RC time management

Thanks for your insightful suggestions, guys. Been following your work here on GMATClub and elsewhere on YouTube etc; appreciate it deeply

avigutman I started practising LSAT passages because a lot of high scorers seem to be big fans of them. Watching the videos right now! Thanks again.


KarishmaB Before beginning the prep, I was confident that RC would be a breeze but GMAT had other plans. I am trying to get my reading time down. Thanks!

GMAT passages are shorter than LSAT passages: short GMAT passages are about half as long, long GMAT passages may be roughly two-thirds the length. Short GMAT passages usually come with three questions and long ones with four.

Do you take 6-7 minutes to read GMAT passages? I think you can probably read any GMAT passage in 3 to 5 minutes.

Stats for RC could be something like this:
Short passage, 3 questions: 3 minutes or less for reading, one minute or less for each question
Long passages, 4 questions: 5 minutes or less for reading, 1 minute or less for each question.

The more you practice, the faster you will be able to read the passages and do the questions. Basically, I see no reason why the extra reading time should be a problem.

Whether to use LSAT questions for practice:
This is a topic on which different experts have different views. And all have good reasons to support their views

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For some tips on how to speed up in RC and also in GMAT verbal in general, see this post.

How to Get Faster at GMAT Verbal

I figured that managing time on the Verbal section is problematic for me, and RC is the biggest drag in the overall scheme of time management on the entire section.

Time markers to keep yourself on track, a reading methodology that promotes absorption, and knowing how INFERENCE questions work on the GMAT can be helpful. I teach a reading a methodology to students but there are probably multiple out there to easily choose from. Find one that "clicks" for you. Some Verbal tips on the GMAT Knight blog.

Hi MKaizer123

There is one fundamental mistake that most students do, that is trying to read the passage fast. The trick to ace RC is not to understand WHAT is written, but to understand WHY it is written. Let me take you through the 3 step process that helped me master RC.

STEP 1: INVOLVED READING

While reading the passage, focus on the role played by each sentence and understand what purpose does it serve? Simple questions that you can ask could be - does it support an argument, weaken it, oppose a viewpoint, provide more data, or bring in a different perspective and so on. The idea is to understand the transition in thoughts and which side is the author taking.

STEP 2: EVOLVED READING

Once you’ve understood the intent of each line, you can then choose to ignore the detail and focus on summarising the paragraphs in a line. Then, focus on the intent of each para and think about the structure of the passage. I even believe in identifying (at a high level) what is the main point of the passage even if there is no main point question attached. It helps in having more confidence in marking Inference or Organization based questions.

STEP 3: ANSWER CHOICE ELIMINATION

If the above two steps are done properly, this step is the easiest. All you need to do is, look at each question one-by-one and eliminate the answer choices from your evolved understanding of the passage. Involved and Evolved Reading will help you eliminate 4 choices in most of the questions. In few tough ones, you might be confused between 2 choices, but those can be easily eliminated by focusing on the following aspects:

1.Scope of the choice – shouldn’t be out of scope or too limited in scope
2.Minute details – shouldn’t have half-truths and rest distortion
3. Confusing words – shouldn’t have words which seem similar but are different.
4. Opposite – is opposite of what you should be looking for

These 3 steps are simple and you need to ensure that you practice using this method and perfect it to get high accuracy.

IT’S TIME CONSUMING – ISN’T IT?

Ok, this is one argument, which I hear several times and the only thing that I’ve to say is “Yes it is time-consuming but not more than what GMAT provides you with”. Even if you spend 3-4 mins in Step 1, 30 secs on Step 2 and 1 min each on answering the 4 questions, you still complete 4 questions in 8-9 mins, which to me is good enough. Now, the tricky thing is to complete Step 1 in 3-4 mins, you should keep the time pressure out of your mind and give the passage its due time. Initially you might spend even 8-9 mins doing Step 1 alone, but that’s ok. That’s how we human beings learn a new skill. Moreover, you’re not writing GMAT tomorrow, so spend time today and keep following the method. Once you solve around 40 passages using this approach, you will find time per passage optimizing.

You can go through the links below to understand the process in a better way:



Hope this helped and feel free to contact if you have any further queries.

Thanks everyone. Lot of important takeaways

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