Need suggestions: Which RC Question bank should I use to practice?

I am kind of on the same boat as you, I am planning to buy the OG Question bank. But there is another option which I have been using to practice RC - LSAT RC question dumps. You can search for that (under downloads) in Gmatclub and you can use it for practice. They are very good and difficult.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Janielle. I will probably buy Question Pack 1 or look for some free LSAT questions on the gmatclub. Appreciate your help!

Hi Rich,

Thanks for your response. I never said that I am not focusing on other Verbal question types. I have a lot of practice material for SC and CR questions, but have finished all the RC material. There are a lot of free questions that are available on gmatclub, but I was just looking for questions sets that don't have questions from MGMAT mocks and gmat prep.

Regards,

YT770

Yes, I've been advised to use the LSAT RC material. How was your performance on LSAT questions as compared to GMAT RC questions? I found that most of them are pretty long and have 6-7 questions per passage. Since GMAT will have only 3 questions (short) and 4 questions (long) passage types, I was thinking that it'd be better to find passages that are actual GMAT like. Practicing on difficult passages may be useful, but I'd rather spend more time on other weak areas. Please share your experience.

Thanks for your response!

My performance on the LSAT RC's has been very similar to the GMAT RC ones, but some LSAT passages are really difficult, similar to some of the OG passages and the quantity of practice options are huge (especially the ones available for free in gmatclub). Also the passages are long in LSAT which helps me because I dont do great when huge passages appear in GMATPrep. Its true that LSAT has lots of questions, but so does OG passages - most have 5+ questions. Best option for GMAT-like is GMATPrep question bank. Another option I can think of is veritas tests (They come for $20 for 7 tests) which can give you some practice materials, but in full test format. Sorry I cannot think of anything else.

Thanks for sharing your experience! I appreciate it. A friend of mine also suggested using RC 99 by Aristotle. It has 99 passages from low to high difficulty level. Though I have read mixed reviews about that book on different sites, I would still give it a shot. Thanks again for your help! Good luck.

I read books, and I believe that, by doing this, I improved my RC accuracy.

I used LSAT RCs for practice for my 3rd GMAT attempt as I had exhausted all the available official resources and I wanted to stick to other "official sources". As LSAT is another well recognized standardized test, I went with LSAT RC sets. I agree that LSAT RCs are longer and with more questions but I used to push myself to complete the reading of the passage and answering all the questions in 6-8 minutes. This helped me immensely in not only understanding longer and denser passages but also made me realize the benefit of picking the battles in GMAT. You have to be smart about how you approach the questions in GMAT. I made sure that all LSAT practice was done under timed conditions. I maintained an accuracy of 70-80% under timed conditions and later when I redid the RC passages from question pack 1, I never felt rushed. You will not find many LSAT passages with less than 5-6 questions per passage though. So either you can time yourself for 4 questions per passage or adopt what I did. You must evaluate different methods and only use the one that suits your needs. At the end of the day you will only be able to get to the correct answers confidently and accurately if

1. You understand the passage
2. You can use POE to arrive to the correct answer.

I am not saying that V34 to V44 jump in my scores was entirely due to LSAT passages but I for sure was able to do better time management in the 3rd attempt.

Hope this helps.

Hi,

Thanks a lot for responding to my post and providing valuable advice. Currently I am spending about 13-15 minutes on a LSAT passage with 6-8 questions. I am spending about 4 mins (sometimes even more) to read a 55-65 lines passage and then about 1 -1:15 min per question. My accuracy for these passages fluctuates (sometimes I get all right) and I've noticed that when I don't understand the passage well enough, I tend to get a lot of questions wrong. But usually I get about 5 -6 out of 8 right. The problem comes when I solve the harder LSAT passages (see attached file for example). I couldn't understand the passage fully even after reading it twice. I don't know if it's just me or this is actually a hard LSAT passage. I totally understand that solving LSAT passages are really helpful in long term and helps with overall time management. I just don't know how to improve or what exactly is am I doing wrong. Here is my approach:

1) Paraphrase after reading every paragraph.
2) Map the entire passage
3) Check author's tone and opinion
4) Check contrast words
5) For specific details or inference questions, go to the passage after before reading the answer choices.
6) Use POE and ignore answer choices with strong words (like most)

Any suggestions on the overall approach? Also, did you use to solve a 6-8 question LSAT passage in under 8 minutes? How much time did you spend just reading the passage?

Thanks again for your response. I appreciate your help.

YT770

PS - My target score is 750+

Your approach is fine for tackling RCs. In order to achieve 750 or more, you need to be not only good but make sure to manage your time properly. Yes, I used to complete the entire passage with 7-8 questions in 8 minutes. I used to make a good mental map of the passage , leaving specific details out as you will have to come back to refer to those anyways. But for main point, tone, author's stance etc I would not go back to the passage. For longer passages with questions, I used to push myself to answer all questions in 8 minutes. In LSAT you only get (approx.)1 minute and 25 seconds (sometimes including the passage as well) to answer such questions. So, the questions would have been created in a manner so as to let most if not all to answer it within that time frame.

As for the RC you have posted, this is not the correct thread to discuss it. Post it in the RC forum (after searching whether this passage has already been discussed before) gmat-reading-comprehension-rc-137/

Generally speaking, passages such as this one, are difficult due to sheer amount of terminologies and jargon and things to remember. One way to handle such passages is to NOT remember any of the details. just make a mental note of how the connections are made between different entities while leaving the information needed to answer the detail questions to be found from the passage and not from memory.

Hope this helps.

Thank you so much for your help! I will practice the LSAT passages by using the above strategy. Apologies for posting the RC in the wrong forum.

Thanks again and good luck with your applications!

awesome expanation of tackling RC strategies!I will try to inculcate such practice with immediate effect.

its definitely worthsharing strategies ...thanks!