GMAT Sample Questions

GMAT Verbal Section : GMAT Sample Critical Reasoning Questions

61. Millions of identical copies of a plant can be produced using new tissue-culture and cloning techniques.

    If plant propagation by such methods in laboratories proves economical, each of the following, if true, represents a benefit of the new techniques to farmers EXCEPT:

    1. The techniques allow the development of superior strains to take place more rapidly, requiring fewer generations of plants grown to maturity.
    2. It is less difficult to care for plants that will grow at rates that do not vary widely.
    3. Plant diseases and pests, once they take hold, spread more rapidly among genetically uniform plants than among those with genetic variations.
    4. Mechanical harvesting of crops is less difficult if plants are more uniform in size.
    5. Special genetic traits can more easily be introduced into plant strains with the use of the new techniques.

    Answer : C

62. Which of the following best completes the passage below? Sales campaigns aimed at the faltering personal computer market have strongly emphasized ease of use, called user-friendliness. This emphasis is oddly premature and irrelevant in the eyes of most potential buyers, who are trying to address the logically prior issue of whether
    1. user-friendliness also implies that owners can service their own computers
    2. personal computers cost more the more user-friendly they are
    3. currently available models are user-friendly enough to suit them
    4. the people promoting personal computers use them in their own homes
    5. they have enough sensible uses for a personal computer to justify the expense of buying one

    Answer : E

63. A weapons-smuggling incident recently took place in country Y. We all know that Y is a closed society. So Y's government must have known about the weapons.

    Which of the following is an assumption that would make the conclusion above logically correct?

    1. If a government knows about a particular weapons-smuggling incident, it must have intended to use the weapons for its own purposes.
    2. If a government claims that it knew nothing about a particular weapons-smuggling incident, it must have known everything about it.
    3. If a government does not permit weapons to enter a country, it is a closed society.
    4. If a country is a closed society, its government has a large contingent of armed guards patrolling its borders.
    5. If a country is a closed society, its government has knowledge about everything that occurs in the country.

    Answer : E

64. Banning cigarette advertisements in the mass media will not reduce the number of young people who smoke. They know that cigarettes exist and they know how to get them. They do not need the advertisements to supply that information.

    The above argument would be most weakened if which of the following were true?

    1. Seeing or hearing an advertisement for a product tends to increase people's desire for that product.
    2. Banning cigarette advertisements in the mass media will cause an increase in advertisements in places where cigarettes are sold.
    3. Advertisements in the mass media have been an exceedingly large part of the expenditures of the tobacco companies.
    4. Those who oppose cigarette use have advertised against it in the mass media ever since cigarettes were found to be harmful.
    5. Older people tend to be less influenced by mass-media advertisements than younger people tend to be.

    Answer : A

65. People tend to estimate the likelihood of an event's occurrence according to its salience; that is, according to how strongly and how often it comes to their attention.
    By placement and headlines, newspapers emphasize stories about local crime over stories about crime elsewhere and about many other major events.

    It can be concluded on the basis of the statements above that, if they are true, which of the following is most probably also true?

    1. The language used in newspaper headlines about local crime is inflammatory and fails to respect the rights of suspects.
    2. The coverage of international events in newspapers is neglected in favor of the coverage of local events.
    3. Readers of local news in newspapers tend to overestimate the amount of crime in their own localities relative to the amount of crime in other places.
    4. None of the events concerning other people that are reported in newspapers is so salient in people's minds as their own personal experiences.
    5. The press is the news medium that focuses people's attention most strongly on local crimes.

    Answer : C