GMAT guessing per section

Question

Hello guys,

I would like to know how many question should a 99%er guess. 
The MGMAT says 4 to 7 questions per section.

Does this mean PS, DS and CR, RC, SC? so for the QUANT you guess 8 to 14 Qs and for the VERBAL 12 to 21?
Or for the whole QUANT and for the whole VERBAL from 4 to 7 Qs?

souvonik2k · Answer

Hi
In my opinion, the no. of guess shall be 4-7 in each Quant and Verbal section.
Having said that, do not make it a habit to guess, it is to be used only in extreme cases when you don't have any clue how to solve the problem or it is taking ~ 3min.

abhimahna · Answer

Hi standyonda ,

Well, I don't think leaving so many questions can ever lead you to score 99% in any section.

I personally feel there is no point of guessing the questions but I do understand that some people face timing issues.

So, if in case you have to guess anyhow, I would prefer guessing 3-5 questions atmost at the end of each section(Verbal or Quant).

The reason I said so is that guessing questions in the middle will actually drop your level of difficulty and getting easy questions correct is not as rewarding as getting tough questions correct. So, if you didn't guess in till the "near to" end and get them right, guessing at the end won't impact much.

I hope that makes sense.

All the best

k1414 · Answer

I sort of agree with abhimahna on this one. Although having the 4-7 number in the back of your head is useful, you should practice within the context that you should be working your problem areas to a point that you don't need to guess a certian type of question everytime you see it.

That being said, within the first minute of working on a question, you should be able to recognize whether you can solve it or not. It takes a lot of willpower to abandon a question, but it's also the key to having time at the end of the section. Answering the last few questions correctly will end your section on a positive slope, which can only serve to improve your final section score.

ccooley · Answer

This isn't going to be a very satisfying answer, but here it is:

- You should guess on as many problems as you need to in order to finish the entire section within the time limit. The whole point of guessing is to get through the entire section without running out of time. If you could do this without guessing  at all , then you should do that. If you need to guess 10+ times to get through the section, you should do that instead. Either way, if you guess  less than you need to , you'll run out of time at the end and you'll get a lower score than you could have gotten if you'd guessed more.

- Guessing doesn't hurt your score very much, because your score isn't calculated from the number of problems you got right. However, there are two things you want to avoid: making a lot of guesses in a row, and guessing on easy problems (because you're running out of time.) It's always completely fine to guess on a hard problem. You should also spread your guesses out throughout the section - in other words, guess  before  you need to, rather than waiting until you're already falling behind.

AjiteshArun · Answer

It's definitely not per question format (8-14 in quant and 12-21 in verbal)

Assuming that you're interested in a 99% overall (not in both quant and verbal), here's a 760 ESR if you'd like to check: 7 in verbal, 4 in quant. This test taker got a 760 with 11 (out of 58) questions incorrect. This is just one data point, and it's not easy to separate the guesses from the total number incorrect, so keep that in mind (some guesses might turn out to be correct, and some questions that were not guessed could turn out to be incorrect). I'm not sure what you're looking to do with this information though, or even whether something useful could be done with it.

standyonda · Answer

Thanks for all the answers. I wanted to know because my character is such that I hate guessing but I had a timing problem and with the mindset that a 99er will guess some questions it will help me to accept it

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GMAT guessing per section

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