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GMATNinja
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GMAT 2: 800 Q51 V51
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Start Here For CR: GMAT Ninja's Critical Reasoning Resource Collection 11 Mar 2021, 20:57
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Start Here for CR:


GMAT Ninja's Critical Reasoning Resource Collection


So you're on the world's biggest and best GMAT website, and you're probably trying to figure out how to get better at critical reasoning. With the mountains and mountains of stuff on this website, where should you start with CR?

Well, how about here? This is our attempt to curate the literally millions(!) of words we've jammed into posts, articles, full explanations, and videos in our years as the GMAT Club verbal experts.

Part 1 of this post includes just the most basic starting points:

  • General advice for improving your CR performance
  • Where to find practice questions and exams
  • Where to find a large pile of full CR explanations
  • Resources for improving your underlying reading skills

Part 2 features CR resources by question type, including articles, videos, and complete explanations of a select group of our favorite CR questions. We're not huge fans of hyper-focusing on individual CR question types -- see part 2 below for a rant on that issue -- but if you want to see some examples of how to think through certain CR questions, we'll point you to some of our favorite examples for each of these types:

  • Assumptions
  • Strengthen & Weaken
  • Complete the Argument & Fill-in-the-Blank
  • Resolve the Paradox
  • Boldface Questions
  • Evaluate the Argument
  • EXCEPT Questions
  • Miscellaneous

Enjoy, and if there's anything you think we're missing, feel free to add a comment in the thread below.


Part 1: General GMAT CR Advice & Resources


Critical Reasoning: The Basics


Articles & Forum Posts

Videos


CR Questions & Practice Exam Resources


Articles


Excessive Quantities of Full CR Explanations, Organized by Question Source




How to Become Better at Reading in General for the GMAT


This isn't what anybody wants to hear, but most GMAT CR errors are caused by an inability to catch the EXACT meaning of the passage, question stem, or answer choices -- not from any logical errors, or failure to study any particular question type. So if you're struggling consistently on CR -- and especially if you're struggling at least as much on RC -- then you might want to spend some time improving your overall reading skills.

Here are two articles that can help you get you started with improving your reading ability:



Part 2: GMAT CR Resources by Question Type


Apologies if you already read this above, but just in case you didn't: most GMAT CR errors are caused by an inability to catch the EXACT meaning of the passage, question stem, or answer choices -- not from any logical errors, or a failure to study any particular question type.

When we tutor our GMAT students, we never give long lectures about the logic behind assumption questions, or about ways to diagram paradox questions. Once our students have mastered a basic process for approaching CR questions (described in our beginner's guide to CR), we rarely see imbalanced results based on question types -- and when we do, it's usually caused by a relatively basic misunderstanding that can be remedied quickly and easily.

That's a long-winded way of saying that we don't recommend obsessively categorizing GMAT CR questions, and we don't even recommend focusing your studying around particular question types. But if you notice that you repeatedly miss certain types of questions, here are some resources that might get you back on track.

Assumption Questions


Videos

Negation Technique
Honestly, we're not fans of the negation technique. Sure, it's logically sound, but only if you actually negate the right thing. Figuring out the "perfect" negation is often more trouble than it's worth. This post and this post discuss the limitations of applying this technique in the context of this question.

And if you'd like to see how we approach assumption questions without using the negation technique...

Full Written Explanations


Strengthen/Weaken Questions


Videos

Full Written Explanations


Complete the Argument & Fill-in-the-Blank


Videos

Full Written Explanations


Resolve the Paradox


Full Written Explanations


Boldface Questions


Videos

Full Written Explanations


Evaluate the Argument


Video Examples

Example Questions


EXCEPT Questions


There's nothing particularly special or different about "except questions." This might sound silly, but the main thing to bear in mind when tackling these questions is to be completely clear about why you're crossing out an answer choice when working through the process of elimination. Otherwise, you'll risk getting twisted around, and crossing out the correct answer by accident. Sadly, that happens to test-takers all the (bleeping) time.

Full Written Explanations


Miscellaneous


Somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% of GMAT CR questions don't fit neatly into categories above, and here are full explanations of some of our favorite CR oddballs:

Full Written Explanations
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Start Here For CR: GMAT Ninja's Critical Reasoning Resource Collection 28 Sep 2021, 14:01
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Hey GMATNinja!
Just had a small doubt. Your approach to CR is by far the most efficient and time-savvy.
But do you think that approaches like Pre-Thinking, Negation, etc. actually work?
I am facing a little problem using these approaches and I am able to get answers through your and Ron's approaches as well. I just see other people who are preaching these approaches like Godfather of CR and 100% correct.
Is CR really about pattern understanding or is it about such tactics like Pre-Thinking or is it like you tell- Simple and Precise Reading and just answers?
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GMATNinja
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GMAT 1: 780 Q51 V46
GMAT 2: 800 Q51 V51
GRE 1: Q170 V170
GRE 2: Q170 V170
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GMAT 2: 800 Q51 V51
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Start Here For CR: GMAT Ninja's Critical Reasoning Resource Collection 05 Nov 2021, 19:07
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KabxW
Hey GMATNinja!
Just had a small doubt. Your approach to CR is by far the most efficient and time-savvy.
But do you think that approaches like Pre-Thinking, Negation, etc. actually work?
I am facing a little problem using these approaches and I am able to get answers through your and Ron's approaches as well. I just see other people who are preaching these approaches like Godfather of CR and 100% correct.
Is CR really about pattern understanding or is it about such tactics like Pre-Thinking or is it like you tell- Simple and Precise Reading and just answers?
Show more
You're right: these approaches are often preached with religious fervor. And if you've seen our videos and articles on CR, you probably can guess what we think about them. ;)

We all wish that certain tricks or shortcuts would help students improve on CR, but unfortunately we've found that those things really don't really help most of the time. If you want to improve, we advocate a lot of hard work refining a simple, effective approach to CR questions.

You can see our specific thoughts on the negation technique here and here. As for pre-thinking, we often finds that it distracts students from simply evaluating each answer choice on the page. This can have a negative impact on both accuracy and efficiency on CR.

I hope that helps a bit!
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Start Here For CR: GMAT Ninja's Critical Reasoning Resource Collection 21 Nov 2025, 10:16
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