Hi All,
First of all, thank you all for the wealth of information that you share on this forum. I’ve gotten invaluable insights and strategies from this forum - straegies that have helped me gain grounds in this GMAT journey.
I'm a non-native but all my education from kindergarten has been in British English. As such, I would say that apart from my accent, I could qualify as a native english speaker.
So far, i have been able to ‘contain’ SC and RC. At medium and low difficulty, my SC accuracy is about 100%. At high difficulty, it’s still about 100%. When it goes really ballistic (as I came to finally see on GMATPrep Question Pack 2 and Exam Pack 2), it could drop to 95% but not below 90%. I am content with that. RC has always come naturally. Without writing anything (i.e. no jotting keywords or summarizing paragraphs) during my mock tests, I have always gotten every single RC question right - at most only one wrong. Kinda surprises me but then I’m happy about that
I'm stating this so that my potential helpers can understand that grammar aint my problem . . .
Now to my main problem. CR at high difficulty! At low and medium difficulty, I fare well on the CR (above 90% accuracy). But once i filter the
OG questions to Hard (
OG 2015 online access allows you to do that), my accuracy drops to between 40% and 50%
. Simply put, I can’t seem to get around the really tough CR questions that involve indirect connections. This problem seems to span across the different types of CR Question (except maybe Bold Face questions which to me are like CR).
I dug deeper and noticed that this usually happened to me when the answer requires what i have dubbed ‘multi-layer’ reasoning i.e. making one deduction, and connecting it to another deduction before connecting it to the logic of the question. To make you understand what i mean, I will show an example of a typical question that knocks me off.
OG13 CR#115
Guidebook writer: I have visited hotels throughout the country and have noticed that in those built before 1930 the quality of the original carpentry work is generally superior to that in hotels built afterward. Clearly carpenters working on hotels before 1930 typically worked with more skill, care, and effort than carpenters who have worked on hotels built subsequently.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the guidebook writer’s argument?
(A) The quality of original carpentry in hotels is generally far superior to the quality of original carpentry in other structures, such as houses and stores.
(B) Hotels built since 1930 can generally accommodate more guests than those built before 1930.
(C) The materials available to carpenters working before 1930 were not significantly different in quality from the materials available to carpenters working after 1930.
(D) The better the quality of original carpentry in a building, the less likely that building is to fall into disuse and be demolished.
(E) The average length of apprenticeship for carpenters has declined significantly since 1930.
The OA to this question is D. The explanation is that of all the buildings built in the 1930s, we have some with good woodwork and some with bad woodwork. But since the ones with bad woodwork have been demolished (as per answer choice D), the only buildings that were available, which the guidebook writer used as a representative sample of all 1930 buildings, were the ones with good woodwork.
How on earth do you just make such connections out of nowhere? This is my main concern. Even if you manage to, will it fly without GMAC saying that we are not sure about blah blah blah based on what we have from the prompt. It almost looks like trying to twist the answer to fit the question. Again, I know that GMAC is ALWAYS right but then . . . . .
At some point, it began to appear that GMAC dismisses any answer they do not like with the usual ‘we can not support this answer with the information in the prompt’ while making similar far reaching connections when justifying the correct answer. I kinda wondered why these far reaching connections that disqualified the attractive wrong answer seem to ‘work’ on the correct answer…..hahahahah….
Okay. I know I’m being a bit sarcastic here but I hope you all understand what I mean. I know that these questions are standardized and
GMAC is ALWAYS correct and this is why I am asking for any strategy that can help to demystify these problems and make the same far-reaching conclusions that GMAC likes
I have learnt the Assumption Negation and Variance Tests and they have been helpful but at times they seem to work on two answers and then GMAC picks one, ‘justifies’ it and discards the other!
Sometimes it even seems like the question has no answer. . . . lol.
Can anyone help with some really deep explanation that can ‘open my eyes’ to what exactly I am missing?
Here is another example of a typical question that I failed to answer correctly.
OG13 CR#88
Businesses are suffering because of a lack of money available for development loans. To help businesses, the government plans to modify the income-tax structure in order to induce individual taxpayers to put a larger portion of their incomes into retirement savings accounts, because as more money is deposited in such accounts, more money becomes available to borrowers.
Which of the following, if true, raises the most serious doubt regarding the effectiveness of the government’s plan to increase the amount of money available for development loans for businesses?
(A) When levels of personal retirement savings increase, consumer borrowing always increases
correspondingly.
(B) The increased tax revenue the government would receive as a result of business expansion would not
offset the loss in revenue from personal income taxes during the first year of the plan.
(C) Even with tax incentives, some people will choose not to increase their levels of retirement savings.
(D) Bankers generally will not continue to lend money to businesses whose prospective earnings are
insufficient to meet their loan repayment schedules.
(E) The modified tax structure would give all taxpayers, regardless of their incomes, the same tax savings for
a given increase in their retirement savings.
Shamefully, I could not even zero in on an answer for this one. I think I picked randomly.
Again, Can anyone help with some really deep explanation that can ‘open my eyes’ to what exactly I am missing? I’m not asking for answers to the questions posted above. I kinda need a systematic way to lock down these nasty CRs!!!