Best questions & answers from comments
Souvik Bhattacharya wrote:
Great Video Whitney. I have a couple of question. One is: when you were describing the scoring analysis and it became clear that one can get 8 without bothering about the last 3 questions, does that mean I am allowed to skip them or I need to mark a guess anyway?
Whitney Garner wrote:
Hi Souvik - Great question! Technically you could decide that your 3 "freebies" will all just be at the end, but that is kindof like giving the GMAT power over your choice. It would be a much better strategy to decide throughout the section to skip questions you know are more difficult or time consuming for you. In this way you maximize the chances of getting the 8-9 questions you do choose to work on right!
Souvik Bhattacharya wrote:
Wait, I though you are not allowed to skip questions even in the IR section. I remember in the CATs I was taking in gmatprep I had to fake-answer every IR question to get it over with. Isnt that the case?
Whitney Garner wrote:
Ah, great point Souvik, and I definitely should have been more clear! You definitely HAVE TO PUT IN AN ANSWER - but for the questions that you know are long, tough, frustrating, difficult, etc., just GUESS ANYTHING and move on! So we "skip" only in the sense that we don't actually do any work for it. We still plug in an answer choice (because the test will make us) but it is simply a random guess allowing us to move on. And who knows, maybe you get lucky and your random guess is the right one!
Alex Satimont wrote:
Thank you for the video - question: what is a good IR score?
Whitney Garner wrote:
So the real question Alex is what is a "good enough" IR score (mostly because we don't know what business schools will want until they have more data and more time to review the IR scores compared to the performance of students in their program who have those IR scores). So plan for a score of at least the mean - that is why I recommend aiming for a 5-6. There is no good reason to worry about getting an "8" at this point (unless you are already scoring in the 99th percentile on the rest of the GMAT and have nothing else to do with your time but study for the IR). Instead use the time to study the important stuff (i.e. the Quant & Verbal sections), and just plan to make the IR as painless as possible (so that it doesn't take away from your energy on the later sections)!!
Alex Satimont wrote:
Thank you! I have not taken any IR practice tests. do you a recommendation for the one that will give me the most realistic IR score estimate? or is it easy to calculate my IR Score by doing the online
OG 13 problems (Sorry if I am new to this - I have not started working on the IR yet)
Whitney Garner wrote:
Hi Alex! Don't worry about being new - we all were new at one point or another!! A GREAT practice test that includes the IR is the free GMAT Prep 2.0 offered from the GMAC (on their site www.mba.com). Otherwise, most test prep programs have practice CATs for free (we have a free practice CAT on our site www.manhattangmat.com that comes with an IR section), or for a fee. But as always, the BEST way to get a very accurate score idea is to go right to THE SOURCE - the GMAC!
OH, and Alex - I missed the piece about the OG 13 questions... you really can't get a score estimate from those practice problems. I would use those for some practice first, and then try a practice test on mba.com (or another site) with the IR section (just note that the IR set on mba.com is NOT separate form the full test, so you will want to take the whole 3.5 hour thing!! For more check:
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