Veritas prep GMAT advanced verbal strategy

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Advanced

Verbal Strategy

Markus MobergChad Troutwine

Neil MoakleyDavid NewlandAshley Newman-OwensJodi Brandon

Nick Mason

Tom AhnDennis Anderson

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Printed in the U.S.A.

Third Edition, Copyright © 2013 by Veritas Prep, LLC.

GMAT® is a registered trademark of the Graduate

Management Admissions Council, which is not affiliated with this book.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of Veritas Prep, LLC.

Finally and most importantly, this book is dedicated to our thousands of students, who have taught us more about teaching and learning than they will ever know And to you, the reader, thank you for adding yourself to that group.

Personal Dedications

Veritas Prep is a community of educators, students, and support staff, and these books would not be possible without our cast of thousands We thank you all, but would like to specifically acknowledge the following people for their inspiration:

Bogdan Andriychenko (GMAT Club), Clay Christensen (Harvard Business School), Tom Cotner (Plymouth-Salem High School), David Cromwell (Yale School of Management), Henry Grubb (Fort Osage High School), Dana Jinaru (Beat the GMAT), Steven Levitt (University of Chicago), Walter Lewin (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Lawrence Rudner (Graduate Management Admissions Council), Jeff Stanzler (University of Michigan), and Robert Weber (Kellogg School of Management)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREVIEW 7

How This Book Is Structured 8

LESSON 13

Introduction to Advanced Verbal .13

Advanced Verbal and the Veritas Prep Pyramid 14

SECTION 1: ADVANCED CRITICAL REASONINg 15

Best Completes the Passage 15

Clever Wordplay 18

Statistics 22

Mental Inertia 29

Advanced Critical Reasoning Summary 36

SECTION 2: ADVANCED SENTENCE CORRECTION 37

Misdirection: Hiding the Correct Answer 38

Misdirection: Selling the Incorrect Answer 47

The Whole Sentence Matters 53

Advanced Sentence Correction Summary 57

SECTION 3: ADVANCED READINg COmPREhENSION 58

Advanced Reading Comprehension Summary 70

hOmEWORK 73

ANSWER KEy 111

REMEMBERING Skillbuilder

In order to test higher-level thinking skills, testmakers must have some underlying content from which to create problems On the GMAT, this content is primarily:

• Math curriculum through the early high school level, and

• Basic grammar skills through the elementary school level

To succeed on the GMAT you must have a thorough mastery of this content, but many students already have a relatively strong command of this material For each content area, we have identified all core skills that simply require refreshing and/or memorizing and have put them in

our Skillbuilder section By doing this:

1 Students who need to thoroughly review or relearn these core skills can do so at their own pace, and

APPLYING Skills Meet Strategy

What makes the GMAT difficult is not so much the underlying skills and concepts, but rather the way those skills and concepts are tested On the GMAT, what you know is only as valuable as what you can do with that knowledge The Veritas Prep curriculum emphasizes learning through challenging problems so that you can:

1 Learn how to combine skills and strategies to effectively solve any GMAT problem,

2 Most effectively utilize the classroom time you spend with a true GMAT expert, and

3 Stay focused and engaged, even after a long day in the office.

CREATING Think Like the Testmaker

Creating is the top of the pyramid in Bloom’s Taxonomy When you have completely mastered the GMAT, you are able to Think Like the Testmaker You are on top of the pyramid looking down! You don’t just have good content knowledge and lots of practice with GMAT problems; you understand how a problem has been made, what makes it hard, and how to break it down When you Think Like the Testmaker you can:

1 Quickly recognize what the problem is actually asking,

2 Discover hidden information and manipulate it to make it useful,

3 Recognize and see through trap answers, and

4 Create your own plan of attack for any problem.

As you learned in the Foundations of GMAT Logic lesson, the educational philosophy at

Veritas Prep is based on the multi-tiered Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives,

which classifies different orders of thinking in terms of understanding and complexity

To achieve a high score on the GMAT, it is essential that you understand the test from

the top of the pyramid On the pages that follow, you will learn specifically how to

achieve that goal and how this lesson in particular relates to the Veritas Prep Pyramid

how This Book Is Structured

Our Curriculum Is Designed to Maximize Your Time

The Veritas Prep Teaching Philosophy: Learning by Doing

Business schools have long featured the Case Method of education, providing students with real-world problems to solve by applying the frameworks they have studied The

Veritas Prep Learning by Doing method is similar In class, you will spend your time

applying skills and concepts to challenging GMAT problems, at the same time reviewing and better understanding core skills while focusing your attention on application and strategy The Case Method in business school maximizes student engagement and develops higher-order thinking skills, because students must apply and create, not just

remember Similarly, the Learning by Doing philosophy maximizes the value of your

study time, forcing you to engage with difficult questions and develop pyramid reasoning ability

top-of-the-An important note on Learning by Doing: In business school, your goal with a

business case is not to simply master the details of a particular company’s historical situation, but rather to develop broader understanding of how to apply frameworks

to real situations In this course, you should be certain to reflect on each question not simply through that narrow lens (Did you answer correctly? What key word made the difference?), but rather as an example of larger GMAT strategy (How could the exam bait you with a similar trap? How deeply do you need to understand the content to solve this genre of problem more efficiently?)

As you learned in the Foundations of GMAT Logic lesson, there are

important recurring themes that you will see in most GMAT problems:

ThINk LIkE ThE TESTMAkER

• Abstraction

• Reverse-Engineering

• Large or Awkward Numbers

• Exploiting Common Mistakes

• Selling the Wrong Answer and Hiding the Correct Answer

Focus on recurring themes, not just underlying content.

Each book in the Veritas Prep curriculum contains four distinct sections:

1 Skillbuilder We strongly suggest that you complete each Skillbuilder

lesson before class at your own pace, and return to the Skillbuilder when you

recognize a content deficiency through practice tests and GMAT homework problem sets

The Skillbuilder section will:

• Cover content that is vital to your success on the GMAT, but is best

learned at your own pace outside the classroom

• Allow you to review and/or relearn the skills, facts, formulas, and content

of the GMAT Each student will have his own set of skills that are “rusty” or even brand-new, and will find other items that come back quickly

• Vary in length significantly for each book, based on the number of

underlying concepts (For instance, the Advanced Verbal lesson does

not have a Skillbuilder because you are already building on the concepts

introduced in three previous lessons.)

2 Lesson The lessons are designed to provide students with maximum value

added from an instructor by:

• Doing in-class problems together (Learning by Doing), and

• Analyzing those problems for the recurring takeaways

With each problem, there will be a detailed explanation that will help you understand how the problem is testing a particular concept or series of concepts, what makes the problem hard, and what underlying skills are required to solve it

When relevant, there will be particular boxes for Think Like the Testmaker, Skills Meet Strategy, and Skillbuilder when you should be focused on

particular aspects of how the question is made or how the underlying content is being tested

work below the problem, and you should not circle the answer on the

• Obscure topics that arise infrequently.

• More advanced topics that are not common on the GMAT but do get

tested

While these uncommon content areas do not warrant in-class time, we

believe you should have some exposure to these topics before taking the

GMAT Therefore you should complete these sections before moving to

the homework problems As with the Skillbuilders, the length of these will

vary depending on their importance

4 homework Problems In many ways, the homework problems are the most

important part of each book After refreshing core content in the Skillbuilder

and then applying that knowledge in the lesson, you must reinforce your

understanding with more problems

Each question is accompanied by a detailed explanation in your online

student account, as well as a quick-reference answer key on the last page

A majority of questions are above the 50th percentile in difficulty, and they

are arranged in approximate order of difficulty (easiest to most difficult) By

completing all of the homework problems, you will learn all of the different

iterations of how concepts and skills are tested on the GMAT

Homework problems are designed to be challenging, so do not despair if

you are answering questions incorrectly as you practice! Your goal should

be to learn from every mistake Students can miss a significant percentage of

questions in each book and still score extremely high on the GMAT, provided

that they learn from each problem Embrace the challenge of hard problems

and the notion that every mistake you make in practice is one that you will

know to avoid on the GMAT when every question counts

Introduction to Advanced Verbal

At this point in the verbal curriculum, you have learned the themes and question types

that you will see on the GMAT, as well as strategies to attack them So what will you

learn in this Advanced Verbal book?

There exists a point, somewhere around the 75th or 80th percentile, at which the

population of test-takers has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they understand

the material Until this point, you can succeed simply by knowing more things or

understanding concepts better than other test-takers Beyond that, strategy is the name

of the game: It’s much more about what you can do with that knowledge and strategy

The further you go above the 75 th percentile, the harder it becomes for the gmAT

to differentiate between who “gets it” and who “really, really gets it ” This book

is about how they do that The authors of the GMAT know your tricks and shortcuts

better than you do; they know which strategies students lean on and perhaps overuse

On the upper-difficulty problems, they often use your crutches against you; the test

“zigs” when your hours of study and repetition make you certain that it will “zag.”

more than anything, this book is designed to give you a look inside the

testmaker’s playbook—to show you how the authors of the gmAT can take

particular question types and make them incrementally more difficult and

frustrating for test-takers The skills and strategies that you have studied so far will

be instrumental in solving these problems, but to truly feel prepared for the hardest

verbal questions on the GMAT you must get “inside the GMAT authors’ studio.” You will

learn classic GMAT techniques like misdirection (beware: The idiomatic expression you

want or expect to see is not always attached to the correct answer), clever wordplay

(remember: “Some” and “not all” have very significant differences), and the authors’

keen understanding of how to use your own mental inertia against you

With this lesson, you should learn not to fear the test and its “traps,” but instead to

appreciate its subtleties If you have seen the nuances used on hard questions, you can

learn to anticipate and notice them, and you can even learn to enjoy the test’s unique

style of difficulty and embrace it as your own competitive advantage

Advanced Verbal and the Veritas Prep Pyramid

Because this lesson is about advanced applications, it has a slightly different format

from the other books First, there is no Skillbuilder, because the previous four verbal lessons have provided the foundation for this lesson Second, the goal

of this lesson is to learn how to think like the testmaker and understand how the

authors of the GMAT make verbal questions hard As a result, the takeaway pages following each question are focused almost exclusively on the broader “Think Like the Testmaker” thought process This lesson is about the top of the pyramid—

about how to recognize the tricks and traps used by testmakers to make problems

hard you will also see more specific strategy boxes when appropriate, but the usual Learning by Doing and Skillbuilder boxes are omitted, as the goal of this lesson is to provide the “top of the pyramid” perspective Also, there is no “You

Oughta Know” section, as all of the important advanced applications are discussed in the lesson The important core concepts/skills for Sentence Correction from the Veritas Prep Pyramid are given below:

“Core Skills” from Skillbuilder

• Argument Structure

• Common Logical Fallacies

• Grammar Rules by Error Type (IMPACTS)

“Skills meet Strategy” Takeaways from the Lesson Section

• Decision Points

• SWIM Categorization

• STOP Reading Techniques

• Slash and Burn

• Learning by Doing

“Think Like the Testmaker” Takeaways from the Lesson Section

• Selling the Wrong Answer

• Hiding the Correct Answer

• Misdirection

• Abstraction

SECTION 1: AdVANCEd CRITICAL REASONING

By now, you are a master of breaking down argument structure and recognizing flaws in

logic You can quickly identify SWIM question types and efficiently read paragraphs with

your role in mind So how does the GMAT make Critical Reasoning more difficult for you?

· It phrases questions so that you have to supply the question stem yourself

· It landmines questions with clever wordplay that diverts your attention from what

is important

· It preys on your natural inclination to accept statistical evidence as proof of a

conclusion that it does not quite support

· It creates questions about topics that arouse your own opinions and interests, taking

your focus away from the parameters of the question

In this section we will address all of these tactics and help you to recognize and navigate

them Let’s begin with an example of “you supply the question stem yourself”:

Best Completes the Passage

1 Which of the following best completes the passage below?

In testing for food allergies, a false positive result occurs when a person is said

to be allergic to a particular food when, in fact, he is not allergic to that food A

false negative result indicates that a person is not allergic to the food when, in

fact, he is To most accurately determine food allergies, a physician should use

the test that gives the smallest percentage of false negative results because

(A) some food allergies cause reactions severe enough to be life-threatening

(B) none of the tests for food allergies have lasting side effects

(C) in diagnosing food allergies it is important to be as thorough as

possible, since most people with one known food allergy have other

undiscovered food allergies

(D) the proportion of tests that do not provide a clear result is the same for

all tests of food allergies

(E) all tests for food allergies have the same proportion of false positive

results

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Hiding the Question Type and Using Your Mental Inertia

The previous question illustrates several important constructs for this lesson First

it introduces you to the “best completes the passage” format, in which you need to infer the question stem from the language immediately preceding the portion to be completed Here that word is “because,” which seeks evidence for a conclusion And that conclusion is “in order to most accurately determine food allergies, doctors should use the test with the smallest percentage of false negatives.” The goal in this question

is clearly to strengthen that conclusion.

With this in mind, you are now set up for another common trap that you will see later in this lesson—one in which the author of the question knows where your mind wants to go and baits you in that direction When you think of an allergy (or

really any medical diagnosis), what is your biggest fear? Probably that the doctor will miss a diagnosis and allow you to continue with a risky behavior that could negatively affect your quality of life Say, for example, that you are allergic to peanuts, but your doctor falsely says that you’re not (false negative) Your next peanut butter sandwich could be catastrophic! On the flip side, if the doctor tells you that you are allergic to peanuts when it turns out you’re not, that’s more of an inconvenience than anything It’s a bummer to not enjoy Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, but it’s not life-threatening

So, naturally, your mind wants to minimize false negatives, to err on the side of safety But what’s the conclusion? To most accurately (not most safely!) determine allergies, you should eliminate false negatives For this specific objective, false positives are just

as detrimental as false negatives; each is inaccurate So the correct answer needs to give you some reason why you are only focusing on false negatives if the goal is accuracy Answer choice E, which does not relate to safety (but neither does the conclusion), is correct, as it shows that false positives will be the same for each test, so the only way to become more accurate is to minimize false negatives

Specifics of this question aside, it is important that you are prepared for this particular

question type With increasing frequency, Critical Reasoning questions ask

“Which of the following best completes the passage below?”—a question stem with no clues as to what it intends to ask To categorize such questions, focus on the word or phrase that introduces the answers; use the introductory wording to determine the form of the answer and from that infer the type of question

SkILLS MEET STRATEGY

Don’t Hijack the Conclusion

As you hopefully remember from the Critical Reasoning lesson, the “Conclusion Is King”

on Strengthen and Weaken questions Most errors that people make on these questions

involve the conclusion You must precisely assess the wording in the conclusion and

make sure that the premise you insert is improving or weakening that exact conclusion

This problem is a perfect example of how you can gloss over a conclusion and make

it your own The problem is not about safety; it’s about accuracy! Make sure you read

every word carefully and don’t hijack the conclusion.

SkILLS MEET STRATEGY

Dealing with “Best Completes the Passage” Questions

Any time you are given a “best completes the passage” question, the categorization

will be tricky, and you should take extra time to figure out what type of question it is

To become better at categorizing “best completes the passage” questions, consult the

examples and table below for trigger language used frequently in these questions.

…Thus, the loss to the company will be quite small because (Strengthen)

… should not be used because (Weaken)

…it should be expected that (Inference)

Introductory Wording Answer is Type(s) of Questions

Because, For example, In

fact, or Since

Premise Strengthen (if justifying)

Weaken (if undermining)

As a result, Expect that,

Hence, Therefore, or Thus

Flaw is Description or indication

of gap logic

Weaken/Method

Clever Wordplay

Many Critical Reasoning problems are difficult primarily because people gloss over subtle differences in meaning between an idea expressed in the stimulus and a concept provided in an answer choice With so many details in each question and so many questions in rapid succession, this tendency is certainly understandable, but not forgivable—at least not once you have been exposed to this commonly used trick! Consider two examples:

2 Criminals released from prison on parole have generally been put under routine supervision A recent program has allowed criminals to leave prison early under intensive supervision; they must obey curfews and in some cases they must be electronically monitored The percentage of released criminals arrested while under supervision is the same for intensive supervision as for routine supervision, so intensive supervision is no more effective than routine supervision in preventing criminals from committing additional crimes.Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument relies?(A) The criminals under intensive supervision, but not those under routine supervision, were required to work or attend school during their supervision period

(B) All of the criminals who were arrested while under routine supervision had been in prison more than once before being paroled and put under supervision

(C) The proportion of arrests to crimes committed was not significantly higher for criminals under intensive supervision than those under routine supervision

(D) Of the criminals arrested while under intensive supervision, some would not have committed crimes if they had been under routine supervision

(E) The number of criminals put under routine supervision was not significantly greater than the number of criminals put under intensive supervision

3 Citizen: Each year since 1970, a new record has been set for the number of

murders committed in this city This fact points to the decreasing ability of our

law enforcement system to prevent violent crime

City Official: You overlook the fact that the city’s population has risen steadily

since 1970 In fact, the number of murder victims per 100 people has actually

fallen slightly in the city since 1970

Which one of the following, if true, would most strongly counter the city

official’s response?

(A) The incidence of fraud has greatly increased in the city since 1970

(B) The rate of murders in the city since 1970 decreased according to the

age group of the victim, decreasing more for younger victims

(C) Murders and other violent crimes are more likely to be reported now

than they were in 1970

(D) The number of law enforcement officials in the city has increased at a

rate judged by city law enforcement experts to be sufficient to serve

the city’s increased population

(E) If the healthcare received by assault victims last year had been of the

same quality as it was in 1970, the murder rate in the city last year

would have turned out to be several times what it actually was

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Wordplay and Hiding the Correct Answer

In the first example (#2), the clever wordplay is the important difference between

“committing a crime” and “being arrested.” Data about “being arrested” is not the same

as data about “committing a crime.” You could have been arrested 50 times and not once have committed a crime If 100 people were arrested in each group and then you claim “Intensive supervision is not any better than routine supervision at keeping people from COMMITTING crimes,” that is flawed What if 80 of the 100 people in the intensive group were actually committing crimes and only 20 of the 100 people in the routine group were? That would show that indeed intensive supervision is much better

at keeping people from committing crimes Correct answer choice C eliminates that

possibility and greatly improves the quality of the argument With Critical Reasoning

questions, you must be on the constant lookout for subtle meaning differences,

as many questions hinge on this type of wordplay

The second question (#3) does essentially the same thing, with the flaw in logic that the murder rate only accounts for one type of violent crime Correct answer choice E points out that violent crimes are happening frequently; it’s only by the grace of the healthcare system that the crimes are not categorized as murders, so the data used by the city official is flawed Again, a precision-in-wording disparity dooms the argument.

Also, the second question unveils another favored technique of the testmaker: Answer choice E, the correct answer, is hidden behind introductory language that seems way out of scope If you stopped reading after eight to 10 words, you’re

not alone The prelude to the premise seems woefully out of scope, so the testmakers know that people will dismiss it Healthcare doesn’t seem to have much to do with crime—except that a patient whose life has been saved in the ER will not count as a

murder statistic This question demonstrates a powerful takeaway: While on many

questions you may be able to correctly eliminate an answer choice after just a few words, the gmAT will contain questions that punish you for not reading the entire option Some incorrect answers contain “bait” designed to entice you closer;

this is an example of a correct answer that camouflages itself as a throwaway answer Beware the curveball; if an answer choice seems oddly out of scope after a few words, read on.

SkILLS MEET STRATEGY

Removing Flaws/Assumption Negation Technique

In the Critical Reasoning lesson, you learned about the important assumption subtype

of Strengthen questions In these questions, you are not so much strengthening the

question as you are removing a deeply embedded flaw This thought process is more

confusing, because the answer choices are often presented negatively and it is hard to

anticipate the flaw (You must rely on answer choices.) The first problem about crimes

and arrests is a great example: The correct answer removes a piece of information that,

if true, would greatly undermine the argument If the proportion of arrests to crimes

committed was significantly higher for criminals under intensive supervision than

those under routine supervision, then this argument would be very weak Answer

choice C says that is not the case, thus strengthening the argument R E M E M B E R: If you

are confused by the negation, you should apply the Assumption Negation Technique

and read negatively worded answer choices affirmatively to see if they contradict the

conclusion.

SkILLS MEET STRATEGY

Answer the Proper Question

Another important takeaway from the second problem is this: On any Strengthen or

Weaken question with multiple positions and/or negatively worded conclusions,

at least one of the answer choices will do the opposite of what you are being asked

to do in the question stem In the example about murder and violent crime, many

students will pick answer choice C, which strengthens, not weakens, the city official’s

argument Always make sure that you are answering the proper question, particularly

when the conclusion contains negation or multiple conclusions exist in the stimulus.

The previous two questions are not merely examples of clever wordplay but also examples of another important GMAT construct: improper use of data People use statistics improperly all the time, and it is important in business that you do not make flawed conclusions from data Millions of dollars could depend on it!

In recent years, the GMAT has trended toward the inclusion of more and more based Critical Reasoning questions, and simultaneously has created the Integrated Reasoning section, which integrates quantitative and verbal skills To succeed in Critical Reasoning, Reading Comprehension, and Integrated Reasoning, you need to be careful when assessing or drawing conclusions based on statistics Consider these statistics and the flawed conclusions that accompany them:

statistics-1 Applications to the Princeton School of management are down statistics-10% this year, so the school should worry that it will not be able to maintain its high standards for incoming students

2 The average gPA of the graduating class at Central high School is 20% higher this year than it was last year Therefore the current graduating class is significantly better qualified to succeed in college compared to last year’s class

3 The average household income in the United States has increased by 2% over the last year, so the average American is better off financially than

he was at this time last year

4 Nearly 3% of all deaths are caused by traffic accidents, while only 0 15%

of deaths are caused by drug abuse Clearly it is safer to abuse drugs than

to drive

Common Statistical Flaws

Recognize that statistics, even when “true” (as all premises on the GMAT will be), don’t

always lead directly to the conclusions that one might try to draw from them In business,

a keen eye for which conclusions can appropriately be drawn from given statistics is

imperative to success, so look for the GMAT to test you on this concept repeatedly

Commonly tested flaws using statistics include:

• Wordplay—a statistic does not match directly the conclusion that follows

(e.g., arrests vs crimes)

As you have seen in the previous questions, precision in wording is an

oft-tested concept on the GMAT With statistics in particular, the authors of the

GMAT are able to take your eye off of the premise and conclusion, and invite

you to focus on the numbers Know this: When you see statistics in Critical

Reasoning questions, there is almost always a flaw in logic Read critically and

ensure that the numbers are tied to an apples-to-apples comparison

• Absolute Number vs Percentage/Proportion

Questions will often try to blind you with numbers in a situation that requires

percentages or proportions For example, one could argue that Connecticut

does not carry its weight in contributing U.S federal income taxes, because

it contributes only $54 billion per year, while California contributes well over

$300 billion But that absolute number is misleading: Connecticut actually

contributes more federal tax money per citizen than any other state It just

happens to have a relatively low population

• Unequal Basis Points/“Unweighted Averages”—uneven sample sizes are

compared to a common third pool (e.g., more people die from choking on

pretzels each year than are killed by great white sharks; therefore it is safer to

swim with sharks than to eat pretzels)

Perhaps the most “statistical” of statistical flaws, the unweighted average is

problematic Consider the very famous statistic that “most traffic accidents

happen within 10 miles of the victim’s home.” Does that really mean that it’s

more dangerous to drive around your neighborhood than to drive in a remote

area that you do not know? Of course not It’s just that the first and last 10

miles of nearly every trip you take are within 10 miles of your home So a

massive percentage of your driving takes place there Using the basis point “all

accidents” is misleading

• Incongruent Samples—two “equivalent” statistics were not obtained in

the same fashion (e.g., a local, low-cost, part-time MBA program with no application fee vs Stanford GSB; even if the local program’s acceptance rate is low, are its applicants analogous to Stanford’s?)

Often data is flawed because the statistics are simply not parallel Even statistics that are comparable (percentage to percentage) can have intervening factors in their sample pools or collection procedures that leave them less than concrete in proving a conclusion For instance, Harvard has an extensive (and expensive) application procedure and is known to have extremely high admissions standards For many it may simply not be worth the time and application fee to apply without a high likelihood of success Other schools may have lower barriers to application—famously, some undergraduate schools have accepted applications through Twitter—that attract a high number of applicants for a low number of seats, creating a low, seemingly selective, acceptance rate that is in fact really not that selective

Again, the difference may be clearest in wordplay One can say that a school

“has a lower acceptance rate than Stanford,” but as soon as one takes the statistic and concludes something in different terms (“more selective” is not the same as “lower acceptance rate”) there exists a subtle gap in logic that an answer choice can exploit

4 Bicycle Safety Expert: Bicycling on the left half of the road is much more

likely to lead to collisions with automobiles than is bicycling on the right After

all, in three different studies of bicycle-automobile collisions, the bicyclist was

riding on the left in 15, 17, and 25 percent of the cases, respectively

Skeptic: But in places where a comparatively high percentage of bicyclists used

to ride on the left, there was surprisingly little decrease in collisions between

bicyclists and automobiles after bicycling on the left was made illegal

One reason the strength of the bicycle safety expert’s argument cannot be

evaluated is that

(A) the statistics cited in support of the conclusion that bicycling on

the left is more likely to lead to collisions with automobiles already

presuppose the truth of that conclusion

(B) the statistics it cites do not include the percentage of bicycling that

took place on the left

(C) no statistics are provided on the proportion of bicycle accidents that

are due to bicycle-automobile collisions

(D) bicycling on the left is singled out for criticism without consideration

of other bicycling practices that are unsafe

(E) it does not distinguish between places in which bicycling on the left is

legal and places in which it is illegal

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Abstraction and the Weighted Average

Cyclists universally know that nearly all riding takes place on the right-hand side of the road, in the same direction as motor traffic But you don’t need to be Andy Schleck

to read this skeptically and see the expert’s flaw in reasoning Just notice that the numbers he cites (at most 25%) could actually suggest that riding on the left is safer

If left-right riding is 50/50, then the side on which less than half of the accidents take place is actually safer The expert assumes that very few riders ride on the left-hand side If only one cyclist out of a thousand in town rides on the left, and he’s responsible for a quarter of all accidents, then clearly what he is doing is unsafe But if it’s an even split, then the left-hand riders are safer.

More universally, this is an example of comparing dissimilar pools In order to provide

a valid comparison, the study would need to determine how frequently riders use either side of the road 1% of the activity with 25% of the accidents—that’s dangerous 90% of the activity with only 25% of the accidents—that’s safe The problem with the argument is that the statistics it cites do not include the percentage of bicycling that took place on the left Without that information the statistics given are meaningless The correct answer choice is B

This data flaw is fairly difficult for many to comprehend and is thus a popular one in harder questions The weighted average concept (i.e., the concept of unequal sample sizes) is more abstract than other data concepts, such as percentage data versus absolute number data You will see this tested more concretely in the Quantitative section of the GMAT, but in Critical Reasoning it can be easy to miss.

SkILLS MEET STRATEGY

Some Verbal Question Are Really Quant Questions

As you have learned already in your quantitative preparation, many Quant questions

on the GMAT are more about reading comprehension: Their difficulty lies in reading carefully, not in hard math In Critical Reasoning, you will often encounter the reverse: Questions that require you to interpret statistics are often more about understanding

a math concept than any true “verbal” skills Make sure you understand statistics concepts well both for the Quantitative section and the Verbal section.

5 College football recruiting services rank incoming players on a scale of one

star (not a highly sought-after prospect) to five star (considered to be the best

players) Recently a service attempted to validate its rankings by assigning star

ratings to players upon completion of their careers to determine the accuracy

of the initial rankings The survey averaged the post-career ratings of each

player and found that five star players’ final average was 4.46, compared with

3.98 for four stars and 3.11 for three stars This suggests that the rankings

services do not effectively judge high-end talent as well as they judge players

in the middle of the range

Which of the following identifies a problem with the service’s attempt to

validate its rankings?

(A) Players at certain positions might be harder to judge at a younger age

than players at other positions

(B) A five-star scale does not allow the most elite players to over-perform

their initial ranking

(C) Players may change positions over their careers and be judged at

multiple different positions

(D) Some players transfer to different schools and therefore need to

change their playing styles

(E) Because of differences in strength training programs at different

schools, players may develop at different rates

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Misdirection with Uncommon Data Flaws

The previous problem demonstrates a type of data flaw that you might not expect (which is exactly what the testmaker wants!) Because the flaw is unusual, you could easily miss the disconnect between the data and the conclusion What’s the flaw here?

In a five-point scale, a predicted 4 has multiple outcomes: a 5 (exceeding expectations and bringing the group average up), a 4 (meeting expectations, keeping the average the same), or a 3 or below (under-performing the prediction, bringing the average down) But a predicted 5 can only live up to expectations; he or she cannot exceed them Anything other than a 5 brings the expected average down So while the experts’ misevaluations of a four star prospect might be balanced out by some 5s to counter 3s, their evaluations of a five star prospect all count in the same downward direction The correct answer choice, B, exposes this flaw; the experts may have missed just as often with three and four star players, but because they could miss on either side of the predicted value the average is close to what they predicted Remember that whenever data is used to make a conclusion, there is usually a flaw present, but that flaw might be difficult to locate and/or understand!

SkILLS MEET STRATEGY

Know What Statistics to Use for Certain Conclusions

In the problem on bicycle statistics, you learned how important it is to understand the weighted average concept This question also contains a classic math flaw: The argument used the wrong statistic to properly determine the accuracy of the ratings In addition to the fact that you cannot “overvalue” with a score of 5, this problem suffers from a common misuse of statistics: If you want to determine the accuracy of these predictions, then you should use standard deviation, not average Standard deviation will tell you, on average, how close the predictions were to the actual score at the end

of a player’s career The average, however, could indicate that the predictions were very accurate, when in fact they were all quite far above and below the score at the end of the player’s career R E M E M B E R: Don’t leave your quant skills at home for the Verbal section, as you will need them on many Critical Reasoning questions involving data.

One of the most common (and powerful) tools that testmakers use to make hard Critical

Reasoning questions relates to the topic of both the stimulus and the answer choices

Consider one example to highlight this trick:

6 Company policy: An employee of our company must be impartial, particularly

when dealing with family matters This obligation extends to all aspects of

the job, including hiring and firing practices and the quality of service the

employee provides customers

Which one of the following employee behaviors most clearly violates the

company policy cited above?

(A) Refusing to hire any of one’s five siblings, even though they are each

more qualified than any other applicant

(B) Receiving over 100 complaints about the service one’s office provides

and sending a complimentary product to all those who complain,

including one’s mother

(C) Never firing a family member, even though three of one’s siblings

work under one’s supervision and authority

(D) Repeatedly refusing to advance an employee, claiming that he has

sometimes skipped work and that his work has been sloppy, even

though no such instances have occurred for over two years

(E) Promoting a family member over another employee in the company

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Misdirection by Using Your Mental Inertia

Fishermen bait their hooks with feeder fish or worms Homeowners set mousetraps with cheese or peanut butter Time-share salespeople use free golf and lift tickets One

of the oldest tricks in the book is the bait and trap: Offer someone what he wants or expects, and then he’s trapped

The authors of the GMAT are masters of this technique They know what you want to see and how your mind processes a topic, and before you know it you’re trapped You’re smarter than a mouse seeking cheese or a Trojan accepting a horse But the authors of the GMAT will appeal to that sense of smart; they know that your mind will willingly leap to conclusions that are satisfying to your intellect From there you’re hooked, like

a fish accepting a free lunch

There are two specific ways that GMAT testmakers accomplish this:

1 They pick topics for the Critical Reasoning questions in which people have preconceived notions and intractable viewpoints.

2 They insert some specific piece of information in the argument or in the answer choices that makes you focus on the wrong thing (commonly called red herrings).

What’s the set-up on this question? When you read about impartiality in the workplace and family members, you automatically think about nepotism You think that the correct answer must be something that relates to unfair bias toward a family member, because that is what your mind expects But when you read through the answer choices, the only one that must violate the policy is the opposite of what you expect: Given the defined policy in the stimulus, if you do not hire one of your siblings and they are each more qualified than ANY OTHER APPLICANT, then that is necessarily unfair While you might first be drawn to answer choice C or E, you do not know if those actions are unfair In answer choice C, for example, the family members may never have done anything that would prompt a firing And the family member in choice E might have fully deserved a promotion Only choice A, the correct answer, supplies a case that violates the rule It just so happens, however, that that case is the one you wouldn’t expect to be a problem You expect for the rule to champion anti-nepotism, and the author of this question uses that tendency against you.

Well over half of Critical Reasoning problems will use this mental inertia against you,

so beware of any preconceived notions or bias relating to a topic Don’t take the bait!

One additional reason that people struggle on this problem is that they do not

categorize it properly (and therefore do not understand the goal of the question) What

type of problem is this? Even though it might sound like a Weaken question at first

glance, the problem is really an Inference question: A policy is defined (premises are

given) and you must decide which one of the given behaviors must violate the policy

The “must be true” thought process is essential to success on this problem Several

of the answer choices most likely violate the policy, but you must pick the one that

must violate it Categorization is essential to success on Critical Reasoning, because

without knowing the goal of the question you will not employ the correct approach

and strategy.

7 There are community leaders, as well as ex-convicts, who are successful in

business All people who are successful in business are invited to join the

(D) Some ex-convicts are encouraged to join the Reynard Club

(E) Some ex-convicts are not encouraged to join the Reynard Club

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Misdirection Using Your Embedded Bias

Where does your mind want to go with this question? Presumably one would have to believe that a club with any exclusivity would find a way to bar at least some ex-convicts, right? Sure, it’s politically incorrect (and just wrong) to assume that all ex-convicts are unworthy of admission, but it’s quite likely that at least some will be repeat offenders

or are otherwise undesirable So answer choice E should look pretty tempting; it just about has to be true—but not necessarily.

All you truly know from this question is that some ex-convicts, those who are successful

in business, are encouraged to join But we do not know anything about those who are not successful in business, nor do we really know that any ex-convicts in this pool are not successful in business Similarly, we do not know about anyone other than those we are told are successful (some community leaders and some ex-convicts), so although answer choice C seems like it has to be true, it’s not guaranteed here If one were to diagram the logic, you’d find:

Some ex-convicts  Successful Some community leaders  Successful Successful  Invited to join

as Reynard Club is just like Sam’s Club) that would counter an answer choice like A or E means that the choice is not necessarily true

The trick here? Your mind views community leaders and business successes positively, and ex-convicts negatively Knowing that, the test can tempt you with answer choices

A and E; knowing better, you can treat this as an Inference question only and make your determination based solely on the information given.

This problem is a perfect example of the “must be true” burden of proof that is required

on Inference questions Several of the incorrect answer choices are almost surely true,

but they simply are not guaranteed If you can come up with one case (remember the

importance of playing devil’s advocate) in which an answer choice is not guaranteed,

then it cannot be correct in an Inference question The correct answer on this question,

while contrary to your “embedded bias,” is relatively easy to prove and must be true

without exception.

Advanced Critical Reasoning Summary

In this section you have seen four important set-ups used by testmakers to make Critical Reasoning difficult:

1 Confusing wording or set-ups in the question stem (The confusion is usually between Strengthen and Inference questions.)

2 Clever wordplay that baits you into treating words or concepts as synonymous, when in fact they are really quite different

3 Conclusions that are not actually supported by accurately presented statistics

4 Questions that are built around topics for which you have deep, preconceived notions

To combat these testmaker set-ups, always consider the following strategies:

• Understand how to categorize questions and know that testmakers can

make the choice between Strengthen and Inference questions particularly confusing This is most common with “best completes the passage” constructs

• Focus on precision in wording If you are struggling to find a flaw or

assumption in an argument, it may be because you are missing clever wordplay

R E M E M B E R: Testmakers like to bait you into treating words as synonymous when they are really quite different

• Understand statistical and data flaws well, particularly those related to

sample size (weighted average) If a Critical Reasoning question contains data, you can almost be sure that the conclusion is improperly drawn from that data

• Leave your preconceived notions and bias at home! Testmakers pick

particular topics to create Critical Reasoning questions in which they can use your mental inertia and embedded bias against you

SECTION 2: AdVANCEd SENTENCE CORRECTION

To this point you have mastered the IMPACTS error categories and learned to see the

illogical meanings that such errors create You are undoubtedly tired of the misplaced

modifiers that your colleagues leave in their e-mails You are annoyed at yourself for

taking too much care to keep items parallel whenever you draw a comparison in

conversation You’re correcting sentences even when you aren’t asked to do so; how

does the GMAT challenge you?

The GMAT has several tactics that it can use against you, including that it:

• Disguises correct answers by hiding them behind structures that are correct,

but that you are not familiar with and do not like

• Sugarcoats wrong answers by packaging them with phrasings and structures

that you expect to see in correct answers

• Baits you into making decisions that you simply aren’t qualified to make,

bet-ting that you will eliminate the correct answer before you consider the proper

Decision Point

• Hides important information far away from the underlined portion, in the

hope that you will skim large parts of the sentence to focus on the answer

choices

In this section, we will cover all of these tactics and show you how to stay one step

ahead of the testmakers

misdirection: hiding the Correct Answer

As you have seen with Critical Reasoning, the authors of the GMAT know that the easiest way to trap you is to provide you with an incorrect answer choice that satisfies your intellect—that allows you to point to a “smart” decision that you made that, at least in your mind, cleverly solved a problem Consider this example:

8 Immanuel Kant’s writings, while praised by many philosophers for their liance and consistency, are characterized by sentences so dense and convo-luted as to pose a significant hurdle for many readers who study his works.(A) so dense and convoluted as to pose

bril-(B) so dense and convoluted they posed(C) so dense and convoluted that they posed(D) dense and convoluted enough that they posed(E) dense and convoluted enough as they pose

SkILLS MEET STRATEGY

You Might Not “Like” the Answer You Pick

On almost every hard Sentence Correction problem you encounter, there will be something in the correct answer choice that you do not like Maybe

it’s an unusual idiom or just a grammatical structure that you are unfamiliar with But rest assured, the other answer choices will all contain some error that you have learned with IMPACTS Use the Decision Point strategy to find the easy errors based on concrete grammar that you do understand (Here it’s verb tense: You can’t use the past tense to reference something going on in the present.)

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Hiding the Correct Answer

Your success on Sentence Correction questions will depend much more on your ability

to recognize what is wrong than to recognize what is right This question offers an

excellent example You know that the structure “so X that Y” is a commonly accepted

idiom It’s so commonly used, in fact, that it formed the basis for an entire line of Johnny

Carson jokes: “Johnny is so old….” (The audience would yell “How old is he?”) “Johnny

is so old that when he was a kid he never blew out candles on his birthday cake They

didn’t have fire yet.” (Thank you to Cliff Clavin for the joke.)

You’ve become accustomed to seeing that structure, so when you see the phrasing “so

X as to Y” in answer choice A and the much-more-familiar “so X that Y” in answer choice

C, your inclination is to quickly eliminate answer choice A—but answer choice A is the

correct answer.

Simply because “so X that y” is correct does not mean that “so X as to y” is

incorrect Idioms are commonly accepted ways to phrase an idea, but they are

not exclusive There are many (or several, or quite a few) ways to express any idea

And much like there is no “greatest prime number” (ask your instructor for the proof,

using what you learned in Arithmetic), there is no “one and only” correct idiom You can

almost always find one more So you can study idiomatic expressions for months and

not have them mastered, and—what’s worse—you’ll likely only lead yourself astray

from your core competencies like verb tense In this example, the past-tense in answer

choice C (and B and D) is illogical It’s wrong The not-as-common idiom in answer

choice A, attached to the “correct” usage of verb tense, provides the correct answer It’s

not what you want to see; the author knows this and constructed a question in which

what you wanted to see was bait

The authors of these questions are grammar experts, and they know this about you: You

will never know all of the correct idiomatic expressions, accepted sentence structures,

or allowable ways to phrase an idea So they use them They take the common phrasing

and attach it to an incorrect answer—one containing a major category error that you

should know—and correct that problem in a choice that uses an awkward, unexpected,

but still-correct structure or idiom They know that you want to choose “what you

know to be right,” but that in doing so you’re apt to also wed yourself to something

that is hidden but wrong.