Evaluate the Argument: Find the Question That Would SETTLE It

By EMPOWERgmat on September 17, 2024

Here is a mistake I watch people make every single week. Say you are twenty minutes into Verbal. You read a short argument about streetlights and car break-ins. The question asks what would be "most useful to know" to judge that argument. You scan the five answers, spot one that talks about streetlights, feel a little jolt of recognition and click it. Next question.

And you got it WRONG. Not because you cannot read. You got it wrong because you picked the answer that sounded RELATED instead of the answer that would SETTLE the argument. Those are not the same thing, and the people who write this test know you cannot tell them apart yet.

Let's fix that.

What an Evaluate question is actually asking

On the GMAT Focus Edition, the Verbal Reasoning section gives you 23 questions in 45 minutes, and every one of them is either Reading Comprehension or Critical Reasoning. That is straight from GMAC's page on the test format. A Critical Reasoning question (people call it CR) hands you a short argument, usually three to five sentences, and asks you to do one job with it.

An Evaluate question is one of those jobs. It usually reads something like "Which of the following would be most useful to determine in order to evaluate the argument?" Here is the real question underneath that wording:

If you could ask ONE question and get a straight answer, which question would tell you whether this argument holds up?

Stop and read that again. The right answer is not a fact that helps. It is not a fact that hurts. It is a question whose answer could go EITHER way, and whichever way it goes, you would know more about whether the conclusion is true.

Now here is why "related" is useless as a filter. Every single wrong answer on an Evaluate question is related to the argument. The test writers are not going to toss in an answer about pizza. They will give you four answers that use the same words as the argument and talk about the same topic, and only one of them actually matters. If your method is "which one sounds like it belongs," you are guessing with extra steps.

The both-ways test

This is the whole method. It takes four steps, and every step goes on your notepad, not in your head.

Find the conclusion and write it down in a few words. Something like "lights caused drop." If you do not know what the argument is trying to prove, you cannot tell what would settle it.
Answer the choice YES. Pretend the answer to that question is yes. Does the conclusion get stronger, get weaker or stay exactly where it was? Write a plus, a minus or a zero.
Answer the choice NO. Same check. Plus, minus or zero.
Pick the choice where the two marks point in OPPOSITE directions. One answer helps the argument and the other hurts it. That question SETTLES something. If either direction gives you a zero, that choice is out.

Your notes end up looking like a little grid: the letter, then "Y" with a mark, then "N" with a mark. It takes seconds once you have trained it. And it replaces the feeling of "hmm, this one seems important" with something you can actually check.

A balance scale shown twice side by side, with the same card on it: in the first picture the scale tips sharply left, in the second it tips sharply right. — The right answer tips the scale one way or the other depending on how it is answered.

Try it on a real one

Try it

In March, the city of Harlow replaced the streetlights on Elm Street with much brighter ones. In the six months after the change, reported car break-ins on Elm Street fell by 40 percent compared with the six months before the change. The mayor concludes that the brighter streetlights are responsible for the drop in car break-ins on Elm Street.

Which of the following would be most useful to determine in order to evaluate the mayor's conclusion?

Whether the brighter streetlights cost more to run than the old ones did
Whether residents of Elm Street say they feel safer walking at night since the change
Whether reported car break-ins on nearby streets that kept their old lights fell by a similar amount over the same period
Whether most car break-ins in Harlow happen on weekends
Whether Elm Street has more parked cars than the average street in Harlow

Show the answer

Step 1: the conclusion. On paper: "bright lights caused drop on Elm." That is a cause claim. Notice something sneaky, too. The "after" period runs from spring into late summer, while the "before" period ran through fall and winter. Different seasons. Hold that thought.

Step 2 and 3: run every choice both ways.

(A) Yes, the lights cost more: the lights still might or might not have caused the drop. Zero. No, they do not cost more: same thing. Zero. Cost would matter if the mayor were arguing the city SHOULD buy more lights. He is not. Out.

(B) Yes, residents feel safer: nice, but feeling safe does not tell us whether the lights stopped break-ins. Zero. No, they do not feel safer: break-ins still dropped either way. Zero. Out. This is the trap. It is about the lights, it is about safety, it is about Elm Street. It sounds SO related. And it settles nothing.

(C) Yes, nearby streets with old lights saw a similar drop: then something else probably caused the drop, like the change in seasons or more police patrols across the area. The conclusion gets weaker. Minus. No, nearby streets did not see a drop: then Elm Street stands out, and the one thing that changed there was the lights. The conclusion gets stronger. Plus. Minus one way, plus the other. THAT is the question that settles it.

(D) Yes, most happen on weekends: the drop on Elm still happened, and the lights shine every night of the week. Zero. No: also zero. Out.

(E) Yes, Elm has more parked cars: that might explain why Elm has lots of break-ins in general, but it was true before AND after the change, so it does not explain the drop. Zero. No: zero. Out.

Step 4: only one choice has opposite marks. The answer is (C).

The trap most people fall into: (B). It hits the same topics as the argument (the lights, safety, Elm Street), so it FEELS like it belongs, and it gives you a warm feeling that the lights "worked." Run it both ways and it does nothing to the conclusion.

Did you notice how fast the wrong answers died once you forced each one to take a side? That is the point. You are not weighing vibes. You are running a test that has a clear pass and a clear fail.

The mistakes that keep costing you Evaluate questions

I'll bet that if you pull up the Evaluate questions you missed in your last practice session, the answer you picked used MORE of the argument's words than the right answer did. Go check. Then look at this list.

Picking the answer that sounds familiar. Repeated words are bait. The test writers know that your brain treats familiar as true. INSTEAD: ignore the vocabulary completely and run every choice through the both-ways test. Familiar is not evidence.
Running the test only one way. You answer a choice "yes," see that it hurts the argument and click it. But some choices only matter in one direction, and some only feel like they matter. INSTEAD: always run BOTH directions and write both marks. One mark is a guess. Two marks is a decision.
Reading the answers before you know the conclusion. If you cannot say what the argument is trying to prove, every answer looks equally useful. INSTEAD: write the conclusion in a few words before you even look at choice (A).
Hunting for the "best fact." People treat Evaluate like a Strengthen question and look for the answer that most helps the argument. Wrong job. INSTEAD: remember the right answer is a QUESTION that could go either way. If you can only imagine it helping, it is probably not your answer.
Doing it all in your head because you are "too fast" to write. That is pride talking. Five choices, two directions each, is ten little judgments. Hold ten things in your head under a clock and you WILL drop one. INSTEAD: letter, Y, mark, N, mark. Every time. It is faster than rereading the argument three times, which is what you are doing now.

And no, the fact that you can review and change up to 3 answers per section is not a backup plan. You do not want to spend your end of section time rescuing questions you could have nailed the first time.

Why this matters more now

With Sentence Correction gone, Verbal is all reading and reasoning. There is nowhere to hide a weak reading habit anymore, which is exactly why your reading has to get sharper. You have 45 minutes for 23 questions, which works out to just under 2 minutes each on average. That is enough time to run a clean method. It is NOT enough time to stare at two answers and wait for one to feel right.

The same discipline shows up all over CR. The pull toward the exciting answer is the same pull that wrecks Inference questions, where the right answer is boring. Different question type, same lesson: the GMAT rewards the person who checks, not the person who feels.

A notepad page with five short rows, each row ending in two small symbols, and only one row where the two symbols point opposite ways is circled. — Ten quick marks on paper beat one gut feeling.

So what do you want MORE: an answer that feels familiar, or an answer that is correct? You cannot have both on this question type. The test is built so that you have to choose.

Your assignment for today

Pull five Evaluate questions from GMAC's official practice materials. For each one, write the conclusion in a few words. Then, for every answer choice, write Y and N with a plus, a minus or a zero next to each. That is 25 rows on your notepad. Do NOT look at the correct answer until all 25 rows are filled in.

Then check yourself. If you got one wrong, find the exact row where your marks went bad and figure out WHY. "I don't know" is not an allowed answer. Do that today, and the next time a familiar sounding answer winks at you on Test Day, you will put it on the scale and watch it do nothing.