by StaceyKoprince Sat Mar 07, 2020 12:46 am
Over the past 5 years, the GMAT has increasingly included questions that do require you to be able to pay attention to the meaning in order to get down to one correct answer. (That is, there are 2 choices that are grammatically correct, but one is illogical, ambiguous, or redundant in some way.)
Most of the published GMAT questions (in, for example, the Official Guide) are older—they use the questions for a while before they retire them and publish them. So it is true that you can get away with not paying attention to meaning in a large majority of the published questions—but if you don't pay any attention to meaning, then that may hurt you on the real test.
If you are going for a very high score (40+ on Verbal), it's important to be able to notice when choices have meaning issues. If you aren't going for that high of a V score, then you might be able to get away with not paying attention to meaning—but I would only do this if you are having trouble noticing the meaning issues. (In the same way, if you were having trouble with, say, probability problems on Q, then I'd say it was fine to bail on probability questions—but if you weren't having trouble studying the topic, then you might as well study it.)
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep