Events & Promotions
|
|
GMAT Club Daily Prep
Thank you for using the timer - this advanced tool can estimate your performance and suggest more practice questions. We have subscribed you to Daily Prep Questions via email.
Customized
for You
Track
Your Progress
Practice
Pays
Not interested in getting valuable practice questions and articles delivered to your email? No problem, unsubscribe here.
May 1501:00 PM IST
-11:00 AM IST
Start your journey with a fully customized action plan and work with a dedicated mentor to achieve a 735+ score.
May 1212:00 PM EDT
-11:59 PM EDT
Make the most of your break with the most realistic GMAT™ prep. Take up to $700 off select products.
May 1810:00 AM PDT
-11:00 AM PDT
Join us in a live GMAT practice session and solve 25 challenging GMAT questions with other test takers in timed conditions, covering GMAT Quant, Data Sufficiency, Data Insights, Reading Comprehension, and Critical Reasoning questions.- May 19
12:00 PM PDT
-01:00 PM PDT
Scoring 329 on the GRE is not always about using more books, more courses, or a longer study plan. In this episode of GRE Success Talks, Ashutosh shares his GRE preparation strategy, study plan, and test-day experience, explaining how he kept his prep.... - Jun 10
06:00 AM PDT
-06:15 PM PDT
Register for the GMAT Club Virtual MBA Spotlight Fair – the world’s premier event for serious MBA candidates. This is your chance to hear directly from Admissions Directors at nearly every Top 30 MBA program..
24 Nov 2022, 23:36
Kudos
Bookmarks
GMAT Verbal for Non-Native English Speakers
It may seem counterintuitive, but any smart GMAT test-taking strategy should include strategies for guessing on the GMAT. Of course, no one wants to have a reason to employ their guessing strategies on test day, but as the saying goes, “Hope for the best; prepare for the worst.” I know that we all hope to answer every question we see on the GMAT in the allotted time. However, the reality is that doing so is not always possible. Thus, guessing is a part of any GMAT.So, let’s talk about some practical, flexible, and research-backed GMAT guessing strategies to maximize your score.
To start, let’s discuss the difference between the two main guessing strategies that test-takers employ: educated guessing and random guessing.
Educated Guessing vs. Random Guessing
There are two basic types of guessing that test-takers have in their arsenal for the GMAT: educated guessing and random guessing. To start, we will discuss educated guessing and look at an example in which taking an educated guess is necessary.Educated Guessing
Educated guessing is what you do when you know enough about a question to eliminate some answer choices. Still, you aren’t sure what the correct answer is, and getting to that answer will require too much time or perhaps be beyond your capabilities.Maybe you’re stuck deciding between two answer choices. Or maybe you’ve been able to eliminate only one choice confidently. Or you take educated guess because you are running out of time or spending too long on a particular question. Either way, you take your best guess at the correct answer, based on your work so far, and move on.
When to Make Educated Guesses
For obvious reasons, educated guessing is always preferable to random guessing. After all, if you have five answers to select, you have only a 1 in 5 chance of choosing correctly. But if you have, for example, only three answers to choose from, then your odds just got significantly better.So, if you’re struggling to make any headway on a question, or you realize you’re taking an inordinate amount of time to figure a question out, and you decide you need to guess, your best bet is to try to quickly eliminate some answers rather than randomly guess. Even if you can eliminate only one answer, or if you feel 70% or 60% certain that 2 or 3 answers are wrong, you’re still giving yourself a better shot at guessing correctly. It’s OK that when making an edutucated guess you may not always be totally confident in your answer.
However, if based on your know-how and the work you’ve done so far, you feel reasonably confident that a particular answer is more likely wrong than another answer, for the purposes of educated guessing, you’ve still done your best to narrow your choices. The key point is to assess and make your best guess quickly.
We can demonstrate how you might take an educated guess. Let’s say you made a math mistake in the following problem. Then you had no choice but to take an educated guess and move on to the next problem.
Example of Taking an Educated Guess
In a veterinary office, there are 8 dogs with an average age of 9 years and 40 cats with an average age of 2 years. What is the approximate average age of the 48 dogs and cats at the veterinary office?A. 2
B. 3
C. 5
D. 6
E. 8
Scenario:
Let’s say when you first see this problem, you feel quite confident that you know how to solve it. However, after close to 2 minutes, you realize that you have not come up with the correct answer, and because you cannot spot your mistake, you don’t think it’s worth it to keep grinding through the problem.
In this case, you can at least employ your knowledge of weighted averages to understand that the correct answer must be between 2 and 9 years, and because there are more cats than dogs, the correct answer will be closer to 2 than to 9.
Thus, 3 and 5 are the two possible answers. So, at least you now have a 50% shot at a correct answer. This is an example of using your previous knowledge about a topic and making an educated guess to try to come up with the correct answer. (Also, if you are wondering, the weighted average of the ages is 3.16, so the correct answer is 3.)
Let’s discuss educated guesses in more detail by looking at some scenarios in which making educated guesses is the right move.
The Art of Letting Go
One uncomfortable fact about the GMAT is that you must be comfortable letting go of questions you cannot solve. To that end, a significant part of being prepared for the GMAT is knowing your strengths and weaknesses. It’s valuable to have a clear understanding your strengths and weaknesses on a micro question level.For the deep dive on all strategies, view my full article on Target Test Prep’s blog.
Warmest regards,
Scott
Moderators:
201 posts
