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GMAT Inequalities is a high-frequency topic in GMAT Quant, but many students struggle because the concepts behave differently from standard algebra. Understanding the right rules, patterns, and edge cases can significantly improve both speed and accuracy.- May 06
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Hi,
First of all thanks to everyone for providing such great information on this forum. It's been a great help!
Recently I took my first 2 MGMAT CATs and scored low on the Quant, but didn't know about the penalty for skipping questions:
Q34 (15 correct, 9 incorrect, 13 blank)
Q36 (16 correct, 9 incorrect, 12 blank)
Nearly all of the questions I completed were in the 700-800 range.
My question is, had I spent the 30 seconds or so randomly guessing D, how much would that have potentially increased my Quant score? Thanks!
First of all thanks to everyone for providing such great information on this forum. It's been a great help!
Recently I took my first 2 MGMAT CATs and scored low on the Quant, but didn't know about the penalty for skipping questions:
Q34 (15 correct, 9 incorrect, 13 blank)
Q36 (16 correct, 9 incorrect, 12 blank)
Nearly all of the questions I completed were in the 700-800 range.
My question is, had I spent the 30 seconds or so randomly guessing D, how much would that have potentially increased my Quant score? Thanks!
Ccs127
Joined: 01 Oct 2012
Last visit: 03 Oct 2015
Posts: 19
Given Kudos: 3
Concentration: Strategy, Technology
Schools: HBS '17 (D) Kellogg MMM '17 (M) Booth '17 (WL)
GMAT 1: 750 Q50 V41
GPA: 3.6
WE:Engineering (Manufacturing)
21 Feb 2014, 01:01
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To answer your question: probably not much. Yes, there is a penalty for not finishing the test, but look at it this way: you're talking about guessing blindly on 12-13 questions at once. Given that no one answer choice is favored over any other answer choice (i.e., you're going to get an even distribution of correct A's, B's, C's, D's, and E's over the long run), you can guesstimate that you would answer maybe 2 or 3 of those 12-13 correct with blind guesses. Even splitting those correct answers up evenly among the 12-13 questions, you're still looking at getting strings of 4 questions wrong, multiple times, at the end of the test. Chances are that's going to swing the test toward thinking those ones you got right were actually outliers, meaning they won't have much of an impact. Also, remember that the algorithms used by GMAC are designed to take into account the fact that you always have a 20% chance of getting a question right simply by guessing. In short, you're not going to be supplying any new information to the algorithm by simply guessing on the last 12 questions of the test.
The bigger issue at hand is that you are taking 75 minutes to complete ~25 problems. You're averaging more than a minute longer per question than you should be. Regardless of how many correct answers to 700-level questions you can string together at the beginning of the test, you're going to run out of time, and that's ultimately going to drag your score down as low, if not lower, than would simply going through the questions with timing in mind and skipping/guessing on the ones you don't have a good grasp on within a short period of time. Remember that your score is roughly equivalent to the "level" at which you're getting half the questions right and half the questions wrong. You should probably aim for getting your timing down on the lower-level questions and build up from there. Making sure that you get the hard questions right at all costs just locks you into a downward spiral where you take more time to get a hard question right, which leads to a harder question that takes even longer to complete. (And this is ignoring the fact that, on a lot of the harder questions, you're STILL going to get it wrong, even after investing all that time.)
TL;DR: Focus on your timing more. Getting a handle on your timing is crucial for getting better at the test.
The bigger issue at hand is that you are taking 75 minutes to complete ~25 problems. You're averaging more than a minute longer per question than you should be. Regardless of how many correct answers to 700-level questions you can string together at the beginning of the test, you're going to run out of time, and that's ultimately going to drag your score down as low, if not lower, than would simply going through the questions with timing in mind and skipping/guessing on the ones you don't have a good grasp on within a short period of time. Remember that your score is roughly equivalent to the "level" at which you're getting half the questions right and half the questions wrong. You should probably aim for getting your timing down on the lower-level questions and build up from there. Making sure that you get the hard questions right at all costs just locks you into a downward spiral where you take more time to get a hard question right, which leads to a harder question that takes even longer to complete. (And this is ignoring the fact that, on a lot of the harder questions, you're STILL going to get it wrong, even after investing all that time.)
TL;DR: Focus on your timing more. Getting a handle on your timing is crucial for getting better at the test.
21 Feb 2014, 07:42
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Ccs127
Hi, thanks for your response. I have certainly focused nearly all of my efforts in recent weeks on improving my timing. Yesterday I took the free GMATClub Quant exam (m25 I believe) and was able to complete Quant test with 10 minutes to spare. I answered 22/37 for a Q45.
Can anyone speak to the reliability of the GMATClub free exams? (Yes I know, "GMATPrep is the most reliable indicator") etc., but I'm not asking for such a precise answer. Just more like, now that I've worked on some timing, does a Q45 on GMATClub mean I can at least break Q40?
(I am currently scoring V45+ and my goal is 700, so my quant goals are relatively modest compared to others on this forum. I'm just hoping to score a Q41-42.)
Thanks in advance!
