Some GRE Reading Comprehension passages are full of details. For example, a passage may mention four different scientists and each of their theories on a certain topic, or a passage might discuss three different situations in which a certain strategy can be used. In such a case, it’s easy to get bogged down in those details. As you’re reading, you may seek to keep straight which scientist thinks what, or which situation a strategy works best in and why, but here’s the issue.

Getting those details straight will take up time, and the questions associated with the passage won’t likely ask about every one of those details. Thus, getting all those details straight won’t likely even pay off. So, spending time getting all those details straight will unnecessarily use up the precious time you have to complete the verbal section of the GRE.

What this information means to us is that, the move when reading an RC passage is to seek to understand overall what the passage is saying while not seeking to get every detail straight. Notice, the idea here is not that we should skim RC passages or use a gimmicky strategy such as reading only the first and last sentence of each paragraph. The point is simply that we can save time by not bothering to fully process and get straight every single detail the first time we read the passage. We can always go back and get details straight if necessary to answer a particular question.