GMAT Experience

[sanyalpritish]

I have been in touch with many GMAT taker recently and all of them mention the standard of the exam has gone high especially for SC.

The SC are long and they more on meaning clarify than any other concepts. I don't see such questions discussed on the forums.

Can any of the instructors provide inputs on this and help us with some course where we can find such questions.

[sanyalpritish]

Request Ron so other tutor to answer this

[RonPurewal]

we can't discuss the specifics of people's live testing experiences here (or anywhere else); that's a violation of GMAC's terms, to which you agreed when you signed up for the test.

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if this observation is true, it's very surprising, since the distinct trend in the OG, from the 10th edition through the 12th edition, has been a move AWAY from hand-waving "clarity / stylistics" issues, TOWARD more grammatical and mechanical issues.

it would be very strange if the real test were actually moving directly against the trend set by the 3 most recent editions of the OG. not impossible, but very, very strange.

finally, there will NEVER be an official problem (let alone a whole exam full of them) that tests exclusively clarity of meaning.
in fact, i've never seen an official problem with more than 2 completely correct (from a grammatical standpoint) sentences, between which you must use clarity.

so, if a student thinks s/he has seen a problem that only tests clarity, then s/he is almost certainly wrong; there are going to be distinct errors in all but 1 or 2 of the problems.

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one other thought:

there are some things that are genuine ERRORS, but that still depend on clarity of meaning.
for example, basically EVERY modifier error.
for instance, if "comma + WHICH" is used incorrectly, the issue isn't going to be grammatical; it's going to be an issue of incorrect/absurd meaning (i.e., "which" points to the wrong noun).
if your friend is counting these sorts of things as "clarity errors", then his/her position is more understandable -- but then your question loses some of its power, since our 9-session course covers modifiers.

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unfortunately, you're not going to find any courses out there that neatly package "clarity of meaning" in one large continuous whole.
the best you're going to be able to do is submit GMATPREP problems and scrutinize the answer choices, one by one.

there's a lot more information in there than you might think -- remember, if you can't FORMALLY EXPLAIN why EVERY wrong answer is wrong, then you haven't really finished reviewing the problem!

[sanyalpritish]

Thanks Ron

[StaceyKoprince]

good discussion