Target Test Prep Representative
Joined: 14 Oct 2015
Status:Founder & CEO
Affiliations: Target Test Prep
Posts: 18761
Given Kudos: 283
Location: United States (CA)
Re: What do the experts think of Manhattan's recommendation?
[#permalink]
14 Nov 2019, 20:33
Hi ChiTexan2015,
I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. Honestly, you need to be really careful about blindly guessing on or skipping questions in order to pick up time during the exam because if you have too quick of a “trigger finger,” before you even realize it, you’ll have guessed on 5+ questions, and then what will happen to your score, right? Thus, consider taking a more organic approach to solving GMAT questions. In other words, your goal should be to correctly answer as many questions as you can (all the while keeping an eye on the clock).
For example, with quant, to know when to give up on a question, you need to trust your instincts and follow your internal clock. Let’s say you are 2 minutes into a question, but you know that you are on the right path; in that case, you’d want to keep going even if it would take you 3 minutes to answer, right? After all, if you have fully mastered GMAT quant, then you should be in a position to answer some questions in 30 seconds, and thus it’s OK to spend more than 2 minutes on certain problems. On the other hand, say you are 60 or 90 seconds into a problem, and you know that you are going down a rabbit hole and likely will not be able to correctly answer the question. In that case, take an educated guess and keep things moving.
My overall point is, yes, it’s OK to guess, but ensure that you take a strategic approach to how and when you guess, OK? Also, since you have been hitting your score goal on practice exams, I really don’t recommend changing things up at the last minute. What you have been doing has been working for you, so stick with it.