How to Read for GMAT Reading Comprehension

Here’s a simple trugh: You Don’t Read Fast Enough for the GMAT

This isn’t an insult. It’s not a personal attack. It’s a statement of fact.

Top scorers in the Verbal section simply read faster. The people who treat GMAT Verbal like a light morning jog, who have time to check over every tricky Sentence Correction before the clock runs out? They often finish with ten to fifteen minutes still on the timer.

What separates them from the pack isn’t magic. It’s not “being good at English” in some vague way. It’s that they move their eyes across the page more quickly, process information more efficiently, and make fewer unnecessary stops along the way.

How Do I Learn to Read Faster?

Fair question. Here’s the reality: I can’t hand you a miracle technique and suddenly you’re reading at double your current speed. Most strong readers got that way through years—sometimes decades—of practice. They’ve built up endurance, honed shortcuts, and learned how to identify what matters in a text and what’s just decorative.

I’m not talking Guinness World Record–level speed reading here. I’m talking practical, “graduate student in research mode” reading: somewhere in the range of 450 to 600 words per minute.

That’s fast enough to handle GMAT Reading Comprehension without sweating the clock. It’s also fast enough to chew through dense journal articles or a week’s worth of work emails in half the time.

I can’t force you to pick up a book, but I can show you where the water is. If the horse dies of thirst next to the river… well, I did my part.

“I Could Never Read That Fast!”

Good news: yes, you can.

Bad news: you’ll need to practice—hard—to get there.

A lot of people don’t read much. That’s not a moral failing; it’s just the reality. But if you’re one of them, here’s step one: stop sulking about it. Step two: read more.

You need regular, sustained exposure to text that’s at or above the level you’ll face on the GMAT. My go-to recommendations? Scientific American and The Economist.

These publications hit the sweet spot: long-form, information-dense, formal but readable. They’re challenging without being completely opaque. The topics—science, politics, business, culture—are similar in tone and structure to GMAT Reading Comprehension passages.

So buy a copy. Subscribe. Steal your roommate’s if you have to. And read them. On the train. In waiting rooms. On lunch breaks. In the shower if you’ve figured out how to waterproof a magazine. The when and where don’t matter. The frequency does.

Change your phone wallpaper to this:

STOP CHECKING FACETOK, INSTACHAT, AND TWATTEX. PICK UP A BOOK. EVEN A MAGAZINE. THE GMAT WILL THANK YOU.

It sounds silly, but reminders help. Every page you read at this level is a training rep for your brain. And yes—you might even learn something along the way.

Why GMAT Reading Comprehension Is Meant to Be Confusing

If you’ve ever read a GMAT passage and thought, “Who writes like this?”, the answer is: someone whose job is to slow you down.

These passages are dense by design. They’re written in ways that make your brain work harder—unfamiliar topics, abstract phrasing, complex syntax. The structure isn’t what you’d find in a news article or blog post.

And here’s where most test-takers sabotage themselves: they assume the solution is to slow down and read for every detail. That instinct is wrong.

The Counterintuitive Fix: Go Faster

Yes, faster. And no, that doesn’t mean becoming reckless. It means adjusting your goal.

When you speed up, you stop fixating on the micro-details that are irrelevant for most questions. You start focusing on the structure—the big picture of how the passage is organized, where the main points are, and how the author moves from one idea to the next.

Why does this matter? Because up to 80% of Reading Comprehension questions are structure-based. They’re about main ideas, the author’s purpose, tone, paragraph roles—not the specific chemical in the example from paragraph two.

A colleague of mine swears you could read a GMAT RC passage in 30 seconds and still get 80% of the questions right—with proper training—because all you really need for most of them is the skeleton, not the flesh.

Details Are Overrated (At First)

Think of the passage as a map. If you know the general layout, you can always zoom in later for specifics. On the GMAT, the passage never disappears—it’s right there for you to revisit on detail questions.

By contrast, if you start by reading for every detail, you risk sinking into the verbal quicksand. You’ll lose track of the big picture, waste precious time, and feel more pressure when you realize you’ve spent four minutes on the first question.

How Much “Care” to Use on Each GMAT Section

When it comes to slow, careful reading, here’s the order from most to least attention:

Data Insights (Including DS) – precise interpretation of every word matters.
Problem Solving – careful enough to catch traps in wording.
Critical Reasoning – focus on argument structure.
Reading Comprehension – fastest read, least micro-level care.

Yes—you read that right. RC gets the least careful reading because you’re aiming for structural understanding first, details second.

The 2-Minute Structural Read

A well-practiced GMAT reader can scan a passage in 30 seconds to two minutes and know exactly:

The topic.
The author’s main point.
The function of each paragraph.

That’s all you need to tackle most questions. Then, when a detail question pops up (“Which of the following best describes the chemical reaction described in paragraph two?”), you can go back and read that part with care.

The Utensil Method: Forcing Speed

If you want a physical trick to keep yourself moving, grab a pen, pencil, or even your finger (please, not a box cutter).

Run the tip under the words as you read. Your eyes should follow the tip, not the text directly.

And here’s the big rule: never let the tip move backward. Most people don’t realize how often they re-read sentences without noticing. That silent backtracking eats up time and breaks concentration.

As you practice, you’ll start noticing every time you want to drift back. Resist it. Keep moving.

Active vs. Passive Reading

Reading with a utensil is one way to force Active Reading—reading with a purpose, engaged in the material.

Active Reading means:

Leaning forward slightly.
Tracking with your utensil.
Processing ideas as they appear.
Pausing briefly (often a blink) to let your brain “file” the information.
Summarizing each main idea mentally before moving on.

Passive Reading is the opposite: letting the words wash over you without retention, like killing time with a disposable beach novel. GMAT RC punishes passive reading mercilessly.

Scan and Skim: Two Techniques to Test

You can combine your utensil with two approaches:

SCAN – Run your utensil straight down the middle of the passage in 30 seconds or less. Don’t process everything; just get a broad sense of topic and tone.

SKIM – Read line-by-line at a pace that feels slightly too fast for comfort. Push for gist over precision.

Try both on practice passages: one with SCAN + question answering, one with SKIM + question answering. See which gives you better accuracy and speed.

Why You Need to Learn to Enjoy It

If you absolutely hate reading, here’s your uncomfortable truth: you’ll need to learn to like it—at least for the GMAT’s purposes.

Think of Wimbledon champions or elite violinists. They don’t love the abstract concept of “tennis” or “music.” They’re hooked on incremental improvement—getting a little better each day, mastering tiny details most people never notice.

That’s how you should approach GMAT Verbal. Even if you dislike the test, you can learn to enjoy getting faster, sharper, and more accurate.

Developing Stockholm Syndrome for the GMAT

At first, it’s an adversary. Over time, as you work with it daily, you start to understand it. You recognize its patterns. You even—dare I say it—start to feel comfortable with it.

That’s not love for the test. It’s love for the process of mastering it.

Your Next Step

Pick up something dense to read today—The Economist, Scientific American, Smithsonian, Foreign Affairs.
Practice SCAN and SKIM on GMAT-style passages.
Use the utensil method to keep yourself moving forward.
Focus on structure first; fetch details later.
Track your time and accuracy, aiming to finish RC with minutes to spare.

Speed and comprehension can be trained. It’s not glamorous, but it works.

The GMAT isn’t impressed by slow, careful, perfect reading. It rewards quick structure recognition and targeted detail-hunting. Train for that, and your score will thank you.

Rowan