Study and Strategy questions relating to the GMAT.
JbhB682
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Guess on 700 level passage ?

by JbhB682 Fri Sep 25, 2020 10:02 am

Hello Stacey

I am aiming for a v39 to v40

Should I be able to do passages such as these below ?

I got this passage during the Verbal Manhattan CAT and I got all the three questions wrong during the exam with regards to this RC passage

Furthermore, when i tried re-doing this passage taking my own time (no time limits) , i actually STILL got the 3 RC questions wrong.

This indicates to me that my RC level is not good enough for these kinds of RC passages.

Should I be guessing quicker on these very tough RC questions during the exam ?

Per my understanding, it should not affect my score getting these TOUGH RC QUESTIONS wrong

Please let me know your thoughts


Link to Manhattan 700 level passage :

https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/forums/extremely-tough-rc-t16873.html#p72730
StaceyKoprince
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Location: Montreal
 

Re: Guess on 700 level passage ?

by StaceyKoprince Mon Sep 28, 2020 5:50 pm

This is one of the hardest passages on our exams, yes. And you can miss a passage like this one—all of the questions—and still get a V score in the 40 range, yes.

Basically, it's great that you earned this super-hard passage. Since the test is adaptive, you want to earn questions that are super-hard...and, in fact, too hard! And then you don't want to spend too much time or brain energy getting them wrong. :)

So the question now is how to recognize sooner that this passage is too much and you should guess and move on. This might be true for some or even all of the questions—it just depends on the passage.

If there are parts of the passage that you do understand, go ahead and read those parts and answer any questions that cover that material. But for the parts that you don't get...move on.

I told my class the other day that, when I get to a part of a passage that's super hard and I don't understand, I don't slow down and read more carefully. Instead, I actually speed up and just skip over the part I don't get. If I get a question about that part, I then have a choice to make. Sometimes, it's the case that, once I've read the rest of the passage, I've learned enough information to help me understand the part that I didn't get at first. So if I feel more comfortable with the rest of it and get a question about the part that I didn't like, I may go back and read it at that point to try to answer the question.

But if I only feel ok about the parts that I did understand, I bail on the questions that ask about the parts that I didn't. And if I couldn't get the passage at all / overall, I would guess on them all.
Stacey Koprince
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Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep