{"id":2620,"date":"2010-03-15T16:23:40","date_gmt":"2010-03-16T00:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/?p=2620"},"modified":"2010-03-15T16:29:33","modified_gmt":"2010-03-16T00:29:33","slug":"veritas-prep-gmat-tips-enough-is-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/veritas-prep-gmat-tips-enough-is-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Veritas Prep GMAT Tips: Enough is Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brian Galvin is the Director of Academic Programs at Veritas Prep, where he oversees all of the company\u2019s GMAT preparation courses<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ask any MBA student \u2013 past, present, or prospective \u2013 about Data Sufficiency questions, and you\u2019re sure to get a response. More often than not that reaction will be negative \u2013 \u201cI hate Data Sufficiency!\u201d \u2013 and even when it\u2019s positive \u2013 \u201cthose are tough questions, but I figured them out and learned to appreciate them \u2013 the reaction will be one of hesitant praise for the complexity of these unique questions. This is with good reason \u2013 Data Sufficiency questions tend to carry a significant degree of difficulty on the GMAT (as quantitative scores have risen, the GMAT has begun to feature more Data Sufficiency questions than its traditional 15 out of 37), and because they require a new thought process for most, they offer a more significant study challenge than perhaps any other type of question on the GMAT.<\/p>\n

All of this is intriguing, however, when you look at the Data Sufficiency format closely, because if you break down the question type, it\u2019s remarkably clear-cut and honest: \u201cDo you have enough information to answer the question?\u201d. Seems fair enough, right? Obviously, the authors of the GMAT can take this seemingly-simple premise and add difficulty to it, but if you focus only on what the question is asking, the test creators really only have two ways to trick you:<\/p>\n

1)\tGet you to think that you have enough information when you really don\u2019t
\n2)\tGet you to think that you don\u2019t have enough information when you really do<\/p>\n

The simplicity of the question type \u2013 asking when you have enough information to answer the question \u2013 lends itself to these two possibilities for you to answer incorrectly. <\/p>\n

With this in mind, you can better think of ways that a question will disguise the sufficiency of the information provided:<\/p>\n

You think you have enough information, but you really don\u2019t<\/strong>
\nTo make this error in your GMAT preparation<\/a>, you\u2019re likely making assumptions about the question that are telling you things about the data that aren\u2019t necessarily true. Are you only thinking in terms of integers, or positive numbers? Have you considered the possibility that 0 is a potential value? Ultimately, to avoid this pitfall, you need to get in the habit of looking for the \u201ccatch\u201d: \u201cI think this is enough information, but what type of situation would give me a different answer?\u201d<\/p>\n

You think you don\u2019t have enough information, but you really do<\/strong>
\nThese can be even trickier, as the GMAT provides you with statements that don\u2019t quite seem like enough information, but if you work through the statement you will find that it\u2019s just enough. When you suspect that this is the case \u2013 one major clue is that a particular answer choice seems almost too obvious \u2013 work through each statement to learn as much information as you can. Often this comes from taking a statement and manipulating the algebra to rephrase the information in a more useful form. Other times, the GMAT will provide you with a valuable clue in the form of the other statement. Consider the question:<\/p>\n

A rental car agency purchases fleet vehicles in two sizes: a full-size car costs $10,000, and a compact costs $9,000. How many compact cars does the agency own?<\/p>\n

(1)\tThe agency owns 7 total cars
\n(2)\tThe agency paid $66,000 for its cars<\/p>\n

Here, answer choice C seems to be a fairly easy choice \u2013 the first statement tells us that the number of full-size cars plus the number of compacts equals 7 (F + C = 7), and the second tells us that the total value is $66,000, or that 10,000F + 9000C = 66000. Having both equations, we know that, with two equations and two variables, we\u2019ll be able to solve for the number of compact cars.<\/p>\n

Here, the GMAT is likely trying to get us to believe that we have less information than we really do \u2013 it\u2019s not too likely that they would make choice C as easy to get to as it is. To counteract that, we can ask ourselves whether one of the statements is necessary. Statement 1 tells us that the agency has 7 total cars \u2013 is that necessary for us to know, or could we derive that from statement 2?<\/p>\n

If we assess the information in statement 2 \u2013 that the cars cost $66,000 total \u2013 let\u2019s see if it\u2019s even possible that the agency could have bought anything other than 7 cars. If not, then statement 1 is unnecessary. If we try to purchase 8 cars, it stands to reason that if 8 of the cheapest cars cost more than $66,000, it\u2019s not possible to purchase 8. 8 of the cheaper cars would be 8 * 9000, or a total of $72,000. Because 8 of even the cheapest cars \u2013 substituting any of the cheaper cars with a more expensive one would only increase the total value above $72,000 \u2013 costs too much for us to reach the $66,000 total price paid, then it\u2019s not possible to purchase 8 cars (or more).<\/p>\n

Similarly, if we test the price of 6 of the full-size cars, we may be able to eliminate that possibility. 6*10000 is $60,000, which is not enough for us to reach the $66,000 total price. If we were to substitute a cheaper car for any of the more expensive cars in our set of 6, it would only decrease that total to below $60,000, so we can prove that the agency cannot purchase 6 cars for $66,000. <\/p>\n

Because, based on the information in statement 2, the only number of cars that could be purchased is 7, the information in statement 1 doesn\u2019t need to be stated explicitly \u2013 we already know that from our interpretation of statement 2. Therefore, the correct answer is B.<\/p>\n

More important than the question itself is the takeaway, which is that the GMAT likes to cleverly hide information from you so that you don\u2019t think you have it. One great way to test for that is to take the given information from the other statement and test to see if you really need it. The testmakers know that we\u2019d all prefer the security of too much information, but will reward us for being able to answer the question with just enough data. If you test the given information to see if you could do without it, you can stay one step ahead of the authors on these tricky questions. <\/p>\n

Overall, keep in mind that, as clever as these Data Sufficiency questions can be, the authors have only two ways to get you to make a mistake \u2013 they can make you think you have enough information when you don\u2019t, or make you think you don\u2019t have enough information when you actually do. Sure, there are several smaller devices that they can employ to get you to make these mistakes, but if you keep these major factors in mind as you study and take the exam, you\u2019ll better be able to anticipate where the trap may lie.<\/p>\n

Read more GMAT advice on the Veritas Prep blog<\/a>. Ready to sign up for a GMAT course<\/a>? Enroll through GMAT Club and save up to $180 (use discount code GMATC10)!<\/p>\n

\"Veritas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brian Galvin is the Director of Academic Programs at Veritas Prep, where he oversees all of the company\u2019s GMAT preparation courses. Ask any MBA student \u2013 past, present, or prospective…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2620"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2623,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2620\/revisions\/2623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}