GRE RC?

Hi diogoguitarrista,

GRE stuff is fine for GMAT practice. In terms of content and tone, the passages are quite similar. Bear in mind, though, that the verbal section of the GRE is 30 questions in 30 minutes, nearly half the time per question as the GMAT. The length of the passages and the question may reflect that difference.

But if you're using Kaplan Premier, one of your goals should be to practice the Kaplan method--briefly summarizing the author's key points and identifying his main idea, then identifying the type of question being asked and solving appropriately. Since mastering the passage map can be done with pretty much any prose (I recommend my students practice on the Economist if GMAT texts are getting too dull) and since the GRE uses the same four basic question types (Global, Inference, Detail, and Logic), they are a great opportunity to hone the skills that you picked up from your Kaplan materials.

Good luck with your studies!

Hi Eli

I love Kaplan's books (I used not only for GMAT, but also for CFA and other standardized tests).
I did use Kaplan Premier's RC strategy. I try to paraphrase the passage, divided in paragraphs (what they are saying, what is the purpose of each paragraph, what is the tone/scope of each paragraph... etc. etc.)

(just to add more details about my test taking, I write about from 7 to 10 words of understanding for each paragraph)

The point is that I am taking too much time in RCs.
I usually take about 1,5min for each question and regarding that I take 4 to 5 minutes to read, I usually get late by the end of a sequence of RC questions.

It was clear when I had the timesheet in my notepad:

Time left Question I should be answering
75 1
60 8
45 16
30 24
15 32

I was some minutes in advance when I started the first RC of the test (this week). When I finished answering (almost sure of most of the answers), I was pretty late.

I read a lot before. My list is:

Newspaper: NY Times
Literature books (The Great Gatsby, The Da Vinci Code & Daisy Miller)

As my background is Bachelor of Science, I usually do not have much trouble with vocabulary in science passages (neither in business, because I work with finance).

Could you (or anyone else) give some advice?

Thanks a lot

If you're really taking 4 minutes per passage and 1.5 minutes per question, then you're just about on schedule!

RC is slow. You'll spend more time on RC than you will on sentence correction or critical reasoning; even Kaplan strategies, which can speed you up and lead you straight to the right answer, can't change that fact. Remember, you should be taking an average of a minute, and not much more, to answer Sentence Correction questions--that's how you balance out the extra time needed to read the passage.

Hi Eli,

so you think I should not spend at most one minute in critical reasoning?
Maybe for SC it could be humanly possible but for CR....

I am not spending up to one minute in SC. You think I should speed up it then?

No, Critical Reasoning averages about 2 per question--sorry if my previous post was not explicit!--although if you learn to recognize the critical reasoning special cases, specific argument structures repeated again and again throughout the GMAT, you may be able to pair that down. It's primarily SC that you want to be aiming for the 1-minute-average benchmark.

Thanks Eli, you are helping me a lot!

as a foreigner student, I am experiencing a lot of hard times with verbal section.
Two months ago, I scored a 34 on verbal and got really excited (too bad it was on GMATPrep rather than on the actual test).

I remember what I did:
just skim the passage and be certain of only half of its questions (tone, scope and main purpose)
With more time, spent more time on the other questions (CR and SC).
(moreover, I made just 1 question wrong out of all RC questions)

I am considering doing this again.

What you guys think? Would it be foolish?

P.S.: my objective for the next month is to score 34 on the actual test

I think LSAT and GRE questions can be a good practice, of course some might be harder or easier than real GMAT but the point is to get good practice of reading and knowing what you read in timed period. So if you are out of GMAT resources, others should be a good way of practice