GMATPrep® Reading Comprehension: Tackling a Tough GMAT Passage (part 1)
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Halfway through a GMATPrep® free practice test, I hit the passage I’m going to discuss in this series—and I groaned aloud the second it appeared on the screen.
Why? Here’s what I saw (without really reading much of anything!):
Can you spot what I spotted?
The roman numeral set-up hit me first. A roman numeral on Reading Comp (RC)! These aren’t that common and they definitely take longer to answer than regular problems. Plus, I could see that the passage, on the left-hand side of the screen, was really long; it ran off the screen.
Sigh. So what’s my approach when something like this pops up?
First, they’re asking me to do more work than normal to answer one question. I might be okay with that on certain quant problems, but I’m pretty annoyed on RC. So the first thing to figure out is whether I even want to bother trying this problem at all.
I normally do not read the question before reading the passage, but in this case, I’m going to do so. I want to see how hard the question seems and, if I do decide that I want to do it, then during my read-through, I may want to keep an eye out for the info I’ll need to answer it.
In this case, one aspect is lucky: the question references specific text that they’ve highlighted in yellow for me, so I know exactly where I need to concentrate. That’s just about the only redeeming feature of this problem.
Okay, here’s the start of the problem. Don’t try to answer it, of course—you haven’t even looked at the passage yet! Just decide whether this looks like something you think you can handle or whether this looks like a nightmare, in which case you’re going to guess and move on.
* “It can be inferred from the passage that application of “other mandates” (see highlighted text) would be unlikely to result in an outcome satisfactory to the female employees in which of the following situations?
“I. Males employed as long-distance truck drivers for a furniture company make $3.50 more per hour…[2 more lines of text]
“II. [five lines: even longer than the first one!]
“III. [long, like the other two]
Wow. That’s a lot of work: three long scenarios and I have to figure out whether a particular thing can be inferred about each scenario.
If you know that RC is a weaker area for you, this would be a great time to guess and move on. If you are behind on time and need to catch up, ditto. If I decided to skip this one, I would guess on this question immediately, before I even bother to read the passage; I don’t want to get sucked into wasting any time at all on a problem that is so ridiculously long.
Unless you’re really behind on time, you’ll likely still want to try the other questions associated with this passage. But feel free to bail on something like this.
Okay, time to read the passage and create a passage Map. (Note: we will go through the roman numeral problem, but not until the second installment of this series. First, we need to process the passage.)
Ready? Here you go.
“Comparable worth, as a standard applied to eliminate inequities in pay, insists that the values of certain tasks performed in dissimilar jobs can be compared. In the last decade, this approach has become a critical social policy issue, as large numbers of private-sector firms and industries as well as federal, state, and local governmental entities have adopted comparable worth policies or begun to consider doing so.
“This widespread institutional awareness of comparable worth indicates increased public awareness that pay inequities—that is, situations in which pay is not “fair” because it does not reflect the true value of a job—exist in the labor market. However, the question still remains: have the gains already made in pay equity under comparable worth principles been of a precedent-setting nature or are they mostly transitory, a function of concessions made by employers to mislead female employees into believing that they have made long-term pay equity gains?
“Comparable worth pay adjustments are indeed precedent-setting. Because of the principles driving them, other mandates that can be applied to reduce or eliminate unjustified pay gaps between male and female workers have not remedied perceived pay inequities satisfactorily for the litigants in cases in which men and women hold different jobs. But whenever comparable worth principles are applied to pay schedules, perceived unjustified pay differences are eliminated. In this sense, then, comparable worth is more comprehensive than other mandates, such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Neither compares tasks in dissimilar jobs (that is, jobs across occupational categories) in an effort to determine whether or not what is necessary to perform these tasks—know-how, problem-solving, and accountability—can be quantified in terms of its dollar value to the employer. Comparable worth, on the other hand, takes as its premise that certain tasks in dissimilar jobs may require a certain amount of training, effort, and skill; may carry similar responsibility; may be carried on in an environment having a similar impact upon the worker; and may have a similar dollar value to the employer.”
What does your passage Map look like? What do you think the main idea is?
Here’s the story I articulated to myself as I read, followed by my Map in blue (which I wrote paragraph by paragraph, as I read).
First, the author defines a term: comparable worth, or CW, says that you can compare the values of tasks performed in dissimilar jobs. This approach has become pretty widespread recently.
The CW concept has made the public more aware of pay gaps. But has CW actually helped to fundamentally fix the problem or is it just making people feel better but not fixing anything?
The author answers her own question: CW has made a real difference. The rest of the paragraph is long and somewhat confusing, but at heart, she’s saying that some other things haven’t had the same impact as CW on the pay gap and attributes that to CW’s focus on comparing tasks in dissimilar jobs.
What’s the main idea here? Even if you don’t get a main idea question, articulating this to yourself will help you to orient yourself to the passage and answer even specific questions. Here’s my stab at the main idea:
Explain an important method for tackling a widespread problem and demonstrate that this method has a distinct advantage in one particular situation (when dealing with different jobs).
All right, got it. Time to do the problem (unless you decided to skip it!).
* “It can be inferred from the passage that application of “other mandates” (see highlighted text) would be unlikely to result in an outcome satisfactory to the female employees in which of the following situations?
“I. Males employed as long-distance truck drivers for a furniture company make $3.50 more per hour than do females with comparable job experience employed in the same capacity.
“II. Women working in the office of a cement company content that their jobs are as demanding and valuable as those of the men working outside in the cement factory, but the women are paid much less per hour.
“III. A law firm employs both male and female paralegals with the same educational and career backgrounds, but the starting salary for male paralegals is $5,000 more than for female paralegals.
“(A) I only
“(B) II only
“(C) III only
“(D) I and II only
“(E) I and III only”
Join me in the next installment of this series, when we’ll talk about how to work your way through the above problem and we’ll try another. ?
Key Takeaways for Mapping Long Passages
(1) You’re trying to accomplish three things: understand the overall “story” of the passage, note the purpose of each paragraph, and articulate the overall main point to yourself.
(2) Don’t go too deep! Compare my Map to the actual passage. I didn’t write down or even bother to try to remember the Equal Pay Act or Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. If I need to know their names, I can go back to the passage at any time. All I really need to know is that they are “other”: the point is that they work differently than the big CW theory.
(3) Once you’re done with your read-through, take about 20-30 seconds to articulate the main point to yourself. Don’t skip this step! You’ll use it to answer any main idea questions and to inform your answers to other questions.
* GMATPrep® questions courtesy of the Graduate Management Admissions Council. Usage of this question does not imply endorsement by GMAC.
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Stacey Koprince is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Montreal, Canada and Los Angeles, California. Stacey has been teaching the GMAT, GRE, and LSAT for more than 15 years and is one of the most well-known instructors in the industry. Stacey loves to teach and is absolutely fascinated by standardized tests. Check out Stacey’s upcoming GMAT courses here.