{"id":19833,"date":"2013-07-23T13:42:20","date_gmt":"2013-07-23T20:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/?p=19833"},"modified":"2013-07-23T13:43:47","modified_gmt":"2013-07-23T20:43:47","slug":"uh-oh-i-dont-know-this-gmat-question-what-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/uh-oh-i-dont-know-this-gmat-question-what-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Uh-Oh, I Don\u2019t Know This GMAT Question…What Now?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tips-for-the-new-GMAT\"<\/a>Picture this: It\u2019s the day of your GMAT. You\u2019re cruising through the Quant section, you\u2019re feeling pretty good about things...and then up pops a doozy of a GMAT math question. It catches you off guard and you\u2019re not quite sure what to do. You start to panic a bit. You read and re-read the question and now it just starts to look like a jumbled mess to you. The clock continues to tick away inexorably, and yet you\u2019re not making any progress. You\u2019re sure you could answer the problem if you had enough time, but time is not a luxury you have when taking the GMAT.<\/p>\n

What do you do?<\/p>\n

Whether you like it or not, there will be questions on the GMAT<\/a> that you don\u2019t immediately know how to answer. Yet, it\u2019s your job to get as many right answers as possible. Here are three key strategies to help you keep a level head and calmly know how to proceed when you encounter these difficult problems on test day.<\/p>\n

1. Start doing something <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Students often feel like they should be able to immediately see how an entire problem will unfold from beginning to end if they\u2019re to answer it correctly. If they don\u2019t see all of the steps in their mind, then they sort of just throw in the towel. But that\u2019s not always necessary.<\/a><\/p>\n

I like the analogy of driving through the fog with your headlights on. If you\u2019ve ever tried driving through thick fog, you know that it\u2019s hard to see more than just a few feet in front of you. You certainly can\u2019t see your ultimate destination way down the road, but you can see just far enough in front of you to make out the center line and drive as far as your headlights will illuminate. So you drive just that far. But then a funny thing happens: You can now drive a little further. And then a little further. And then further yet. And the next thing you know, having driven only as far as your headlights would allow you to see each time, you\u2019re able to make it to your final destination.<\/p>\n

The GMAT can work the same way. Even if you don\u2019t know how to do the whole problem right away, you can almost always do something. Write down a formula. Draw a diagram. Sketch out an equation and solve for one of the variables. At the time you might not see how it will be helpful, but often the very act of doing something opens the door to the next step in the process, and then the next step after that becomes apparent, and eventually you\u2019re able to tackle the entire problem.<\/p>\n

2. Use non-standard math techniques<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

One of the most common things I hear from my students, especially on GMAT problem solving questions, is that they don\u2019t know how to get started on certain problems. \u201cIf only I just knew how to begin, then I could do the rest of it,\u201d they say. If you find that you\u2019re having trouble knowing how to solve a problem in a traditional way, turn to non-standard GMAT math techniques<\/a>. For example, if the answer choices are all numbers, try working backwards and plugging the answers into the question, starting with answer choice \u201cC,\u201d to see which one works. (Note: Click here<\/a> for a free session<\/a> that will teach you this important \u201cWorking Backwards\u201d GMAT strategy). Or if the question and answer choices contain variables, make up numbers for those variables to make esoteric algebra problems more concrete (and therefore easier). And on GMAT geometry questions where the figure is drawn to scale, use that figure to your advantage by \u201ceyeballing\u201d the length of line segments or degree measure of an angle. There are a lot of useful strategies for out-thinking the test makers and avoiding difficult math if you train yourself to employ them properly.<\/p>\n

3. Eliminate clearly wrong answer choices<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

There are always a couple \u201cthrow away\u201d answer choices that you can eliminate if you just apply a little logic and common sense. On probability questions, for example, you can often take a step back and ask yourself: \u201cOkay, big picture here, is the outcome in question likely or not likely?\u201d For example, What is the probability of getting at least one \u201cheads\u201d on four consecutive flips of a coin? You may not know how to solve for the exact probability, but you certainly know whether there\u2019s a good chance or a slim chance of the outcome occurring. In fact, given that the individual probability of getting a \u201cheads\u201d on one flip of a coin is 50%, then the likelihood of getting a \u201cheads\u201d is going to be really high (certainly greater than 50%) if I\u2019m giving you four chances. If answer choice A is something really small like 1\/16, then, you can eliminate it straight away. Likewise if answer choice B is also small, like 1\/4, you can eliminate it as well. Just getting rid of those two answers will increase your guessing odds from 20% (1 in 5) to 33.3% (1 in 3). If you\u2019re able to do that for every question you ultimately have to guess on, then statistically if you have to guess on six questions throughout the GMAT quant section, that\u2019ll result in two more correct answers for you. Not bad.<\/p>\n

Brett Ethridge is the founder of <\/em>Dominate the GMAT<\/a>, a leading provider of GMAT courses online<\/a> and topic-specific GMAT video lessons. He has taught the GMAT for 9 years and loves working with students to help them achieve their highest potential. Brett is an entrepreneur, a triathlete, and an avid Duke basketball fan.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\n<\/span><\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on the Accepted Admissions Consulting Blog<\/a>, the official blog of Accepted.com.<\/em> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Picture this: It\u2019s the day of your GMAT. You\u2019re cruising through the Quant section, you\u2019re feeling pretty good about things…and then up pops a doozy of a GMAT math question.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1,939,775,113,736],"tags":[399,511,212,640,574,220,361],"class_list":["post-19833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mba","category-uncategorized","category-accepted","category-admission-consultants","category-applications","category-quant-gmat","tag-gmat-preparation","tag-gmat-quant","tag-gmat-questions","tag-gmat-strategies","tag-gmat-strategy","tag-gmat-test","tag-gmat-tips","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19833"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19835,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19833\/revisions\/19835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}