Unlike many of the Critical Reasoning question types on the GMAT, Evaluate the Plan questions are unique to the exam; you are extremely unlikely to find them on the LSAT, which does feature most of the other question types. Therefore, if you choose to use LSAT Critical Reasoning materials in your GMAT preparation, you’ll need to make an extra effort to seek out Evaluate the Plan questions from traditional GMAT prep sources.
The questions themselves aren’t all that different from most of what you’ll see on the test: there’s a plan (or argument, in some cases), and the question stem asks you to identify the information that would be most helpful in evaluating the plan. This can take different forms; sometimes you’ll be asked to choose a study or research topic, for example, and other times you’ll be asked to identify the question that, when answered, would help you to evaluate the validity of the plan. The key to answering Evaluate the Plan questions with a minimum of stress is to use the skills that you employ for Assumption, Strengthen, Weaken, and some Flaw questions: look for a gap in the reasoning.
For example, an assumption question might look like this:
Video game designers develop innovative new gaming technology in response to the demands of the market. Only serious gamers are willing genuinely interested in innovative technology and willing to pay for it. Therefore, the video game designers at XYZ Gaming Corp. will develop new gaming technology only if it can be used in violent car-chase video games.
Which of the following is an assumption…
The correct assumption for this question would be something like this:
Serious gamers are only interested in innovative technology that can be used in violent car-chase video games.
This assumption ties together the evidence, which discusses serious gamers, with the plan, which addresses violent car-chase video games. But the same stimulus could be used for an Evaluate the Plan question, and the same identification of the gap in the reasoning could help us choose the correct answer. Let’s look at the question again, from that perspective:
Video game designers develop innovative new gaming technology in response to the demands of the market. Only serious gamers are willing genuinely interested in innovative technology and willing to pay for it. Therefore, the video game designers at XYZ Gaming Corp. will develop new gaming technology only if it can be used in violent car-chase video games.
The answer to which of the following questions would be most useful in evaluating the validity of XYZ Gaming Corp.’s plan?
- a. Are violent car-chase video games popular with the “casual gamer” segment of the market?
- b. What percentage of serious gamers is willing to invest significant amounts of money in purchasing newly developed technology?
- c. Are serious gamers interested in innovative technology that can be used in games outside of the violent car-chase genre?
- d. On average, what percentage of the total annual video game market has been comprised of violent car-chase video games for each of the last five years?
- e. How would one distinguish between a serious gamer and a casual gamer?
We know from evaluating this as an assumption question that there’s a gap between serious gamers and violent car-chase video games; now we look for a question that, if answered, would allow us to determine whether or not the link between them exists. We find that in choice C. If the answer to C is ‘yes,’ then the assumption we identified earlier is invalid and the plan is not a solid one. If the answer is ‘no,’ then the plan is valid. Either way, though, the answer to the question in choice C is important in evaluating the plan.
The basic approach for Evaluate the Plan questions, then, is similar to what you’ve been doing for assumption questions; you just need to take an extra step beyond identifying the gap to finding the question or study that would help you to fill it.
