VR - Critical Reasoning

Question 1

GMAT never wants you to draw a conclusion on Critical Reasoning (CR) questions even when they specifically ask you to “draw a conclusion”.
They actually want you to make an INFERENCE

Answer 1

Inference = the recognition of an additional fact that must be true given the previous information
- Inferences should be very factual with no assumptions made

Conclusion = an opinion that you draw based on interpretation of the facts

Ex: Suppose you’re at work and your friend Lothar tells you: “The boss is not my biggest fan right now”

Inferences that you CANNOT conclude on GMAT:

• The boss is angry at Lothar
• The boss’ opinion of Lothar has declined
• Lothar is the boss’s least favourite employee
• Lothar has said or done something recently that the boss found upsetting
• If someone is going to propose a risky new idea to the boss, Lothar should not be the one to do it

Inferences that you CAN conclude on GMAT
- Lothar has a boss
- Lothar has some ability to discern his boss’s opinions
- At least one person is a bigger fan of Lothar than the boss is (this is a stretch b/c you are assuming that Lothar has a biggest fan)
More technical version
“If Lothar has one or more fans, at least one of those fans thinks more highly of Lothar than the boss does”

Question 2

How to reason through Critical Reasoning

Answer 2

• It is known as the most time consuming section of VR
• make up roughly 1/3 of verbal questions
• Resemble short RC questions but CR asks you to actually do something to, or with, the important information

Question 3

CR Format

Answer 3

• It is composed of 3 basic parts
  1. Short passage - aka an argument
  2. A question
  3. 5 answer choices
• if the question includes a conclusion in the written argument, the right answer needs to be connected to the conclusion in some way. Wrong answers are sometimes not tied to the conclusion at all

Question 4

Steps to solve CR problem

Answer 4

1. Identify the question (i.e. identify the Q family, Q type and goal - see hard copy notes)
2. Deconstruct the argument
3. Pause and state the goal
4. Work from wrong to right ( many of the wrong answers follow patterns that are repeated over and over again)