SEP 9: Pak Flood Relief Fundraiser: GMAT Ninja Solves YOUR GMAT Ques

Great initiative! GMATNinja comes forward when humanitarian assistance is required. You are not only a superb instructor but also a wonderful human being. You deserve love and respect!

Can't agree more! Post your GMAT questions / queries if any here.

I must attend the session and denote for Pakistan per my means. Thanks to gmat club and all the other organizer associated with the event.

Also, we have been collecting $$$ for the Pakistan Relief over the past few days and are at $675 so far!

if anyone would like to support this initiative, you can learn about it and how to donate here: https://gmatclub.com/forum/donate-and-h ... 97994.html

Thank you,
BB
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My question is on the usage of Past perfect in sentences where we have time indicators such as - "before, after"
In some questions, "had" is dropped and in others, it is not.
DO shed some light here please-

Q1] The Federal Reserve announcement said </underline>that growth had accelerated after slowing in the second quarter and that the policy makers remain concerned about the prospects of inflation, even though there are few</underline> signs of higher energy prices driving up the cost of other goods so far.

• that growth had accelerated after slowing in the second quarter and that the policy makers remain concerned about the prospects of inflation, even though there are few
• growth had accelerated after slowing in the second quarter and that the policy makers remain concerned about the prospects of inflation, even though there are few
• that growth had accelerated after slowing in the second quarter and the policy makers remain concerned about the prospects of inflation, even though there are little
• growth had accelerated after slowing in the second quarter and the policy makers remain concerned about the prospects of inflation, even though there are little
• that growth accelerated after slowing in the second quarter and that the policy makers remain concerned about the prospects of inflation, even though there are few

Here I eliminated options with "had" but OA: A

There are other questions where they eliminate "had'' the reason is that time markers are present.

How to decide?

My question is in regards to GMAT prep for my 3rd attempt.

My last score was 640 ( Q48V28)
but my Official Mocks gave me 660, 700 and 690.

My ESR shows 40th percentile in CR and RC and 76th percentile in SC.
Quant dipped in Arithmetic, Counting, and No. System.
I have added screenshots of my ESR for reference.

I would like to know how to go about chasing 730(Q50V40) in my next attempt, section-wise.
I will be applying in Round 2 this year.

Hi GMATNinja,

I have been struggling to understand how the pronoun 'she' refers to the noun in an apostrophe (Answer choice 'D'). It would be really helpful if you could explain this question. This is a part of the OG question bank.

Thanks
Pratik Vaibhav

Although she was considered among her contemporaries to be the better poet than her husband, later Elizabeth Barrett Browning was overshadowed by his success.


(A) Although she was considered among her contemporaries to be the better poet than her husband, later Elizabeth Barrett Browning was overshadowed by his success.

(B) Although Elizabeth Barrett Browning was considered among her contemporaries as a better poet than her husband, she was later overshadowed by his success.

(C) Later overshadowed by the success of her husband, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry had been considered among her contemporaries to be better than that of her husband.

(D) Although Elizabeth Barrett Browning's success was later overshadowed by that of her husband, among her contemporaries she was considered the better poet.

(E) Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry was considered among her contemporaries as better than her husband, but her success was later overshadowed by his.

Thank you NCC and ptkvaibhav for sending your questions but you haven't mentioned source of the question in your posts. Are these official questions? Can you both please mention the question source in your posts? Thanks!

Thank you - we are 24 hours away from the event!
I will see you tomorrow! 👍
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Thank you! See you in the session tomorrow.

Defense attorneys have occasionally argued that their clients’ misconduct stemmed from a reaction to something ingested, but in attributing criminal or delinquent behavior to some food allergy, the perpetrators are in effect told that they are not responsible for their actions.


(A) in attributing criminal or delinquent behavior to some food allergy

(B) if criminal or delinquent behavior is attributed to an allergy to some food

(C) in attributing behavior that is criminal or delinquent to an allergy to some food

(D) if some food allergy is attributed as the cause of criminal or delinquent behavior

(E) in attributing a food allergy as the cause of criminal or delinquent behavior

Correct Answer: B

I was wondering if it is possible to eliminate wrong answer choice D without using idioms?

Source: Official Guide (Tagged on GMAT Club)

Hi Charles,

My question is with regards to GMAT prep for my 5th and final attempt.

My 3rd attempt's score was 720( Q48 V40 )

My 4th attempt's score was 690 ( Q49 V34)

I am gunning for a 750+ score in a month and a half's time.

Please tell me the necessary steps.

I have attached the ESRs.

Hello Everyone!

Just for your information: This session is especially being conducted to collect money to help flood victims in Pakistan. The questions will be prioritized or sorted by the amount donated against them. Any member who donated a bigger amount will get his question answered on priority and so on. All those who posted their questions but haven't deposited any donations will get their questions answered only if we have not enough questions to answer anymore. Hence, it is recommended to everyone donate any sum of money and priortize their questions.

We will also provide a super chat option to everyone during the session on youtube, anyone can donate any sum of money and can get their questions directly go to GMATninja and get anwer to the same.

Regards

GMAT Official Verbal Review 2019 Question:

Hardin argued that grazing land held in common (that is, open to any user) would always be used less carefully than private grazing land. Each rancher would be tempted to overuse common land because the benefits would accrue to the individuals, while the costs of reduced land quality that results from overuse would be spread among all users. But a study comparing 217 million acres of common grazing land with 433 million acres of private grazing land showed that the common land was in better condition.

The answer to which of the following questions would be most useful in evaluating the significance, in relation to Hardin's claim, of the study described above？


(A) Did any of the ranchers whose land was studied use both common and private land?

(B) Did the ranchers whose land was studied tend to prefer using common land over using private land for grazing?

(C) Was the private land that was studied of comparable quality to the common land before either was used for grazing?

(D) Were the users of the common land that was studied at least as prosperous as the users of the private land?

(E) Were there any owners of herds who used only common land, and no private land, for grazing?

I have a doubt:
Option B - doesn't it go against the facts of the argument?

Hello,
Please share your response on -
Doubts in an RC Q1, Q2, and Q4.

https://gmatclub.com/forum/because-we-h ... l#p2184046

Also, I don't agree with the mapping they have given for the 2nd Para. How is consciousness relevant here?

Thank you.

Thank you so much for the wonderful donation, DrVanNostrand! And sorry that we didn't get to your ESR in the livestream. The lovely behind-the-scenes crew made a point of mentioning your post to me afterwards, so here's a long-winded analysis.

A few thoughts, not necessarily in any particular order:

• It's interesting that you're consistently clobbering IR. That's obviously not a definitive sign that you can get to a 750+, but it makes me think that when you're at your very best, you're perfectly capable of reading with precision, picking your battles wisely, and executing without making silly mistakes. I might be wrong here, but my bet is that you're relatively calm and relaxed on IR, and that might not be the case on quant and (especially) verbal.
• On the verbal section of your 1st exam in July (720/48Q/40V), I think you got a little bit lucky. Your timing was a mess on both sections. In the 4th quarter of the verbal section, you spent just 28 seconds per question... and somehow got 7 out of the final 8 questions right. That's some wonderful good fortune. Also, we need to talk about your speed in verbal -- I'll get to that below.
• On the quant section of the July exam, you had very similar timing issues: 51 seconds, on average, for your final 7 questions. It cost you a bit: you missed 4 of those final 7. More importantly: is your allocation of time on quant really efficient? I doubt it. You spent nearly 3 minutes per question on average in the first chunk of the test, and you were forced to speed up as time went on. You probably would have been better off letting a few of the harder ones go early, so that you didn't melt down quite as badly towards the end. For more on quant time management, check out this video.
• On your 2nd exam in August (690/49Q/34V), the demons we see in your July exam reared their heads again, with somewhat different effects this time. On both quant and verbal, you spent an eternity on the first chunk of questions, and then you were forced to speed up later. This time, you got away with it on quant -- an average of 64 seconds for the last 7 questions, and you only missed two of them. That's somewhat lucky. Similar deal on verbal: you had 78 seconds per question for the last 8 questions, and somehow only missed two again. You mostly got away with it, but the timing issues are certainly going to drive a ton of variability in your scores from day to day. Unless you make changes to your process (and psychology -- more on that in a moment, too!), I wouldn't be surprised if your scores look totally different on the next test, just because the timing issues will lead to quite a bit of erraticness in your results.
• And now here's the biggest thing on that August test: you were a mess at the beginning of both the quant and verbal sections. Yeah, you only missed one question out of the first 7 on quant, but it was a very easy one, and you averaged more than 3 minutes per question. That can't happen -- careless errors will keep you from your ceiling, and so will stubbornness. Verbal was worse: somewhat slow in that first quarter of the section (2:34 per question), but also terrifyingly inaccurate. Something was happening to you in the beginning of both sections, but especially verbal. You're the only one who knows for sure, but my bet is that you were nervous, and you were struggling to focus. You may or may not have felt consciously jittery, but your brain wasn't working in its normal ways -- you were probably reading sloppily, or rereading things, or rushing at times and paralyzed at other times. As always, I could be very wrong here, but this shows all of the classic signs of test-day nerves in the August exam.
• One last elephant in the room: is efficiency a big underlying problem on verbal? I can't quite be sure. It's very possible that the timing issues are driven primarily by feeling a bit overwhelmed or paralyzed at times on test day. But it's also very possible that you need to get more efficient at verbal. If that's the case, there's no easy solution -- all of the BS I teach in all of my verbal videos is geared towards maximizing your efficiency, and it can be a slow, hard process to get better. But again, it's not clear to me whether the problem is your approach to verbal, your fundamental reading speed, or test-day nerves. Or some combination of those things.
• Your ESRs do seem to be saying that you're weaker on CR than the other verbal question types. Maybe there's a real issue there, and it would be good for you to put some serious work into improving your process on CR. But I'll repeat the same caveat as in today's livestream: these question-level percentile scores are based on only about 10 questions each for CR, RC, and SC, so the sample sizes are kinda small. And since some of your errors seem to be driven by time pressure and/or nerves, they might be somewhat random at times. It might be worth doing a few LSAT sections if you haven't already -- and if you perform better on RC than CR, it's probably a good sign that you need to work on your process for CR.

Did all of that make you want to throw your computer out the window?

One final thought: my instincts are telling me that your talent level is probably fine. We have a 690 and a 720, filled with what appear to be "non-academic" issues: bad time management, probably some nerves or paralysis of some kind... and perfect IR scores. That combination makes me think that a 720 isn't your ceiling on this test. Please don't prove me wrong on that last bit.

I hope that helps a bit! And seriously, thank you so much for your generosity with our Pakistani friends. It is very, very much appreciated.
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Hi Charles,

Thanks dearly for such an eye opening analysis.

I have few questions:

1) While I am practicing CR from GMAT Club, I have a accuracy of around 50-60% on questions which have 75%+ difficulty level but more than 85% accuracy on all the questions below that level.

Should I focus on improving my accuracy on 75%+ difficulty level questions?

2) Combinatorics and Probability are hard nuts to crack and I struggle with these topics. Should I focus on medium level questions from those topics and leave the hard ones?

3) In my August attempt, what I found strange was that I was not able to properly understand the first two SC questions and it took time to let go.I found those question really diffecult. I didn't face the same scenario in my July attempt and I was really confident about my accuracy even in the last quartile of questions.

Where am I going wrong here?

I hope you can find time to answer my questions.

Looking forward to your suggestions.

P.S. I had an eye problem that I identified later, probably that caused the lack of focus on the August exam.It could have hindered my ability to focus on the verbal section especially starting from the middle of the verbal section.

Posted from my mobile device

Just to pitch in without being asked, as I usually do, I would always highly recommend to focus on the easier and medium level questions and eliminating mistakes there. Here is why:

1. You have to pass a lot of medium and easy questions to get to the hard ones so while you’re preparing to fight the giants, you may never see them

2. The penalty for missing a hard question is fairly negligible compared to that missing an easy or a medium level question so the ROI is further skewed in favor of mastering medium and easy.

3. Lately, many people have reported and observed getting a large number of medium in the easy questions on the test I’m getting surprisingly low scores while missing four questions in the entire section. This led me to speculate and believe that the test they took contained fewer hard questions. This is likely because it’s more expensive and harder to create hard questions. you also have to remember that the exam bank pool of questions changes every two weeks so you can only imagine the pressure to keep creating new hard questions on the regular basis

4. While you’re practicing medium and easy questions, you are also practicing hard ones. Not exactly since as you mentioned probability of combinations doesn’t get solved by knowing geometry but solving an easy probability question does help you when dealing with the hardet one.

5. Finally, you can only hold so many things in your mind. I tend to over emphasize this but it’s true. While you can cram a hard probability concept in, you will probably do that at a cost of some thing else. Such as forgetting fractions or some basic grammar rule. As a result, it is a significantly better investment of time to focus on the medium and easy questions, even if you’re looking for a high score.

As proof, I can share my experience though it is dated, it applies. Because the older editions of the books I used did not have probability and combinations, I did not cover those topics at all. So when I showed up on my test and got a probability question, I spent about four minutes trying to solve it. That’s a lot of time I wasted. I guessed it and I guessed it wrong. I got Q49 at the end. I don’t recommend this and I suggest that you know how to solve a basic probability question and how the solution supposed to be worked out but I completely ignored this topic and it’s clearly worked out. Again, I have made a lot of mistakes that I don’t recommend you repeat because there is an element of luck but it illustrates the combination of stupidity and good luck can still produce a decent result and if you remove both stupidity and luck then in the worst case scenario you still end up with a decent result.

Posted from my mobile device
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Thank you everyone for participating!
We have collected $81.81 via super chats based on the YouTube stats and we had $20 additional contributed so $100.81 collected today! 💖👍
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