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Hi all!
Before we start, we would want to know how is your prep going?
Are your Mock scores upto the mark or have you analyzed some stark errors or gaps that once closed, will help you to raise the bar even higher?
Are you fully into concepts & application build up or you do try to guess smartly on the Official Questions?
Why don't you let us know through your response or comments here?
So lets GUESS this out!
Here you are, not much worried about practicing n number of questions but more about the three digit GMAT score, Official Mock Tests, gaps of "thinking" and the algorithm of "thought process" that may be one of the prominent reasons to pull down on the score.
You want to maximize the chances of getting a great score and want to know every tip to help you get a boost on the day of the exam.
You are thinking on time management but don't want to go all ROBOTIC to to precisely measure your time with every question.
Has all of this been going on in your mind?
This piece is filtered and distilled from over 20 years of what we have learned from observing students trying to maximize their scores
(Note: Many of these were very, very smart students who went on to do their MBA from top schools such as Harvard, Wharton, INSEAD. So this advice is gold).
Let us focus our attention in the next 4 min on the following-
1. When to guess on the GMAT?
2. How many questions can I guess for my target GMAT score?
3. How long should I take before I decide to guess a question on the GMAT?
4.What kind of questions on GMAT can we guess?
Lets get to some deep diving!
1. When to guess on the GMAT?
Have you heard of the Pareto principle? Lets try to explain you something here.
80% of the GMAT questions you will solve in under 2 minutes.
But 20% of the questions will take disproportionate time on the GMAT.
Sometimes it may so happen that you invest 60 sec and reach a dead end but still go ahead to invest another 60 sec on the same question!
There are 3 categories of GMAT questions that you would encounter.
Very Advanced and Challenging Question- These are questions that are just not worth solving. For example a lengthy word problem where you are unable to figure out the operations occurring or needed to occur in the question.
The Trick Monster - There are some of those questions that leave you confused about the required task. For example an obvious C option as answer to a DS question whereas the right answer would be E.
The Effort drainer - These are the questions that you know you can solve, but they just take a humongous amount of time. For example, an inference question in RC for which you have to comb the passage multiple times
Once you recognize the type of the question and get a sense that it might require a greater investment of time and effort than you are prepared to give- YOU KNOW YOU NEED TO GUESS AND MOVE ON!
All of us have been guilty of overspending time on some questions. Isn't it?
Just remember that on the GMAT, this can prove to be an expensive dilemma. We end up digging ourselves into a deeper hole in that case.
If you end up randomly marking an answer at the end of two minutes – it is not guessing – it is putting your weapons to ground. In this case, the GMAT is in control.
Think of Guessing as a "strategy" which YOU have absolute CONTROL and learn exercising not only the strategy but also the experience of having full control on it.
2. How many questions can I guess for my target GMAT score?
Lets analyze this through a simple example.
You need to score possibly in the 80th percentile range for both quant and verbal – giving you a total GMAT percentile score in the high 90s. For example, a Q50 (87th %ile) and a V40 (80th %ile) will give you a respectable 740 (96th %ile).
This is a score at which no business school will reject you based on your GMAT scores (of course, there are other reasons for rejection such as profile, interviewing skills though).
GMAT Tip-On GMAT,your focus should be on scoring enough questions right to get to your goal of the 87th%ile in Quant and 80th%ile in Verbal.
We have to set a trigger for the [url=https://www.crackverbal.com/resources/how-to-calculate-gmat-score/]GMAT algorithm[url] that we are one among the 7500 students in 2022 who will end up scoring a 740+ – calculating it as the 97th %ile from among roughly 2,50,000 students.
About 7-8 mistakes in Verbal spread evenly across the test, and about 4-5 mistakes in Quant should get you a Q50 V40 – leading to a 740.
That means you can get 1 in 5 questions wrong in Verbal and 1 in 6 in Quant and still get to your targetted score!
Also remember its not only the number of questions but the difficulty level that matters for an overall GMAT score.
This guides us to another pertinent question related to time-
3. How long should I take before I decide to guess a question on the GMAT?
You have a total of 127 minutes (62 minutes for Quant and 65 minutes for Verbal) to complete 67 questions (31 questions in Quant and 36 questions in Verbal)
That means 113.73 seconds per question on average. Or 120 seconds for every quant question and 108 seconds for every verbal question.
But its not strategic to start worrying of time invested at every question but rather a bulk of questions.
It is effectiveness (getting the question right) that is our goal and not efficiency (getting it under the time limit).
It is better to agree that we will invest slightly more time in a few questions while intelligently guessing a few of them. One must try to smash the Easy and Intermediate and have reserve time created for the Advanced Questions.
So, WHICH types of questions YOU need to use the strategy of guessing?
4.What kind of questions on GMAT can we guess?
There are two ways of guessing; one which is a guess made when you are stuck between two answer choices and so you take a chance by intuitively marking one of them and the second is when you understand nothing of the Question stem and randomly take a blind guess to move on.
Lets look through the kinds of guesses you can make in the different GMAT topics
SC Guessing Strategy-
Make an educated guess when you are stuck between two options and don’t waste more time sitting on the fence by weighing the options in your mind.
When complete sentence is underlined, and the answer options have different sentence structures you can make a move of a blind guess as these questions require you to mentally juggle the sentence structures and ensure that you are retaining the meaning of the sentence. These questions demand a lot of time and you can strategize using the guessing game here.
CR Guessing Strategy-
On CR questions, try to remove at least a few answer options using common traps such as out of scope, extreme answers, and vague phrases.
When you are down to the last two and cannot process it further – you might want to pick an answer and move on. If you havent understood the question or made sense of it,you must not use a lot of your time but move on with a blind guess otherwise. Always remember guessing is also a a "strategy" on GMAT.
RC Guessing Strategy-
In the inference questions on GMAT, be careful of each word.Put the last two options under a scanner and understand the correct contextual meaning of the words.You dont want to fall in the classic traps!
Questions that start with “Which of the following predictive statements the author would agree with” are the best ones to guess but you must understand that you have to maximize the ROI by guessing one question among the three / four questions for any given passage.
PS Guessing Strategy-
It is essential that you master the art of "eliminating choices" on questions of GMAT. Eliminate choices by information from question stem and from logically deduced inferences. Then make an educated guess among the leftover choices.
If its a lengthy word problem or a geometry problem say from coordinate geometry that you just cant maneuver, take a guess and move on!
DS Guessing Strategy-
Typically the C-Trap questions would put you under the radar. But if you can identify the constraints clearly then it wont be difficult to take an educated guess and mark an answer between C / E.
If you cannot understand the context of the question and/or the concept remains unclear,its best to guess wild and move on!
Since GMAT tests on several abilities of a B-School aspirant, learning strategies and practicing to know when to use the right strategy is the name of the game and we reiterate that guessing like elimination, back solving, testing values is also a strategy that can reward you with both time and accuracy.
If you get 3 questions incorrect sequentially because you did not guess through the paper but ran short of time at the end and took 3 sequential guesses, the penalty is huge!
However if you have taken distributed guess at the right place and used guessing as a strategy, you would not lose that much.
Strategizing on your paper and the attempts of the question is equally important as attempting the questions correctly under 2 min.
We hope that it made sense and we could strike a chord!
Do let us know if you liked this piece and if we have added value to your GMAT journey through this read.
Crackverbal Academics
Before we start, we would want to know how is your prep going?
Are your Mock scores upto the mark or have you analyzed some stark errors or gaps that once closed, will help you to raise the bar even higher?
Are you fully into concepts & application build up or you do try to guess smartly on the Official Questions?
Why don't you let us know through your response or comments here?
So lets GUESS this out!
Here you are, not much worried about practicing n number of questions but more about the three digit GMAT score, Official Mock Tests, gaps of "thinking" and the algorithm of "thought process" that may be one of the prominent reasons to pull down on the score.
You want to maximize the chances of getting a great score and want to know every tip to help you get a boost on the day of the exam.
You are thinking on time management but don't want to go all ROBOTIC to to precisely measure your time with every question.
Has all of this been going on in your mind?
This piece is filtered and distilled from over 20 years of what we have learned from observing students trying to maximize their scores
(Note: Many of these were very, very smart students who went on to do their MBA from top schools such as Harvard, Wharton, INSEAD. So this advice is gold).
Let us focus our attention in the next 4 min on the following-
1. When to guess on the GMAT?
2. How many questions can I guess for my target GMAT score?
3. How long should I take before I decide to guess a question on the GMAT?
4.What kind of questions on GMAT can we guess?
Lets get to some deep diving!
1. When to guess on the GMAT?
Have you heard of the Pareto principle? Lets try to explain you something here.
80% of the GMAT questions you will solve in under 2 minutes.
But 20% of the questions will take disproportionate time on the GMAT.
Sometimes it may so happen that you invest 60 sec and reach a dead end but still go ahead to invest another 60 sec on the same question!
There are 3 categories of GMAT questions that you would encounter.
Very Advanced and Challenging Question- These are questions that are just not worth solving. For example a lengthy word problem where you are unable to figure out the operations occurring or needed to occur in the question.
The Trick Monster - There are some of those questions that leave you confused about the required task. For example an obvious C option as answer to a DS question whereas the right answer would be E.
The Effort drainer - These are the questions that you know you can solve, but they just take a humongous amount of time. For example, an inference question in RC for which you have to comb the passage multiple times
Once you recognize the type of the question and get a sense that it might require a greater investment of time and effort than you are prepared to give- YOU KNOW YOU NEED TO GUESS AND MOVE ON!
All of us have been guilty of overspending time on some questions. Isn't it?
Just remember that on the GMAT, this can prove to be an expensive dilemma. We end up digging ourselves into a deeper hole in that case.
If you end up randomly marking an answer at the end of two minutes – it is not guessing – it is putting your weapons to ground. In this case, the GMAT is in control.
Think of Guessing as a "strategy" which YOU have absolute CONTROL
and learn exercising not only the strategy but also the experience of having full control on it.2. How many questions can I guess for my target GMAT score?
Lets analyze this through a simple example.
You need to score possibly in the 80th percentile range for both quant and verbal – giving you a total GMAT percentile score in the high 90s. For example, a Q50 (87th %ile) and a V40 (80th %ile) will give you a respectable 740 (96th %ile).
This is a score at which no business school will reject you based on your GMAT scores (of course, there are other reasons for rejection such as profile, interviewing skills though).
GMAT Tip-On GMAT,your focus should be on scoring enough questions right to get to your goal of the 87th%ile in Quant and 80th%ile in Verbal.We have to set a trigger for the [url=https://www.crackverbal.com/resources/how-to-calculate-gmat-score/]GMAT algorithm[url] that we are one among the 7500 students in 2022 who will end up scoring a 740+ – calculating it as the 97th %ile from among roughly 2,50,000 students.
About 7-8 mistakes in Verbal spread evenly across the test, and about 4-5 mistakes in Quant should get you a Q50 V40 – leading to a 740.
That means you can get 1 in 5 questions wrong in Verbal and 1 in 6 in Quant and still get to your targetted score!
Also remember its not only the number of questions but the difficulty level that matters for an overall GMAT score.
This guides us to another pertinent question related to time-
3. How long should I take before I decide to guess a question on the GMAT?
You have a total of 127 minutes (62 minutes for Quant and 65 minutes for Verbal) to complete 67 questions (31 questions in Quant and 36 questions in Verbal)
That means 113.73 seconds per question on average. Or 120 seconds for every quant question and 108 seconds for every verbal question.
But its not strategic to start worrying of time invested at every question but rather a bulk of questions.
It is effectiveness (getting the question right) that is our goal and not efficiency (getting it under the time limit).
It is better to agree that we will invest slightly more time in a few questions while intelligently guessing a few of them. One must try to smash the Easy and Intermediate and have reserve time created for the Advanced Questions.
So, WHICH types of questions YOU need to use the strategy of guessing?
4.What kind of questions on GMAT can we guess?
There are two ways of guessing; one which is a guess made when you are stuck between two answer choices and so you take a chance by intuitively marking one of them and the second is when you understand nothing of the Question stem and randomly take a blind guess to move on.
Lets look through the kinds of guesses you can make in the different GMAT topics
SC Guessing Strategy-
Make an educated guess when you are stuck between two options and don’t waste more time sitting on the fence by weighing the options in your mind.
When complete sentence is underlined, and the answer options have different sentence structures you can make a move of a blind guess as these questions require you to mentally juggle the sentence structures and ensure that you are retaining the meaning of the sentence. These questions demand a lot of time and you can strategize using the guessing game here.
CR Guessing Strategy-
On CR questions, try to remove at least a few answer options using common traps such as out of scope, extreme answers, and vague phrases.
When you are down to the last two and cannot process it further – you might want to pick an answer and move on. If you havent understood the question or made sense of it,you must not use a lot of your time but move on with a blind guess otherwise. Always remember guessing is also a a "strategy" on GMAT.
RC Guessing Strategy-
In the inference questions on GMAT, be careful of each word.Put the last two options under a scanner and understand the correct contextual meaning of the words.You dont want to fall in the classic traps!
Questions that start with “Which of the following predictive statements the author would agree with” are the best ones to guess but you must understand that you have to maximize the ROI by guessing one question among the three / four questions for any given passage.
PS Guessing Strategy-
It is essential that you master the art of "eliminating choices" on questions of GMAT. Eliminate choices by information from question stem and from logically deduced inferences. Then make an educated guess among the leftover choices.
If its a lengthy word problem or a geometry problem say from coordinate geometry that you just cant maneuver, take a guess and move on!
DS Guessing Strategy-
Typically the C-Trap questions would put you under the radar. But if you can identify the constraints clearly then it wont be difficult to take an educated guess and mark an answer between C / E.
If you cannot understand the context of the question and/or the concept remains unclear,its best to guess wild and move on!
Since GMAT tests on several abilities of a B-School aspirant, learning strategies and practicing to know when to use the right strategy is the name of the game and we reiterate that guessing like elimination, back solving, testing values is also a strategy that can reward you with both time and accuracy.
If you get 3 questions incorrect sequentially because you did not guess through the paper but ran short of time at the end and took 3 sequential guesses, the penalty is huge!
However if you have taken distributed guess at the right place and used guessing as a strategy, you would not lose that much.
Strategizing on your paper and the attempts of the question is equally important as attempting the questions correctly under 2 min.
We hope that it made sense and we could strike a chord!
Do let us know if you liked this piece and if we have added value to your GMAT journey through this read.
Crackverbal Academics
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