A gimmicky GRE Critical Reasoning strategy that you may have heard about is “pre-thinking” the answers to the questions. Pre-thinking involves seeking to come up with or guess the answer to a CR question after reading the passage and question stem but before reading the answer choices.

The rationale for pre-thinking is that it will help you to understand the passage and identify the correct answer to the question. The truth is that pre-thinking is a rookie maneuver that can sabotage your performance, and here’s why.

For one thing, pre-thinking takes time. As you know, when taking the GRE, we have to use time efficiently, and taking the extra step of pre-thinking answer choices uses up some of our precious time. Now, of course, if pre-thinking were a surefire way of arriving at the correct answer to a CR question, then it would be a worthwhile use of time.

However, pre-thinking is not at all a surefire way of arriving at the correct answer to a CR question. After all, if we pre-think, we’ll come up with one possible answer to the question. Of course, there are many other possible answers, so there’s a good chance that one of those other possibilities will be the correct answer. In many cases, time spent pre-thinking is almost totally wasted.

Secondly, if we pre-think an answer, that pre-thought answer can distract us as we’re going through the answer choices. Imagine that you’re going through the choices with an answer in mind, but none of the choices match it. Rather than simply reading the choices and deciding which is best, you’re comparing the choices with your pre-thought answer without making much progress. Then, of course, you’ll have to go through the choices again without considering your pre-thought answer to find the one that actually works. Great ...

Finally, and worst of all, is the possibility that an incorrect answer is similar enough to your pre-though answer that you get tricked into choosing that incorrect answer. In such a case, pre-thinking will have totally sabotaged your performance.

The bottom line is that there’s no good reason to waste time trying to guess what the answer to a CR question will be when the five answer choices are right there in front of you on the screen. So, your move is to read the passage thoroughly, read the question stem, and then skip pre-thinking and go straight to the answer choices.

Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep