Distribution of SC questions - Strategy

Hey guys,

Have you ever faced such situations, while solving SC, as you are not able to spot the errors in any of the answer choices, or are not able to narrow down the answer choice to one? If yes, then I am with you!!!

I seldom find myself staring at the screen with no clue how to attack a hard SC. I know, I know, every question falls under a specific category of error. According to MGMAT SC there are 9 such categories: Parallelism, Modifiers, Comparisons, Idioms, Verb Tense/Voice/Mood, Subject-Verb agreement, Pronouns, Meaning/Concision, Odds & Ends. So if you are stuck in a situation like above, then you should start checking if the question falls under any of these error categories. But which category to test first? It is definitely not economical to spend time in real GMAT checking these categories randomly. So I have come up with my own strategy to tackle such situations.

Here is the distribution of questions from OG and Official Verbal Guides:

It is clear from this chart that the probability of a question to fall under one of the first 3 categories is more than 50%. And 75% of the questions comes under one of the first 5 categories. Questions that fall under modifiers and comparisons categories are usually easier than those that fall under parallelism. So it is safe to place your bet on parallelism if you are not able to determine the category of any question.

I personally found this strategy very useful to increase my speed in finding the answers of Brutal SC questions, and I hope that you all will also benefit from it. Comments and suggestions are Welcome!!

Assumption: The distribution of the SC questions in OG and Official Verbal Guides represents the actual distribution of questions in real GMAT.