Educated guess vs random guess

Question

Hi All,

I am just curious to know that how differently does GMAT treats an educated guess and a random guess.
By educated guess, I mean selecting an answer choice out of the two most close answer choices.
By random guess I mean blindly selecting an answer choice out of the 5 answer choices.

Does GMAT give some credit to a even a wrong answer choice when it is an educated guess.

ankurgupta03 · Answer

I am sure there is no way to find out if you are making an educated guess or a random guess.
Educated guess for one may be random guess for other.

If you are trying to justify an educated guess by the time spent on a question, then that case is also possible with a random guess wherein a person just sits scratching his head in search of an answer and then randomly marks one option and moves on.

I think you are trying to ask that if there are any marks for the second closest option. But this also is very subjective and depends on the individual.
The marks you get are only for the right answer.
Hope this helps!

KarishmaB · Answer

There is only one correct answer and you get credit for that only - whether you arrive at it by solving, guessing or making an educated guess, it's all the same for GMAT. There is no way for the software to tell how you arrived at the answer.

What educated guessing does is that it increases the probability of getting the correct answer. If you randomly guess on a question, the probability of getting it correct is 1/5. If you make an educated guess - say out of two options - the probability of getting it correct increases to 1/2.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi nphsingh,

There are some interesting aspects to the scoring algorithm for the Official GMAT that are worth knowing. Unfortunately, there is NO partial credit - you either select the one correct answer or you select one of the four incorrect answers. Each of the 4 wrong answers is treated the same (as far as the algorithm is concerned).

There are some other aspects of the program that you should know though:

1) If you leave any questions unanswered, then those questions are marked as 'incorrect' AND then are penalized. Thus, it's better to guess on those last couple of questions than to run out of time and not answer them.

2) There are experimental questions in both the Quant and Verbal section that do NOT count, so you shouldn't get too 'invested' or too 'emotional' on any one question (since it might not even count). Unfortunately, you won't know which ones those are.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

nphsingh · Answer

Thank you all for your replies. :-D

manyatpr · Answer

Hi nphsingh,

This topic is very subjective. The guess which may be an intelligent guess for you might not be the same for some other. In GMAT exam you get marks only for the correct answers.

www.manyagroup.com

KyleWiddison · Answer

Agreed - it is subjective because it's impossible to know if you have correctly eliminated three wrong answer choices and the test doesn't know which choices you have eliminated.

However, this is a very important point for test takers because many people don't work hard enough at eliminating incorrect answer choices along their way. They get late in the clock searching for the correct answer, start to panic when they see they are late and take a random guess. People need to have an explicit strategy around switching to "educated guess mode" at some point in every problem they can't figure out. Even eliminating a single incorrect answer increasing the chances of getting the problem correct. Those increased chances will add up to a higher score over the course of the exam...

KW

OptimusPrepJanielle · Answer

Hello nphsingh,

The GMAT doesn't give partial credit or credit that is different based on whether the answer is an educated or blind guess. Your answer is just right or wrong. I find that blind guesses are almost never right. But educated guesses will be a valuable friend. Here's are some tips on educated guessing: https://gmat.economist.com/blog/test-ta ... g-and-gmat.
https://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/20 ... ed-guesses
Use process of elimination first to narrow your answer choices down to 2 choices if you can, and then guess.

I hope that helps!

Educated guess vs random guess

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