Don’t Let Reality Get In the Way of Your GMAT: Critical Reasoning

Here’s one of the sneakiest reasons strong readers still miss GMAT Critical Reasoning questions: they know too much. On CR, outside knowledge isn’t an asset; it can actually cause silly mistakes, and the cure is learning to stay inside the narrow constructs of the passage. Keep reading for a confession about how reality once cost me a CR question, and how to keep it from costing you.

In an old GMAT article featuring an incredible student who answered more than 4,000 CR and RC practice questions, I wrote some decidedly unsexy stuff about the reality of improving your GMAT CR and RC results. Unfortunately, if your fundamental reading precision isn’t very good, it can take a lot of work to move the needle on your GMAT or Executive Assessment verbal score.

“Fine,” you might be thinking, “but I’m not an imprecise reader. I swear, I’m not! My Reading Comprehension results are totally fine. So why am I bad at GMAT CR?”

We’ve heard that question from hundreds of GMAT and EA test-takers over the years. There are plenty of possible answers, but I’ll focus on just one here: you might be letting reality get in the way of your thinking on GMAT and EA Critical Reasoning questions.

How Critical Reasoning Questions Are Different From Real Life

That might sound snarky, and I suppose that it is: I’m not always a big fan of the skills tested by the GMAT and EA. I would argue that GMAT and EA verbal questions require you to read with an unrealistic sort of intensity: if somebody plops a report on your desk tomorrow, you’re going to skim it for key takeaways, facts, and quotable bits of data. If you’re dissecting the author’s tone or carefully determining what might weaken the author’s argument on page 23 of that report, you’re probably wasting time that could be better spent… I don’t know, maybe doing your job or something?

More importantly: in real life, you’re expected to, um, know stuff. For example, if your boss asks you to evaluate a one-paragraph plan to replace your firm’s incandescent bulbs with energy-efficient LEDs, then it’s a good thing if you know something about light bulbs, right? And if you know about a third type of light bulb, say, a cutting-edge titanium bulb that consumes even less energy than an LED, then your boss would be impressed with your useful, outside knowledge, right?

But on GMAT and EA Critical Reasoning questions, if you start thinking beyond the one paragraph you’re given, you might be screwed. As soon as you let reality, in the form of outside knowledge or ideas, enter your mind, you’re much more likely to miss the question. (And yes, the light bulb example refers to a real GMAT CR question, albeit a not terribly difficult one.)

How to “Think Narrowly” on GMAT and EA Critical Reasoning

Here’s another example, loosely adapted from a retired test question:

In the nation of Pelmenistan, 20% of 18-year-olds are left-handed, while just 10% of 45-year-olds and 2% of 70-year-olds are left-handed. But the percentage of children born left-handed has never changed in Pelmenistan, nor have societal attitudes toward left-handedness.

Which of the following, if true, most helps to explain the variation in left-handedness among Pelmenistanis?

Before we get to the answer choices: when I first saw the official version of this question in 2008, I got it wrong. Why? I let reality get in the way of my test-taking.

I totally thought that I knew the answer immediately: left-handers are more likely to perish in accidents in factories or while operating heavy machinery, since most industrial machines are designed for right-handers. I actually learned this in an economics class in Chile as an undergraduate.

So I was certain that the answer had to have something to do with accidents or machinery or something. But I was wrong.

Back to the question:

Which of the following, if true, most helps to explain the variation in left-handedness among Pelmenistanis?

(A) A substantial number of Pelmenistani men are born with only one arm.

(B) In Pelmenistan, left-handers are no more likely to perish in accidents than right-handers.

(C) In Pelmenistan, ambidexterity is considered a gift from God.

(D) In Pelmenistan, women have a lower life expectancy than men, and they are more likely to be born left-handed.

(E) Pelmenistan was named after a type of dumpling that is traditionally eaten with the right hand only.

“Easy,” I thought, “the answer is clearly (B). This is all about the accidents. My Chilean economics professor told me so!” So I picked (B) and moved on.

Do you see my error? I cherry-picked the answer choices, looking for an answer that mentioned factories or industrial accidents or something like that. I “found” what I was looking for, but then misread it. It says that lefties are NOT more likely to perish in accidents. But I subconsciously refused to read it correctly, because I “knew the truth.”

And once I misread answer choice (B), I compounded my mistake by not paying much attention to the other answer choices. (A), (C), and (E) are irrelevant, but if I’d thought about (D) a little bit more, maybe I would have questioned my love for (B).

But I didn’t. I was too jacked up about my outside knowledge, and as a result, I did a terrible job of reading what was right in front of me.

It’s Not About Reality in GMAT and EA Critical Reasoning

So when you answer GMAT or EA Critical Reasoning questions, always stay inside the narrow constructs of the passage. If the passage tells you that mix-handed GMAT tutors enhance their pedagogical genius by eating Namibian caterpillars, then you have to believe them. If the passage tells you that the sky in Pelmenistan is a nice shade of Denver Broncos orange, then you have to believe them. Read what’s on the page, and ignore anything else that pops into your head.

Remember: the GMAT and the Executive Assessment are just standardized tests. They aren’t reality. Stay inside the GMAT’s meticulously-drawn lines on Critical Reasoning, and good things will happen.

For the full precision-first approach to CR, start with our Beginner’s Guide to GMAT Critical Reasoning, and if you keep struggling to keep outside knowledge out of your thinking, Is GMAT Verbal Arbitrary and Subjective? explains why the test’s internal logic is more consistent than it might feel.