GMAT Critical Reasoning—Never Lose Sight Of The Conclusion

Official GMAT Critical Reasoning questions test a range of logic and reading skills across various question types. The difficulty in these questions generally comes from cleverly constructed scenarios and arguments that contain very nuanced wording. Often the difference between an incorrect and correct answer comes down to subtle changes in meaning between only a few words in the answers. On hard official questions in particular, the game is extremely precise. This type of verbal difficulty at the far end of the curve is challenging to create in a way that differentiates at the 90th+ percentile but is still valid.

With very few exceptions, when test prep companies try to create Critical Reasoning questions (particularly the hard ones) for their practice tests and banks, those unofficial questions contain subtle flaws. The difficulty exists more because the questions are a little obtuse than because they are valid but very clever. If you want to learn how the official question writers make hard Critical Reasoning questions, you better prepare with their questions! On the verbal side of the GMAT in particular, you risk never learning how to deal with hard questions if you prepare with unofficial problems.

Best Practices for Critical Reasoning

In GMAT Critical Reasoning, there are four broad types of questions: strengthen, weaken, method of reasoning, and conclusion (aka inference) questions. A vast majority of the questions that you encounter on the exam are strengthen and weaken types. This includes the two very common subtypes for strengthen and weaken questions: useful to evaluate and assumption. As you learn in almost any curriculum for Critical Reasoning, it is essential to read the question stem first to determine the type of question, as that will inform the strategy and approach you will be using when reading the stimulus.

The first step after you categorize the question is always to deconstruct the argument stimulus, except when it is a conclusion question. You should find and isolate the conclusion, ask why to that conclusion, and then build the premises back to expose the line of reasoning presented in the argument. In the early stages of preparation, students tend to be pretty bad at deconstructing arguments because it is not something they have ever done before. With practice, this very important skill becomes second nature.

The more difficult skill after you properly deconstruct the given argument is to attack the reasoning and anticipate gaps and flaws within the argument. If it is a strengthen question, you will be finding a new piece of information in the answers that improve a given flaw or fills a gap in reasoning. If it is a weaken question, you will be exposing that flaw, and if it is a method of reasoning question, you will be describing the roles of the different parts within the argument. Conclusion questions are completely different, as you are not deconstructing the given stimulus, but rather taking that stimulus as fact and deciding which answer is a valid conclusion based upon that stimulus.

Success in Critical Reasoning strengthen and weaken questions depends on several key strategies and realizations:

The number one mistake people make in these questions is that they are NOT strengthening or weakening the exact conclusion given. Don’t hijack the given conclusion and change it slightly to what you expect it to be or think it should be. Isolating the precise conclusion given and focusing on that in your analysis of answer choices is the most important skill in Critical Reasoning.
Understand and recognize quickly the most common logical fallacies used in GMAT Critical Reasoning arguments: mistaking correlation for causation, generalization, data flaws, apples-to-oranges comparisons, etc.
Be ready for all the different wording tricks and general wordplay used to create difficulty in Critical Reasoning. Being precise in wording/noting subtle word shifts is absolutely key to success in this question type. Dealing with negation in the stimulus and the answer choices is one of the hardest manifestations of wordplay.

Once you get proficient at quickly deconstructing arguments, anticipating gaps and flaws within the stimulus, and sorting through the clever wording and tricks in answer choices, your efficiency and accuracy in Critical Reasoning will improve dramatically.

GMAT Critical Reasoning: Example Question

Instead of bringing cash to school to pay for food, Swengstown’s schoolchildren will now use electronic cards that record students’ purchases so that parents can later be billed. The goal of this new system is to provide children with a cash substitute that cannot profitably be stolen. To make sure that the cards are worthless to thieves, each card will bear its owner’s picture, so staff at cafeteria checkouts can spot stolen cards easily.

Which of the following, if true, would most seriously undermine the ability of the card system to achieve its goal?

As a result of the cards’ introduction, the number of students who purchase food from school cafeterias is expected to increase.
The replacement of cash with electronic cards will not allow any reductions in staffing for the checkouts at the schools’ cafeterias.
Staff at the cafeteria checkouts know by name many of the students who regularly use the cafeteria, and the cards will bear the owner’s name as well as his or her picture.
The cost to the school system of issuing the cards and installing the checkout machines to read them will be covered by the savings arising from no longer needing to handle cash.
The companies operating vending machines in the schools are adapting their machines so that the electronic cards can be used for purchases

Detailed Explanation

This particular question presents a scenario that is often problematic for test-takers. Instead of presenting a typical argument—premises with a conclusion—this stimulus presents a plan and you need to weaken the goal of that plan. Anytime you are presented with a “plan” question, you must clearly isolate the goal of that plan, which takes the place of the conclusion in a typical argument. The plan itself takes the place of the premises in a traditional argument.

In this case, the goal of the plan is clearly the following: The goal of this new system is to provide children with a cash substitute that cannot profitably be stolen.

The plan is as follows: Give students electronic cards for payment. To make sure that the cards are worthless to thieves, each card will bear its owner’s picture, so staff at cafeteria checkouts can spot stolen cards easily.

So when we go through the answers, you should be looking for something that will weaken the goal of providing children with a cash substitute that cannot profitably be stolen. In other words, find something that shows electronic cards are a bad idea because they could be stolen. The commonly used con on this question (and many plan questions like it) is that it seems that the correct answer must relate to buying food at the cafeteria. However, the goal of the plan does not just relate to the cafeteria!

Imagine if there are other uses for the cards that will not have staff members checking the photos on them. This argument assumes that the only use for these cards will be at places where staff is checking the photos on the cards. Given this assumption, answer choice E is correct:

E. The companies operating vending machines in the schools are adapting their machines so that the electronic cards can be used for purchases

If this is true, then bullies might be stealing other kids’ cards and using the stolen cards successfully at vending machines without anyone checking the photo. This shows that the plan might not achieve its goal of creating a card that cannot profitably be stolen.

If you look at discussions of this question, so many students don’t pick answer choice E because they feel like vending machines are “out of scope” of the argument, which appears to be only about cafeteria purchases. By focusing on the goal of the plan properly, you can notice that this is not the case and even anticipate this well-constructed con. In examining the other four answers, none of them address the issue of being profitably stolen and can be eliminated for that reason.

In Critical Reasoning, never lose sight of the conclusion and remember that in questions involving plans, the goal of that plan takes the place of the conclusion.

Caution: Avoid Unofficial GMAT Critical Reasoning Questions

As you can see from this example, official Critical Reasoning questions employ very specific cons and tricks. Harder “plan” questions like this one in which you lose sight of the goal of the plan as the conclusion are easy to miss the first few times you see them. By doing large sets of quality official Critical Reasoning questions you will be exposed to almost all of the different mechanisms used to create tricky CR questions. With that practice, you are much more likely to “spot the con” on test day and find a correct answer that those who have prepared with low-quality unofficial questions will not.

To enhance your ability to recognize and navigate the cons and tricks in official Critical Reasoning questions, consider enrolling in one of Menlo Coaching’s 5-Week GMAT prep courses. These courses offer focused practice and insights to help you master these challenging aspects and increase your chances of success on test day.