-4 errors in all my GMATprep exams, usually with 1-2 CR errors and 1-2 SC errors. On actual test day, I noticed that the ceiling of difficulty for verbal can go higher than the GMATprep tests. I presume that this is the reason why your verbal score can be higher than your score on CATs.

I will break this up into two posts: one for Critical Reasoning, and the second for Sentence Correction.

CRITICAL REASONING

First, write down all premises and IDENTIFY THE CONCLUSION. For the GMAT writers, "conclusion" = "position" = "author's argument." This is especially important to know for boldface passages.

Second, make SURE you write down all dates, percentages, ranges, and whether or not the word "PROFIT" showed up (quick and dirty tip: if the word profit shows up in the conclusion, you can almost be sure the answer choice will have something to do with costs).

The prompt is gospel. For the purposes of the GMAT, you must assume every word you read in the prompt is 100% verified fact. Do NOT make ANY inferences that would contradict any premise in the prompt.

Begin with Process of Elimination. I would highly recommend writing down A, B, C, D, E on your pad for each CR question and crossing out answers you eliminate. Do not revisit these answers unless you end up crossing out everything - this will happen, especially for tougher CR questions. If you end up crossing out every answer choice, you missed writing down an important detail in the prompt. Re-read and look for what it was (sometimes it can be the tiniest detail). Your first pass through should be to eliminate ANYTHING that contradicts the statements in the prompt - these choices are always wrong.

Sample CR passage

To evaluate a plan to save money on office-space expenditures by having its employees work at home, XYZ Company asked volunteers from its staff to try the arrangement for six months. During this period, the productivity of these employees was as high as or higher than before.

Which of the following, if true, would argue most strongly against deciding, on the basis of the trial results, to implement the company's plan?

A) The employees who agreed to participate in the test of the plan were among the company's most self-motivated and independent workers
B) The savings that would accrue from reduced office-space expenditures alone would be sufficient to justify the arrangement for the company, apart from any productivity increases
C) Other companies that have achieved successful results from work-at-home plans have workforces that are substantially larger than that of XYZ
D) The volunteers who worked at home were able to communicate with other employees as necessary for performing the work
E) Minor changes in the way office work is organized at XYZ would yield increases in employee productivity similar to those achieved in the trial

STUDENT888'S APPROACH

1) IDENTIFY THE CONCLUSION

Reword the prompt so that it has premises leading to a clear conclusion. I would write down the following:
XYZ Company asked volunteers to work from home for 6 months -> Productivity of those employees were high -> THEREFORE, Company plans to save money on office expenditures by having employees work from home (CONCLUSION!)

2) IDENTIFY THE QUESTION

"Which of the following, if true, would argue most strongly against deciding, on the basis of the trial results, to implement the company's plan?"

Okay, I want to WEAKEN the conclusion. I would write "WKN" next to "THEREFORE, Company plans to save money on office expenditures by having employees work from home."

3) FIRST PASS

Once you've done Steps 1 and 2, you realize that this question is very straightforward. Time to eliminate answers. I will cut off answer choices with an ellipsis (...) to indicate when I stop reading an answer choice.

E) Minor changes in the way office work is organized at XYZ would yield increases in employee productivity... DON'T CARE, doesn't affect conclusion (Company saves money by having employees work from home, I don't care if it could save more money).
D) The volunteers who worked at home were able to communicate with other employees... DON'T CARE, doesn't affect conclusion (Company saves money by having employees work from home)
C) Other companies... DON'T CARE, doesn't affect conclusion (THIS Company saves money by having employees work from home, who cares about other companies)
B) The savings that would accrue from reduced office-space expenditures alone would be sufficient to justify the arrangement for the company... This STRENGTHENS the conclusion; we're supposed to weaken it.
A) The employees who agreed to participate in the test of the plan were among the company's most self-motivated and independent workers. SUFFICIENT. The conclusion that the Company saves money by having employees work from home is premised on the fact that the workers in the study were productive. If the workers in the study were non-representative (i.e., highly self-motivated and independent), then the study's results are not valid.

Correct answer is A. There is only one correct choice. When you clearly identify the conclusion, it is very similar to a Data Sufficiency question, you just need to find an answer choice that's sufficient for whatever the question is (Strengthen, Weaken, Inference, Evaluate Argument, etc.). Trust me when I say that even the HARDEST CR questions will only have AT MOST two answer choices that survive my initial pass through. You can generally eliminate ALL wrong answers on the first try, provided that you have CLEARLY identified the conclusion and what the question is asking.

Sample boldface CR

Editorial: An arrest made by a Midville police officer is provisional until the officer has taken the suspect to the police station and the watch commander has officially approved the arrest. Such approval is denied if the commander judges that the evidence on which the provisional arrest is based is insufficient. A government efficiency expert has observed that almost all provisional arrests meet the standards for adequacy of evidence that the watch commanders enforce. The expert has therefore recommended that, because the officers' time spent obtaining approval is largely wasted, the watch commander's approval no longer be required. This recommendation should be rejected as dangerous, however, since there is no assurance that the watch commanders' standards will continue to be observed once approval is no longer required.

In the editorial, the two portions in boldface play which of the following roles:

A) The first is a claim, the accuracy of which is disputed by the editorial; the second is a conclusion drawn in order to support the main conclusion of the editorial
B) The first is an observation that the editorial disputes; the second is a conclusion that was drawn from that observation
C) The first is a finding that was used in support of a proposal that the editorial opposes; the second is a judgment that was based on that finding and in turn was used to support the proposal
D) The first is a finding introduced to support the main conclusion of the editorial; the second is that main conclusion
E) The first is a conclusion, the evidence for which the editorial evaluates; the second is part of the evidence cited in favor of that conclusion

STUDENT888'S APPROACH

Boldface passages are actually very straightforward. The first task is to translate the entire passage into a string of facts, judgments, and conclusions.

FACTS - Bare facts that cannot be disputed (within the realm of the prompt, do NOT bring in outside knowledge!)
JUDGMENTS/CLAIMS - Statements of opinion. Will have stronger language than just facts.
PROPOSALS/CONCLUSIONS - Sometimes only one, but usually two. One is generally a counter-conclusion or counter-proposal, a conclusion/proposal that goes against the conclusion/proposal of the author. The other is the author's conclusion. IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO RECOGNIZE THE AUTHOR'S CONCLUSION! Do that first! Conclusion can also be called "position" or "author's argument" by the prompt.

The second task is to divide up the facts, judgments/claims, and conclusions/proposals into camps. Camp A is the author's conclusion camp: facts and judgments/claims that support the author's conclusion. Camp B is the counter-conclusion camp: facts and judgments/claims that support the counter-conclusion.

Here, the author's conclusion is clearly the following -
"This recommendation should be rejected as dangerous, however, since there is no assurance that the watch commanders' standards will continue to be observed once approval is no longer required." So this would be Conclusion A.

Now translate every other sentence in the passage into just FACTS, JUDGMENTS/CLAIMS, and CONCLUSIONS, and clearly indicate which camp they fall into. Sometimes, facts may be neutral, in that case, I just note them as facts.

"An arrest made by a Midville police officer is provisional until the officer has taken the suspect to the police station and the watch commander has officially approved the arrest. Such approval is denied if the commander judges that the evidence on which the provisional arrest is based is insufficient. A government efficiency expert has observed that almost all provisional arrests meet the standards for adequacy of evidence that the watch commanders enforce. The expert has therefore recommended that, because the officers' time spent obtaining approval is largely wasted, the watch commander's approval no longer be required. This recommendation should be rejected as dangerous, however, since there is no assurance that the watch commanders' standards will continue to be observed once approval is no longer required."

TRANSLATION
"Fact. Fact. Fact B - B1 (Student888: B1 stands for the first boldface statement). Judgment B - B2, Proposal B. Conclusion A." (This is what I write on my pad).

After the translation, you just scan the answer choices that match your translation. There is only one: C.

"The first is a finding that was used in support of a proposal that the editorial opposes (Student 888: FACT B); the second is a judgment that was based on that finding and in turn was used to support the proposal (Student888: JUDGMENT B)."

Hope that helps! I will post my approach on SC shortly.