Study and Strategy questions relating to the GMAT.
mobenny
Course Students
 
Posts: 67
Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2008 5:32 am
 

Anatomy of the test

by mobenny Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:00 am

How many reading comp passages are usually on the test?

Is there any structure to how many DS or PS questions are on the test?

Also in terms of specific contect, is the quantity of each subject on the test random? i.e divisibility and primes, subject verb, etc.

Thank you!

Moses
RonPurewal
Students
 
Posts: 19744
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2007 8:23 am
 

Re: Anatomy of the test

by RonPurewal Sun Mar 29, 2009 4:19 am

mobenny Wrote:How many reading comp passages are usually on the test?

normally four: 2 long, 2 short. the long passages normally have 4 questions each, and the short passages 3, for a total of 14 questions.
there may be small deviations from this standard, but you will almost certainly have exactly 4 RC passages.

Is there any structure to how many DS or PS questions are on the test?

normally there are slightly more PS problems, although the proportion of each is usually close to half the quant section.
unlike on verbal - where the time allotment per question is vastly different for different problem types - this is not worth worrying about AT ALL on the quant section, since the time guideline is the same (~2:00 per question avg) and, moreover, DS and PS test the same underlying math concepts.

Also in terms of specific contect, is the quantity of each subject on the test random? i.e divisibility and primes, subject verb, etc.


it's hard to give "quantities" for sentence correction, because SC problems test way more than one subject at a time. however, parallelism seems to be the most commonly tested topic by far.
since SC tests many different concepts per question, you are almost certain to soo large numbers of every major SC topic.

on RC, "weaken" is the most common question type, followed, in approximate order, by "find assumption", "draw conclusion", "strengthen", and minor question types.

the most common large area of quant is word translations. among the most common subtopics are statistics and divisibility/primes; percents, algebraic translations, and inequalities are also common.
again, it's worth studying all the major subtopics outlined in the strategy guides.

Thank you!

Moses[/quote]
mobenny
Course Students
 
Posts: 67
Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2008 5:32 am
 

Re: Anatomy of the test

by mobenny Sun Mar 29, 2009 12:36 pm

Thank you!
StaceyKoprince
ManhattanGMAT Staff
 
Posts: 9360
Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:05 am
Location: Montreal
 

Re: Anatomy of the test

by StaceyKoprince Mon Mar 30, 2009 2:52 pm

you're welcome!
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep