Skipping Questions

7sagelsatstudent180

Hey guys. During timed prep tests, I take a long time to answer Parallel Reasoning and Parallel Flaw questions and I only get them right 20% - 40% of the time. Even with this issue, I score pretty consistently in the low 160's. I am considering skipping these questions altogether by guessing after a 30 second preliminary P.O.E. for questions of these sorts. Actually trying hasn't worked much better for me from a percentage standpoint and I think it would probably save me 3-4 minutes over the course of each LR section. Any recommendations? Does anyone else skip problems under timed conditions?

nicole.hopkins

@7sagelsatstudent180 said:
Does anyone else skip problems under timed conditions?

I skip PF/PR after Q20 and save them for last (I put a big box around the whole Q and make sure to bubble the right Q's ... this is critical). 95% of the time I have time to complete them before the buzzer. They're almost always liable to be time-sinks and I mitigate the risk of losing time on other Q's by reserving these guys for the final minutes of the section.

blah170blah

Can I ask how you approach parallel reasoning and parallel flaw questions? I think it's actually possible to reduce the amount of time you spend on these questions so I'm curious as to how you're approaching these right now.

7sagelsatstudent180

I try to break them down using logic but I am admittedly not great at it... I am comfortable with my scoring right now and If I score 160-165 in June, I'd be estatic. I spend close to 1:50 on each PF and PR question regardless of difficulty. It doesn't appear worth it because I tend to miss most of them.

harrismegan

If you're confident that you'll get them wrong/it'll be a time sink, then I would skip them for sure. No use wasting time on something that you know is a weakness. At the same time, however, if you're ending each section (skipping these questions included) with 5 minutes to spare, then I WOULD take a crack at them. You should probably incorporate drilling of these questions, as I truly believe they can be improved upon. especially since the skills in them (conditional statements) are helpful across the exam.

In terms of the parallel flaw, I find it helpful to just read the stimulus and ask myself "what is the flaw". I write down the flaw and then quickly skim through the other answers. Most of the time, I find at least, they give you a sort of.... obvious flaw.... and I think that's just because of sheer volume of amount of text that you have to read. &, even when you're stumped between two, having written down what exactly the flaw was makes it easy to reference so you don't have to reread the stimulus.