by RonPurewal Fri Jan 31, 2014 7:32 am
Regarding #1 "”
As you've probably noticed by now, CR doesn't involve ANY outside knowledge, nor does it require ANY "special" thought processes that you haven't already been using since before puberty. It just requires focus, concentration, and a fair amount of real-world thinking. (The main reason why 12- or 13-year-olds wouldn't do too well on CR is that the writing in the passages is too dense, and too formal, for them to readily comprehend.)
The problem with "academic" thinking "” rules, memorization, etc. "” is that it actually destroys "real-world thinking" / "common sense". In fact, that's basically the point of memorizing anything at all, ever "” so that you don't have to think about it.
Obviously, that kind of thinking has value in many areas of life. (E.g., lots of people would be dead if you had to think carefully about what a red light means, rather than memorizing that it means "stop".) But the entire reason why CR is on the test is that it's absolutely impossible to do with memorized "rules".
The only "preparation" you need to do for CR is to un-learn the mentality of "rules" / memorization / formal logic. Once you get rid of those, CR is really just an exercise in normal everyday thinking. Really, it is. This is hard for some people to believe, but, yeah.
This is not an easy thing for everyone.
For some students, it takes literally about 5-10 minutes to un-learn absolutely all of that ("Holy ****, I can't believe I've been doing this the wrong way for so long" "” and then they immediately start doing it the right way). These students tend to be the ones who've always hated memorization, and who have been studying that way only because they've somehow been convinced (by themselves or by others) that this test is a memorization-based "academic" task.
For other people "” people who like to memorize things, and have always been good at doing so "” the process is much longer and more difficult.
The worst-case scenario would be a student who derives emotional security from memorizing tons and tons of facts, and who feels distinctly nervous at the thought of going into any thought process without a memorized protocol. This kind of student may very well never be able to do well on CR "” but that's ultimately a good thing, because anyone who's so extremely attached to memorization really shouldn't be considering business (which is always changing, all the time, forever) as a career.
In any case, if you have specific "rules" or "patterns" in your head for CR, you should basically get rid of every single one of them. Every single one.
(This is not a reference to general concepts, such as the idea that negating an assumption destroys an argument. That's not a template or a formula; that's basically just defining what "assumption" means.)
When you see specific instances in a CR book or guide (e.g., our strategy guide, or the CR bible), you should NOT memorize them "” because you shouldn't have to. Every single one of them should be an example of reasoning that you can already do "” and that you've been able to do, given simple enough topics, since you were 10 or 11 years old. The only additional complications here are (a) that the writing is dense and formal, and (b) that the topics discussed are remote from most people's everyday lives.
If you see a "pattern" that looks difficult or unfamiliar, just try to make your own analogy for it, as I did here with the % of problems correct. It may take you a while at first, but it's worth every minute.
