Tips for boosting the CR, RC and DS part in the GMAT

Question

Hi All,

Looking for the guidance and strategy to boost the score of RC and DS part. Please share your inputs and strategy to boost. Planning to give gmat in 2 month.

MartyMurray · Answer

For DS, practicing untimed and learning to "lock in" your reasoning for your answer is key. I often recommend to people working with me to do DS streaks method practice to develop skill in getting DS questions correct consistently.

How to Ace the GMAT Using the Streaks Method

Regarding CR and RC, the following post and videos cover in detail how to prepare for both and how to approach answering the questions to get them correct consistently.

How to Prepare for GMAT Verbal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOKU2kHN4uw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LyM5qI4SRA

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi deepuvj,

I see you joined GMAT club in 2018. Have you already taken the GMAT? Also, given that you've almost certainly prepped quite a bit, it'd be useful to hear what you think is holding you back in RC/DS.

Edit: CR/RC/DS (from the title of the thread)

EducationAisle · Answer

For CR, our Critical Reasoning book  Critical Reasoning Nirvana  is perhaps the  only  book that offers a score improvement  guarantee .
 
After reading the book  twice  (yes! it's an  academic  book, and so must be read twice in all seriousness, to  reinforce  the concepts), you will start looking forward to solving CR questions! 
 
If you want to  sample  a chapter before deciding to go ahead with our book, please DM me your mail-id (along with the chapter that you would like to sample) and we will be happy to send that chapter to you by mail.
 
p.s. The book is available on  Amazon  and  Flipkart .

Edskore · Answer

Two months is actually a solid runway for CR and DS specifically. Here's what worked for me when I was stuck in the 600s on those two sections.

For CR, the shift that made the biggest difference was stopping treating every question the same way. Assumption questions and Weaken questions look similar on the surface but require different thinking. On Assumption, I started asking "what does the argument silently depend on being true?" before reading the answer choices. On Weaken, I was looking for something that breaks the connection between the evidence and the conclusion. Mixing up these two approaches late in prep was where I kept dropping points.

Practically: I did sets of 10 CR questions, but grouped by type, not randomly. Doing 10 Strengthen questions in a row helped me feel the pattern in my bones. Random practice feels like prep but it can hide the fact that you're actually weak on a specific type.

For Data Sufficiency, the single best thing I did was stop picking answer choices and start writing out my analysis on paper first. Something like: "S1 alone -- what do I actually know? What's still unknown?" Then S2. Then both. I was so much faster once I stopped confusing "I feel like I have enough info" with "I can prove a unique answer." Those are very different things.

One more thing -- if DS is your pain point, go back and look at what type of DS mistakes you're making. Are you picking D when it should be C? Are you picking E when one statement was actually sufficient? Those patterns point to different fixes and you don't want to waste 2 months solving the wrong problem.

What's your current score range on CR and DS if you know?

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Tips for boosting the CR, RC and DS part in the GMAT

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