Parallel Questions (Timing Strategy)

Noise Dogood

For Parallel Flaw/ Parallel MOR questions, do you move on after reading (what you believe) to be the CAC? Doing this has saved me massive time in some instances, but in others I miss a slight missing parallel that would have been obvious had I read another AC (the one I chose was missing a “can”, etc). I often make a local decision that changes for every parallel question, but I want to be more systematic about this.

Curious to hear how your timing is on Parallel questions!

Noise Dogood

I know there are some methods, such as reading the conclusion first, and then eliminating easy WACs - but for mid-difficult parallel questions, JY has said this is a shortcut/crutch that’s not always reliable, which is true.

So what’s the advanced/high level way to go about mid-difficult parallel questions? Do high 170 scorers read all the ACs, but just process it more quickly?

Scoring in the low 170s, but my strategy for parallel q's is never consistent and I think I've gotten lucky on too many occasions with parallel q's

a1ex_682

Following

canihazJD

I think for these and any other question type, and really any part of the test, you have to just understand the argument being presented to you. All these "tricks" can work, and they're great tools to augment a solid grasp of what the stimulus is saying, sometimes helping you eliminate ACs faster... but as you said they're not reliable as the core of your approach. Test writers will let you get so far, then punish you for this. If you can see exactly what's going on before you leave the stimulus, matching structure will be easy to identify. Nothing can replace solid argument analysis.