Host: What strategies can I use on the GMAT data sufficiency questions?

Jeff Glazer: The data sufficiency questions are some of the most complicated questions on the GMAT, in fact they are one of the things most test takers fear the most or find most detrimental to their score. One of the things that you really want to do is get your problem solving down solid, the reason for that is since data sufficiency is asking just whether you can or cant solve a problem, the more problem solving you have done where you have actually gone through to the end, the more familiar you will be with what type of problems and what type of information you need to solve. The other thing is to become very familiar with the answered choices, the five answer choices for data sufficiency never change, so lot of test takers waste time constantly re-reading the answers but the answers are always the first one is that you can do with just statement one alone but not statement two, the second answer choice is you can do with statement two but not statement one, the third one is that you cant do it either by themselves but you can do it together, the fourth choice is that either statement one or statement two alone would be sufficient to solve the problem and the last one is that even all the information they give you is still not sufficient to actually answer the question. The more familiar you are with these five answers then you dont have to constantly re-read them, the better off you are. Another thing is to get very, very used to only looking at one statement at a time, a lot of test takers ultimately try to look at both statements together first and ultimately think oh, wow its sufficient and choose that third answer choice even though they could have done it with just one or the other statement by themselves.