Sufficient & Necessary Questions - - Question 40

An air traveler in Beijing cannot fly to Lhasa without first flying to Chengdu. Unfortunately, an air traveler in Be...

alicat6 August 12, 2020

Timing for long questions like these

Hello, I am wondering if on the real test once you find the right answer to select it and move on. For example, because the correct answer for this question was B, and I was pretty certain I had it correct, would it be advised to select B and move on, or to check all the remaining answers?

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shunhe August 12, 2020

Hi @alicat6,

Thanks for the question! So it depends on a number of things, including what question type it is, and how much time you have left. Generally speaking, the best policy is to go through all the answer choices, making sure that the other answer choices are worse. This is because you might hit an adequate answer choice early up, but there’ll be a better one under it that’s the correct answer choice. Or you might have misinterpreted the question/passage, and so only on reading the rest of the answer choices will you realize that you did that. This is especially true for the reading comprehension section and most of the logical reasoning section.

However, I will add a caveat, which is that if you’re strapped for time, and it’s most logic game questions or some of the more formal logic-y logical reasoning questions, if you get an answer choice you’re absolutely sure is right, you shouldn’t feel too bad about picking it and moving on. I’m talking about stuff like

Premise: A
Premise: A —> B
Question: What must be true based on the above?

In the above example, if an answer choice says “B,” you know it’s true and can move on without looking at the rest. With formal logic questions, whatever’s the answer choice is compelled to be correct, and it’s not like tricky details in the wording that’ll mess you up (unlike, for example, reading comprehension). But ideally, spend some time checking the remaining answers.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

alicat6 August 13, 2020

This is really helpful! I appreciate the thoughtful explanation to my question. Thank you!