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Brian Galvin is the Director of Academic Programs at Veritas Prep, where he oversees all of the company’s GMAT prep courses.
Studying for the GMAT comes with a pretty nice ancillary benefit -- after reading through dozens of Reading Comprehension passages, you'll pick up enough trivial knowledge about zoology, history, literature, astronomy, etc. that you'll be well-prepared for a run at Ken Jennings' Jeopardy! earnings record. The topics for most verbal questions on the GMAT are, by design, those that tend to fall outside the comfort zone of the typical business school applicant; how many botanists apply to Harvard Business School each year?
The authors of the GMAT have a responsibility to the schools to determine (and reward) those candidates most likely to succeed in business school, so on the surface it seems odd that the exam would favor those with either trivial or, at the very least, minimally relevant knowledge to the types of careers that MBA grads will pursue. Because of that, you can infer that the questions you'll face on test day are not concerned with your ability to pick up scientific facts or literary terminology. You're applying to business school in hopes of becoming an executive, not a professor, so your understanding of what you read should be in line with that of an Executive Summary.
Accordingly, the types of questions that you will face are in line with the ways you'll need to process written information as an executive. It's more important for you to determine the author's purpose for writing, for example, than it is to understand or know all of the details. Similarly, you'll want to know why the author cites details, statistics, or much more than you'll need to fully understand those references. Because of this, the most important words in Reading Comprehension passages are those that express the author's intentions, those such as: therefore, however, because, moreover, etc. If you understand what the author is trying to accomplish within each paragraph, you'll be primed to answer the subsequent questions, and can always return to specific details as necessary.
In summary (which, in itself, is a contextual clue!), if you focus on the words that you know to be important, you can pay less attention to those that may seem intimidating. The writers of the exam know that scientific details, literary terms, and other unfamiliar verbiage can easily distract and intimidate readers -- and that an important skill for you as a manager will be to filter out distraction and focus on what is important. Emphasize the important terms, worry less about the technical terms, and you'll read more confidently and efficiently en route to a higher verbal score.
Visit veritasprep.com to find a GMAT prep course near you. And, remember to use discount code GCLUB385 to save up to $160 on our seven-week GMAT course, available to all GMAT Club members!
