Beat The GMAT!

It was an absolutely gorgeous summer day today. Not a cloud in the sky, temperatures in the high 70s (translation: high 20s for all you international people)--it was one of those days where you want to just say 'screw it' and run around in the sun.

Fortunately, I was able to beat down these natural urges and do some good studying. I began the afternoon with my usual Delta Course, RC, DS, and SC problems. After that I studied the critical reading chapter of the Princeton Review Verbal Workbook, which I found in pdf form somewhere on TestMagic Forum a long time ago. It was a good chapter, but pretty much identical to the critical reading chapter in Princeton Review Cracking the GMAT. The material was all review for me, but helpful in getting me into the CR mentality.

I was quite pleased today to score a 95% hit rate on my set of 40 Official Guide Critical Reasoning problems. Here's how I attack a typical Critical Reasoning question:

1. Read the question prompt and WRITE DOWN the question type (weaken, assumption, etc.)
2. Read the CR passage actively, noting the location of the conclusion and premises.
3. Look at answer choices and immediately eliminate choices that are out of scope, moving top to bottom. Remember, the CR passage provides a limited set of information. There tends to be a lot of answer choices with out-of-scope information.
4. Review answer choices that are left and pick the one that best answers the question.

I have a pretty simple approach but it seems effective. The only thing that is really giving me problems with regard to critical reading is stamina. I tend to take longer in answering these questions, and reading passage after passage actively is very tiring. But it's all getting better with practice.

Hope I stay productive this week...

SUMMARY OF DAY 66 WORK:
1. Reviewed 10 errors from past Delta Course problem sets.
2. Official Guide Reading Comprehension passage, #25-30, pages 328-329.
3. Official Guide Data Sufficiency problems, #1-10, pages 237-238.
4. Official Guide Sentence Correction problems, #11-20, pages 654-656.
5. Princeton Review Verbal Workbook, Arguments Chapter, pages 49-85.
6. Official Guide Critical Reading Set, #131-170, pages 532-543.

RECAP OF DAY 66 INSIGHTS:
1. Practice building your stamina with critical reasoning. It's a lot of reading you have to do, so get used to it now.

Labels: Critical Reasoning, GMAT Verbal

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25, 2005 at 11:59 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.