{"id":2777,"date":"2010-04-02T11:29:58","date_gmt":"2010-04-02T19:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/?p=2777"},"modified":"2010-04-02T11:29:58","modified_gmt":"2010-04-02T19:29:58","slug":"veritas-prep-gmat-tips-imitation-is-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/veritas-prep-gmat-tips-imitation-is-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery\/","title":{"rendered":"Veritas Prep GMAT Tips: Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery"},"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

The authors of the GMAT have two main goals when they write any GMAT question \u2013 they want you to have the potential to get the question wrong, and they also want to give you the chance to waste precious time as you arrive at your answer (so that you have the potential to get future questions wrong). Cleverly, they have designed a style of Critical Reasoning question that is suited to serve both ends \u2013 the \u201cMimic the Reasoning\u201d question.<\/p>\n

In these \u201cMimic the Reasoning\u201d questions, you are asked to read an argument, and then select from five different arguments the one that best parallels the reasoning in the given stimulus. A sample question stem would read: Which of the following arguments is most similar, in its logical structure, to the argument above? What sounds like an innocent enough question type \u2013 like a game of card matching or Travel Guess Who \u2013 can contain quite a few pitfalls for you as the authors of the GMAT seek out their mission:<\/p>\n

Waste Your Time<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mimic the Reasoning questions are unique in that you need to read six different arguments, or a total of 12-18 sentences. Most Critical Reasoning questions are shorter \u2013 3-4 sentence stimulus with five, one-sentence answer choices. If nothing else, these Mimic questions will require a bit more reading time, and take a little extra focus.<\/p>\n

Your response? <\/em><\/p>\n

Be diligent in determining up front what the flow of the logic of the initial argument is, because your job is to match it identically. If you know, for example, that the initial argument flows as X leads to Y, and Y leads to Z, so X leads to Z, you can more quickly go through the answer choices and eliminate them as soon as there is a deviation from the required logic. Because your only job is to find a match, as soon as you can determine that an answer choice isn\u2019t a match, it\u2019s no longer useful to you, and you don\u2019t have to read any farther.<\/p>\n

Elicit an Incorrect Answer<\/strong><\/p>\n

The authors of the GMAT can use the way that you think against you. This may best be demonstrated with an example:<\/p>\n

Fish have dorsal fins and tails. Dolphins have dorsal fins and tails, so dolphins must be a type of fish.
\nWhich of the following is most similar, in its logical structure, to the argument above?<\/p>\n

A)\tFruits are edible and have seeds. Apples are fruits, so apples must have seeds.
\nB)\tThis blog must be a novel, because novels have multiple typewritten paragraphs, and this blog has multiple typewritten paragraphs.
\nC)\tFish breathe through gills. Salmon are fish, so salmon must breathe through gills.<\/p>\n

To elicit incorrect answers from you, Mimic questions tend to take the natural ways that you process information and use them against you. A few popular ways that the authors do this are:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Provide a stimulus with a flawed conclusion, and an incorrect answer that has a valid conclusion<\/em>. Look at answer choice A. Its conclusion is valid \u2013 if a condition of fruits is that they have seeds, then an apple, which is a fruit, will then have seeds. The conclusion works. In the stimulus, however, the logic is flipped and incorrect; fish have dorsal fins and tails, so we would know that any subset of the category \u201cfish\u201d should have fins and tails, but we don\u2019t know that fish are the only animals with fins and tails. This is a flawed conclusion, so the correct answer must also have a flaw.<\/p>\n

You will tend to gravitate to answer choices like A because they are true \u2013 as you read it, and it makes logical sense, your mind will accept it as \u201cgood\u201d because it\u2019s true, and you\u2019ll be likely to consider it correct. But the correct answer has to match the logic \u2013 flaw and all \u2013 so you need to think in terms of logical parallelism, not logical correctness.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Give you matching logical structure, but different sentence structure.<\/em> Choice B is correct, but it may not seem that way at first. The logical structure is parallel \u2013 the premises flip the logic in the same way as the original (X has Y characteristic. A has Y characteristic, so A must be X.), but the sentence structure is different. The stimulus reads: Premise, Premise, therefore Flawed Conclusion; Choice B reads Flawed Conclusion, because of Premise, Premise. Because of this, B might not seem to fit exactly, but the logical structure is all that matters. The authors know that they can change the sentence structure to make it seem different, but you\u2019re only responsible (as the question stem states) for the logical structure, so make sure that you keep that as your focus.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Provide an incorrect answer with similar topic matter.<\/em> Choice C seems extremely similar to the stimulus because the topic matter \u2013 characteristics of fish \u2013 is nearly identical. Its logical structure actually parallels incorrect choice A, however \u2013 it\u2019s valid. If fish have gills, and salmon are a type of fish, then salmon should have the characteristics of a fish, and therefore have gills. Because the logic is valid, and your job is to match an answer with incorrect logic, C is incorrect \u2013 even though it is extremely similar in sentence structure and subject matter.<\/p>\n

The authors of the exam know the way that your mind works \u2013 you see similarities and differences most obviously with subject matter and sentence structure, and your mind processes \u201ccorrectness of logic\u201d as \u201cthe correct answer\u201d. Your job on Mimic the Reasoning questions is, as the questions ask, to mimic the reasoning, so beware of these traps to get you to mimic anything other than the reasoning, and these questions can become much more manageable.<\/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. The authors of the GMAT have two main goals…<\/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-2777","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\/2777","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=2777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2779,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777\/revisions\/2779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}